Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/45

 128. VIII. JAN. 8, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 33 important junction where dinner was served to hungry through-travellers. The dinner at York " in the pleasant refreshment -room hung round with engravings," is mentioned in ' Mr. Verdant Green Married and Done for,' and on the Irish line mentioned dinner used to be served about 5 p.m. at Limerick Junction, where two rather slow trains leaving Dublin and Cork, at 1 p.m. and 2.45 p.m. met and passed each other. Those of your readers who know this station, will recall its rather whimsical design which compels trains approaching from four different directions to run past their plat- forms before they can reach their proper stopping-places, by backing into them. M. G. L. The railway policemen at Shrewsbury Station (L. &N.W. and G.W.R. Joint) wore the tall hat a very few years ago, and may do so even now, but I am not sure. HERBERT SOUTHAM. LINES ON NEBUCHADNEZZAR (12 S. vii. 351, 437, 439.) The authoritative note of the Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, at the second reference, makes it probable that the poem about Nebuchadnezzar which was the subject of T. S. O.'s inquiry was a bundle of fragments and not one connected poem. The story there mentioned that a similarity of names caused some unsuccessful sets of verses, intended for the Newdigate competi- tion of 1852 on ' Belshazzar's Feast,' to fall into the hands of an undergraduate instead of a judge of the prize, may be dismissed with a smile, and all that can now be done is to record such short fragments as are remembered, out of a considerable number thrown off by some clever writer or writers in the summer term of 1852. As T. S. O. (how thin the disguise !) par- ticularly asks for definite references, perhaps I may be allowed to add the only printed references which I know to the *"poem." One is an extract from ' A Son of Belial : Autobiographical Sketches, by Nitram Tradley ' (London, 1882, 8vo : the author was Edmund Martin Geldart, resident at Balliol, 1863-8) : P- 187. " 1 was never favoured with a> sight of one of these productions [the English Poem on a sacred subject, a triennial prize first competed for in 1851, and often not printed], but a couplet was quoted in my time as taken from a poem on Nebu- chadnezzar, wherein of that monarch it is told, that what time he ate grass like an ox- He murmured as he chewed the unwonted food, It may be wholesome, but it is not good. I think I have now nearly exhausted the field of theological pabulum on which the young Nebuchad- nezzas of Bosphorus [Oxford] were put to graze in my day, nor do I know that I should be inclined to pass upon it a much more favourable verdict than that of the Assyrian potentate. Good it most cer- tainly was not, and, however wholesome in the abstract, it did not agree with me." It will be observed that Mr. Geldart is mistaken about the quotation, being from a 'Poem on a Sacred Subject,' which the context shows to have been on the writer's mind ; whereas the ' Newdigate,' a non- theological poem, was the real occasion of the Nebuchadnezzar fragments. The second reference is in the Oxford Undergraduate's Journal for Nov. 20, 1867 p. 205, where the following passage occurs, as from a ' Rejected Poem for the Newdigate Prize ' : While at these words the wise men stood appalled Some one suggested Daniel should be called. Daniel was called, and just remarked in passing, Oh ! Mene, Mene, Tekel and Upharsin." Perhaps this is all that we shall ever recover of the lines inquired for. FAMA. BEAUCLERC (12 S. vii. 391, 437). In Sep- tember last The Times printed several letters about the early handwriting of the Kings of England. The correspondence was closed by a letter in the issue for Sept. 25, in which I quoted the following decisive statement by Mr. W. J. Hardy : " Prior to the reign of Edward III. we have no- evidence of any member of the Royal Family being able to write his or her name." The mark was written in in a space left by the scribe, who had previously written, the name to be represented by the mark. The first actual name signature of a King of England is believed to be that of Richard II in 1386. FAMA. Oxford. DENNY, DE DEENE AND WINDSOR FAMI- LIES (10 S. xii. 424; 11 S. ii. 153, 274; vi. 418; 12 S. vii. 247, 358). One feels great diffidence in venturing to dissent from DR. ROUND. But apart from any assump- tions connected with the fesse dancettee coat or otherwise, there would seem to be the indisputable evidence of fact that the surnames Denny and Dene, &c., did run. nto one another in the days when ortho- graphy was in a very fluid state. The following examples, from different periods,, will show what is meant. Robert "Dany," also called "Dene" and "Dan " (Subsidy Lists, Chancery Pro- I ceedings, &c.) succeeded William "Dany,"