Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/291

 12 s. ix. SEPT. IT, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 237 Croix, Vicomte of Semoine and. Baron of Plancy, who married a Louise de Harlai. This last alliance is found in the Court enay pedigrees, but Baron G. de Plancy is not pre- cisely clear as to the descent from Charlotte de Courtenay. X. V. D. P. This copy of Petra Sancta's ' Tesserae Gentilitiae ' (Rome, 1638) probably be- longed at one time to one of the children of Henri IV. of France and his second consort, Marie do' Medici. Petra Sancta was for some years private secretary to Marie d ;' Medici, and is generally understood to have been the Italian teacher of the future Queen Henrietta Marie of England. Petra Sancta returned to Italy in 1625 (the year of the marriage of his pupil to Charles I.), and died at Rome about 1648. ANDREW DE TERNANT. 36, Somerleyton Road, Brixton, S.W. This stamp is stated by Guigard to have belonged to Henri de Guenegaud (1609-76), Secretaire d'Etat et Commandeur des Ordres du Roi. It is to be presumed that this is cor- rect, but the heraldry is peculiar as Guigard ascribes the 1st and 4th quarters of the shield to the family of La Croix, and the lion on the inescutcheon of pretence to Guenegaud. H. J. B. CLEMENTS. " SHUFFLE-WING " OR " SHOVEL-WING " (12 S..ix. 129, 174). Further evidence for this word is given in Prof. Wright's ' E.D.D.,' a work which should not be overlooked by investigators of bird and plant names. It is there recorded as occurring in N. Yorks (1891), W. Yorks (1885), W. Worcs (1888), and Surrey (1894). Knapp was, as MR. HARTING points out, a Gloucestershire man. Macgillivray records the name in his large 'History of British Birds' (1839), vol. ii., p. 251, and on pp. 253-4 remarks that the birds " shuffle along with short steps, with a half-hopping and half-walking move- ment. . . . Quietly they search among the tiny protuberances of the soil, gently raising and shaking their wings as they proceed." It is somewhat doubtful if Macgillivray actually heard the local name in his own dis- trict ; it seems to me much more likely that he met with it in Knapp' s ' Journal ' or else- where, and was struck with its peculiar appropriateness, as the critical Newton was in more recent years. I should hesitate before pronouncing it to be " almost obsolete," as these dialect and local names die very hard and have a sur- prising way of turning up in unexpected places. I note that in Rennie's edition (1831) of Col. Montague's ' Ornithological Dictionary,' " hedge -warbler " is discarded for " hedge - chanter," a book-name which has had some currency. LAWRENCE F. POWELL. Oxford. THE SWAN'S DYING SONG (12 S. ix. 190). Eugenius Philalethes, in his ' Brief Natural History,' says : It is said that swans, a little before their death, sing most sweetly, of which notwithstanding, Pliny, Hist. x. 23, thus speaks: " Olorum morte narratur flebilis cantus, falso ut arbitror aliquot experimentis." And Scaliger, Exercitat. 23, to the like purpose : " De cygni vero cantu suayissimo quern cum men- daciorum parente Graecia jactare ausus es, ad Luciani tribunal, apud quern aliquid novi dicas, statuo te." AndAelian, lib. x., c. 14: " Cantandi studio- sos esse jam communi sermone pervulgatum est. Ego, vero, cygnurn nunquam audivi canere, fortasse neque alius." ROBERT GOWER. The Song of the Swan is discussed at some length and with an abundance of literary references in Note O at the end of the late Sir William Geddes's edition of Plato's 'Phaedo,' 2nd ed., 1885. From this the following extracts are taken : It is frequently supposed that the ancients considered the dying spng of the Swan to be both its first and last musical strain, as if it were the bursting forth of a power unknown before. This, however, is an erroneous impression, and the passage in the Phaedo [84E-85A] is proof to that effect : for, although Socrates is represented as saying that it sings most richly at death, he yet admits that it sings also at other times. The oldest references to its cry make no mention of the approach of death and regard it as a familiar phenomenon of its life : cf. Homer, Iliad ii. 463 ; Hesiod, Scutum Herculis, 316 (cf. Aristoph. Aves. 776 ; Callimachus, Hymn. Apoll. 5, Hymn. Del. 249, in which last passage the Swans are represented as singing, not on the occasion of their own death, but on that of the birth of Phoebus). The majestic form, the dazzling whiteness, the grace of motion on the element of water, and the lofty freedom of flight in the element of air, combined with its incapacity to move with ease on the common element of earth, were features marking out this bird for high poetic associations. . . . It was but a step to complete its investiture as the bird of Apollo (Cic. Tusc. i. 30) by ascribing to it the almost necessary accomplishment of the gift of song. The origin of the notion of its melodiousness at death is due to the kindred fancy, that the poets, the servants of Apollo, as their locks grew white with age, while their voice became shrill (hence