Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/484

398 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 B.IX. NOV. 12,1921. (12 S. ix. 328).—Noting a reference to "The Rising Sun" at the above reference, is it a propos to mention that in Prof. Muir head's 'Guide to London' the Rising Sun, as an emblem, is marked in connexion with Anne of Bohemia's tomb (d. 1394) in Westminster Abbey?

RICHARD CCEUR DE LION (12 S. ix. 353). It was in the Castle of Durrenstein, accord- ing to the legend, that the troubadour Blondel discovered him. (December 1192.) Surely the traditional account of the King's interment is the correct one. " Richard," says Miss Norgate in her ' England under the Angevin Kings ' (1887), ii. 386-7, gave directions for the disposal of his body. It I was to be embalmed ; the brain and some of the internal organs were to be buried in the ancient Poitevin abbey of Charroux ; the heart was to be deposited in the Norman capital, where itj had always found a loyal response ; the corpse itself was to be laid, in token of penitence, at his father's feet in the abbey church of Fon- tevraud. Lastly, he received extreme unction (6 April). His friends buried him as he had wished. St. Hugh of Lincoln, now at Angers. . came to seal his forgiveness by performing the last rites of the Church over this second grave at Fontevraud (Palm Sunday, 1199), where another Angevin King was thus " shrouded among the shrouded women " his own mother, doubtless, in their midst. He was laid to sleep in the robes which he had worn on his last crown- ing-day in England, five years before. His heart was enclosed in a gold and silver casket, carried to Rouen, and solemnly deposited by the clergy among the holy relics in their cathedral church. A. R. BAYLEY. BOOK BORROWERS (12 S. viii. 208, 253, | 278, 296, 314, 334, 350, 377, 394, 417, 456, j 477 ; ix. 137). In ' N. & Q.'s ' latest series j (I have no chance to look over the many ' previous ones), no mention is made of the j " Judas' Curse." This was traditionally, in ! the West and in the Levant, employed j against book " borrowers." and this con- nexion is exhaustively treated in The American Journal of Philology, 1921, xlii. 234-252, especially at 247-251. Of the many quotations let the following suffice, it being a short form of about the eighth century, almost the standard in the Benedictine monasteries of Eastern France, viz. : " Hie est liber Sancti Benedicti abbatis Floriacensis coenobii ; si quis eum aliquo ingenio non redditurus abstraxerit, cum Juda proditore, Anna et Caipaa atque Pilato damnationem accipiat ! Amen." ROCKTNGHAM. Boston, Mass. " MAKING BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW" (12 S. ix. 331). In reply to the query of L. L. K., I spent my boyhood in South Africa, where many sun-baked bricks were made, and do not remember seeing straw chopped up and used for the purpose of mechanically hold- ing the clay of the bricks together. Nor does it strike me, as an engineer, as a likely reason for incorporating straw with the clay, for the tensile strength of straw is small, and would probably not much increase the strength of the bricks. On the other hand, it is known that the remarkable plastic qualities of clay are largely due to colloids, and that a small quantity of tannic acid greatly increases the plastic properties of clay. Consequently, it has been suggested that the straw referred to by the Israelites when they were in Egypt was not used so much on account of its mechanical binding- qualities (if in fact it was incorporated with the actual bricks) as for its colloidal properties, especially if it were allowed to rot in water beforehand, and this water, with or without the rotting straw, were added to the clay, such use would increase its plastic proper- ties, and enable it to be more readily moulded, and probably result in stronger and_better sun-dried bricks. A. S. E. ACKERMANN. on The Chronicle of Muntaner. Translated from the Catalan by Lady Goodenough. Vol. ii. (The Hakluyt Society.) WE are glad at length to have Muntaner in English complete (see 12 S. yiii. 299). This second half of the Chronicle, which closes with the coronation of Alfonso IV. of Aragon at Saragossa, is one of the principal sources for the history, during its period, of the Eastern Mediterranean and Greece. By the way, in the list of con- temporary sovereigns given in an appendix no mention is made of the Emperors at Con- stantinople. It is hardly necessary to stress the importance of .this account of the expedition of the Catalan Company, or to dwell on the careers of the famous and chivalrous Roger de Luria and the redoubtable Roger de Flor. Muntaner himself, as students of the period are aware, bore no small part in the Catalan enterprise, having been present at its very inception and in command for a long period, and during important operations, at Gallipoli. One of the most interesting of his many adven- tures was the capture of the alum-manufacturing city of Fogliari or Phocaea, undertaken at the instance and in the company of the Genoese Ticino Zaccaria. An enormous booty fell into the conqueror's hands, among which were three