Page:Notes and Queries - Series 1 - Volume 1.djvu/15

Nov. 3. 1849.] the knight of Charlcote, nearly all the cooks'-shops and ordinaries of London were supplied with stolen venison. The following letter from the lord mayor (which I copy from the original) of that day, Thomas Pullyson, to secretary Walsingham, speaks for itself, and shows that the matter had been deemed of so much importance as to call for the interposition of the Privy Council: the city authorities were required to take instant and arbitrary measures for putting an end to the consumption of venison and to the practice of deer-stealing, by means of which houses, &c. of public resort in London were furnished with that favourite viand. The letter of the lord mayor was a speedy reply to a communication from the queen's ministers on the subject:—

I dare say that the registers of the Privy Council contain some record of what was done on the occasion, and would enable us to decide whether the very reasonable request of the Cooks of London had been complied with. Whether this be or be not so, the above document establishes beyond question that in the summer of 1585 cooks'-shops, tabling-houses (i. e. ordinaries), and taverns were abundantly supplied with stolen venison, and that the offence of stealing it must have been very common. J. PAYNE COLLIER.
 * Kensington, Oct. 26. 1849.

the great popularity which the legends of the Saints formerly enjoyed is considered, it becomes matter of surprise that they should not have been more frequently consulted for illustrations of our folk-lore and popular observances. The Edinburgh Reviewer of Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, has, with great judgment, extracted from that work a legend, in which, as he shows very clearly, we have the real, although hitherto unnoticed, origin of the Three Balls which still form the recognised sign of a Pawnbroker. The passage is so curious, that it should be transferred entire to the "."

"None of the many diligent investigators of our popular antiquities have yet traced home the three golden balls of our pawnbrokers to the emblem of St. Nicholas. They have been properly enough referred to the Lombard merchants, who were the first to open loan-shops in England for the relief of temporary distress. But the Lombards had merely assumed an emblem which had been appropriated to St. Nicholas, as their charitable predecessor in that very line of business. The following is the legend; and it is too prettily told to be omitted:—

Now in that city (Panthera) there dwelt a certain nobleman, who had three daughters, and, from being rich, he became poor; so poor that there remained no means of obtaining food for his daughters but by sacrificing them to an infamous life; and oftentimes it came into his mind to tell them so, but shame and sorrow held him dumb. Meantime the maidens wept continually, not knowing what to do, and not having bread to eat; and