Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/388

 318 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.ix. OCT. 15,1021. Enlarged" (Kegan Paul, 1901), in which there are minor alterations in the text. As the quatrains are incorrectly quoted, 1 append a correct transcript from the 1883 edition : 197. True I drink "wine, like every man of sense, For I know Allah will not take offence ; Before time was, He knew that I should drink, And who am I to 'thwart His prescience ? 102. If grace be grace, and Allah gracious be, Adam from Paradise why banished He ? Grace to poor sinners shown is grace indeed ; In grace hard earned 'by works no grace I see. 34. Pagodas, just as mosques, are homes of prayer, ''Tis prayer that church-bells chime unto the air, K- Yea, Church and Ka'ba, Rosary and Cross Are all but divers tongues of world-wide prayer. 270. We are but chessmen, destined, it is plain, That great chess player, Heaven, to entertain ; It moves us on life's chess-board to and fro, And then in death's box shuts us up again. A. G. POTTER. 126, Adelaide Road, Hampstead, N.W. '!F I SHOULD DIE TO-NIGHT' (12 S. v. 318). At the above reference a long quota- tion was given from the late Sir Edward 'Cook's ' More Literary Recollections,' on the disputed authorship of these verses. Among those whose claims were considered were a certain Dr. Cameron of Australia ; Theo- dore Parker (to whom the verses were as- cribed by Professor James Stewart) ; and a Mr. R. C. Vivian Myers of Philadelphia, U.S.A., for whom a definite claim had been made by the Press of that city. No fresh light appears to have been thrown on the subject in ' N. & Q.,' but it may be of in- terest to note that the question was raised in John o' London's Weekly towards the end of 'last year. In reply to an inquiry, Miss Kathleen V.O'Leary, M.A., of Cork, definitely asserted that the poem was written by her uncle, Charles Costello of Killimor, Galway, a 'journalist who died in 1895, aged twenty- three years. Miss O'Leary wrote : I have often seen ... a cutting of the poem from the Dublin paper in which it originally appeared, but ... I cannot be sure of the paper. In recent years the verses were included anonymously in a reading book for Irish schools, edited by Father Finlay, S. J.. who was a friend of my uncle's. Seeing that Sir Edward Cook found the verses in Public Opinion as long ago as 1876, as stated by him in ' More Literary Recollec- tions,' the claim put forward on behalf of the Irish journalist, who was only twenty-three years of age at his death in 1895, would seem to be conclusively refuted. J. R. H. NAMING OF PUBLIC ROOMS IN INNS (12 S. ix. 189, 231, 255, 274). It was a common occurrence in the sixties to meet with rooms in Lancashire hotels named after statesmen and naval and military commanders. Rooms in a Wigan hotel were called the Wellington, the Nelson, &c. B. C. I remember seeing (more than forty years ago) " Mr. Sydney Smidt " painted on the door of a room on the first floor of the old Hotel d'Angleterre at Chamonix. Inquirers were informed it had been the room of the " celebrated Englishman," and I wondered if the spelling of the patronymic had been supplied by the mirthful Sydney. ARTHUR T. WINN. This custom obtains in the old building called the God-begot Hostel at Winchester. I don't know whether it is continuous or a revival. J. FOSTER PALMER. 3, Oakley Street, S.W.3. At the Albion Hotel, Manchester, there are six reception and dining rooms bearing the following names : Victoria, Phila- delphia, Albert, America, Prince, and Victory. ARCHIBALD SPARKE. THE SEA-SERPENT (12 S. ix. 210, 274). There is an interesting article supported by affidavits on sea-serpents in The London Journal dated Dec. 30, 1848. It would appear that a few months after the appearance of a sea-serpent off the island of Coll, in June, 1808, the dead body of a monstrous sea-snake was found driven on shore on Stronsa, one of the Orkney Isles. It measured fifty-five feet in length and about ten feet in circumference, and was furnished with a kind of mane or ridge of bristles, which extended from the shoulder to within two feet and a half of the tail. These bristles, while moist, were luminous in the dark ; and it was provided with fins or swimming paws which measured four feet and a half in length, and in shape resembled the wing of a goose without feathers (in this character it agrees with the great sea-snake seen by Egede the missionary). The accounts of this singular creature are contained in the affidavits made before the