Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/317

 12 s. ix. SEPT. 24, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 259 such items as " Romescot 2s. 4c?.," " Smoke- money 2s. 6d," " Smoake -farthings " (1519- 21), and " Pentecostalles," otherwise called " smoke -farthings " (1602), while so late as 1642 " Smoake -farthings and charges to Ilsley, 8s. Orf.," appear in the Newbury churchwardens' accounts. This was due to the restoration of the tax under the Marian reaction. It disappeared with, or before, the Commonwealth, having, no doubt, for many years been ill and reluctantly paid, and took its new and wholly secular form at the Restoration, 13 and 14 Car. II., cap. 10. The term " Pentecostals " was due to the fact that it was usually collected at the Whit- suntide visitation. When it was finally abrogated ( 1 W. and M., cap. 10) its place was taken six years later, by the still more in- iquitous window tax (7 W. I., cap. 18), which, as Blackstone observed, " somewhat darkened the prospect " of the remission of a tax, which had been declared to be " not only a great oppression of the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people " (1 W. and M., cap. 10, as above). The wjndow tax, beginning in a house tax of from 2s. to 3s. (cottages excluded), varied, being first imposed on a house with nine windows or more and then on one with six windows or more. One great objection to the hearth tax was the intrusion on privacy by the entry of officials to ascertain fire-places. The Government conceded that remission at the price of a tax on fresh air which has promoted tuberculosis. UVEDALE LAMBERT. MILK, BUTTER AND CHEESE STREETS (12 S. ix. 169, 214). Dartmouth and Totnes both have " The Butter Walk." A. H. W. FYNMORE. Arundel. JJotetf on Beowulf : an Introducton to the Study of the Poem irit/i a Discussion of the Stories of Off a and Finn. By R. W. Chambers. (Cambridge University Press, 1 10s. net.) THK volume before us will claim the attention of all students of Anglo-Saxon as an important, and at the same time delightful, contribution to the understanding of 'Beowulf.' Though itself both li'.-ii iicd and ingenious, it represents the return of scholarship from over-ingenious and strained interpretation to a reading more natural and closer to common sense and first impressions. Thus Mr. Chambers argues against the theory that ' Beowulf ' is a translation from the Scandinavian ; and, in contending that the Eotens in the Firins- burg Fragment are the Jutes and not the Frisians under that name he goes back to a careful scrutiny of such facts as are known to us and demolishes, we think, very successfully the plausible but all too slenderly supported theories of some previous writers. The discussion of the Finnsburg Fragment is indeed excellent through- out, especially the attempt at reconstruction, which, though by the nature of the case it cannot be definitely proved to be the correct one, gives, we believe, as good a working hypothesis for the student as it is possible to form. It is clear that Mr. Chambers possesses an un- usually strong and ready feeling lor construction, for his own book is admirably put together. He deals with ' Beowulf ' in three lengthy chapters treating respectively of the historical elements, the non-historical elements and theories as to the origin, date and structure of the poem. On the question of the historic reality of Beowulf as a Geatic King, he sums up unfavourably, conceiving his reign to be a poetic fiction composed after the downfall of the Geatic kingdom, though the his- toric background of the poem is, of course, not disputed. In the section on Heorot he maintains the identification of Heorot with Leire as against the identification with Boskilde at the head of the fiord conclusively in our opinion. The arrival of the Geats at Heorot and their march from the ship inland to the great hall, bears, if anything in the poem does, the character of adherence to tra- dition as distinct from invention. If we are not prepared to acknowledge that much in this in- stance the whole attempt at any identification becomes nugatory. More important is the careful discussion of the problem of King Offa a problem upon which we agree with Mr. Chambers in thinking that Prof. Earle decidedly went wrong. In Part II., which contains documents relating to the stories in ' Beowulf ' and to the Offa Saga, Mr. Chambers prints both the story of Offa in Saxo Grammaticus and the life of Offa I. from the MS. in the Cotto- nian Collection. This documentary portion of the book is much to be valued. The relation of heroic poetry to folklore, and of ' Beowulf ' from the folklore or legendary aspect to Scandinavian parallels, is worked out in a sequence of vivid and pleasant pages of which the attrac- tiveness by no means impairs the general cogency. Here and there, in quite minor points, we cannot follow our author as, for instance, when he says A propos of Welhisc, that an old man of the seventh century " may well have continued to spell his name as it was spelt when he was a child, even though the current pronunciation had changed " ; but in general we believe his views will in the end commend themselves as sound. It would be difficult effectively to counter his arguments in favour of the unity of structure of ' Beowulf ' ; and the essay on the Christian elements in the poem is illuminating and to our mind convincing. In fact, both as to " dividing " the poem structur- ally and as to the question of the interpolation of Christian allusions it seems to us that too much microscopic examination and too little feeling for poetry as such, have been brought to bear. The poet of ' Beowulf,' familiar as he shows himself with the Old Testament, would be well acquainted with a view of history in which there was a long period before the coming of Christ.