Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/139

 2- 1 S. N 7., FEB. 16. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

131

and made the communication to your pages, is incorrect, the note being furnished by one of your earliest correspondents, subscribed with his own initials, E. D.

Shameful Severity formerly practised in School*. Your correspondent X. O. B. (2 nd S. p. 13.), and also HENBY KENSINGTON (p. 53.), will be in- terested in the verses subjoined. They were the production of one of the boys in the upper form of a very large school, where great severity was practised in the last century. The retaliation re- corded was firmly credited by all the scholars, and affirmed by the servants. As extremes usually beget extremes, corporal punishment seems now to be quite abrogated :

" The Tables turned by 'Dear Molly,' the Name of En- dearment used always by the Doctor to that Vixen, his Wife.

" Our Master, who, within his school, Bears always most tyrannic rule, And every day, to keep us jogging, Gives four or five a good sound flogging, Storming like any demigod, Whilst he administers the rod; I Of all his manliness forsaken, At home can scarcely save his bacon. ^Whilst his 'Dear Molly,' with tongue pye, Scolds him all day confoundedly ; And oft' at night, with his own birch, Makes him pray louder than at church ; Until, 'Dear Molly's' 1 wrath to appease, He begs her pardon on his knees."

E. D.

N.B. The words printed in Italics were school phrases in daily use at that time.

Thomson, Armstrong, and Savage. A scrap from the Daily Advertiser of Tuesday, Sept. 13, 1737, preserved in a volume of Masonic Collec- tions, by Dr. Rawlinson (now Bodl. MS., Rawl. C. 136.), informs us that on the preceding Friday, James Thomson, Esq., author of The Seasons, Dr. Armstrong, and others, were admitted free and accepted Masons at Old Man's Coffee-House, Charing Cross, on which occasion " Richard Sa- vage, Esq., son of the late Earl Rivers, officiated as Master." W. D. MACBAY.

New College.

May we not hope, through the medium of " N. & Q.," to set at rest, or at least throw some ad- ditional light upon that obscure point, the origin of the term galilee, as applied to the porch or chapel at the entrance, or at the west end of some churches ? At Durham we find the galilee (1153 -1154) in the form of a large chapel at the west end of the nave, that was built for the use of

females frequenting the monastic church. At Ely the galilee (1200-1215) is a beautiful porch at the west end of the nave ; and at Lincoln it is a porch on the west side of the south transept. St. Stephen's Chapel at Westminster formerly had a galilee, which was a vestibule or ante-chapel at the west end.

The reasons usually assigned for the use of the term are five in number :

1. The author of the Ancient Rites and Monu- ments of Durham, a work written in 1593, tells us

" It is called the galilee by reason (as some think) of the translation of the same, being once begun and after- wards removed ; whereupon it took the name of galilee."

alluding to Bishop Pudsey's fruitless attempt, in the first instance, to build the chapel for females at the east end of the cathedral.

2. Mr. Millers, speaking of Ely, accounts thus for the term :

" As Galilee, bordering on the Gentiles, was the most remote part of the Holy Land from the holy city of Jeru- salem, so was this part of the building most distant from the sanctuary, occupied by those unhappy persons who, during their exclusion from the mysteries, were reputed scarcely, if at all, better than heathens."

3. Another writer says

" Attached to the south end of one of the crosses of the western transept of Lincoln Cathedral is an elegant porch, called a galilee, open on three sides, the fourth leading by folding doors into the church. There were formerly such porches at the western extremity of all churches. In these, public penitents were stationed, dead bodies deposited previous to interment, and women allowed to visit their rtlatives who were monks of that church. We gather from a passage in Gervase, that when a woman applied to see a relative who was a monk, she was an- swered, ' He goeth before }'ou into Galilee ; there you shall see him ; ' and hence the name." Compitum, n. 265.

4. Surtees conjectures that the text

" Go, tell my brethren that they go into Galilee ; there they shall see me." Matt, xxviii. 10.

as applied to the consolation given in this part of the building at the time when the kingdom was under interdict, may have given rise to the term.

5. Ornsby suggests the following origin :

" There was a custom among the Benedictine monks

to make a procession at certain times round their church

and cloister, and to halt at certain stations, in memory of

the Resurrection, and of the various times at which our


 * Lord afterwards appeared to His disciples. His last ap-

I pearance was on a mountain iirGalilee, and it is therefore

not improbable that the place where the procession made

its final halt should have received that name." Sketches

of Durham, p. 83.

All these explanations of the origin of the term cannot have equal claims to be the true one ; per- haps none may be so. The first Galilee, from removal or translation, might have stood, if Durham only had this appendage to its cathedral. The second Galilee, from Galilee being that portion of Western Palestine furthest distant from