Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/265

 2 1 " 1 s. NO 13., MAR. 29. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

257

who was captured within the British lines, having volunteered for a similar desperate service, failed also ; and met, in as cool and courageous a man- ner, a similar fate. His biography has not, that I am aware of, been written ; neither has a monu- ment been raised to his memory.

Before closing this note, which I fear may oc- cupy too much space in " N. 8c Q.," I would only remark, that a lineal descendant of a most dis- tinguished American officer, who sat on Major Andre's court martial, is now in the English army, and has served with distinction in the present war. W. W.

Malta.

PASSAGE IN PLUTARCH.

(1 st S. xii. 205.)

I think the following passage will show that the author of Thoughts on Manners, was more in- debted to Cudworth than to Plutarch for his clever illustrations :

" Plutarch somewhere observes it as a strange and un- couth rite, in the worship of the goddess Hecate, that they which offered sacrifice to her did not partake of it. And the same author reports of Catiline and his con- spirators, on. KaTaBvaavTv; avdptoirov eyeviravro TWI> irapKtav, ' that sacrificing a man, they all did eat somewhat of the flesh ' using this religious rite as a bond to confirm them together in their treachery. But Strabo tells us of a strange kind of worship used by the Persians in their sacrifices, where no part of the flesh was offered up to the gods, but all eaten up by those that brought it, and their guests: they supposing in the meanwhile, that while they did eat the flesh, their god which they worshipped had the soul of the sacrifice that was killed in honour to him. The author's own words are these in his fifteenth

book : ' MeptVoi'TOs Se TOV Mdyov TO. fcpe'a TOU vT)yovfiei'ov rr)i> lepovpyCav, airiacri, SieAd^ei/oi, TOIS Scots ovSev airoveCiioLfTtf /xe'po?. Trjs yap ifivxy'S $a.> ot TJJ 'E/comj Kai TOIS arroTpoiratois ex^epoi/Tes TO. oeiirva, (AT) yevo^ieVous aurovs, ftijSe TOVJ oiKOt.VATji' KO.TTVOV KOU flopv/3ou /u.ere'xoi'Tas.",

On this Mosheim says :

" Sed hie locus Plutarchi alienus mihi videtur a prse- senti negotio. Nam de sacrificiis Hecates haud agitur in eo, sed de Hecates ccena quae vocabatur inter Grascos. Moris nimirum inter Grsecos erat, ut huic Deae, in novi- luniis mensam publice ponerent variis cibis instructam, qui a pauperibus consumebantur, nulla illis parte relicta, qui eos apponi jusserant."

Mr. Birch, in the preface to his edition of Cud- worth, says that he has given all Mosheim's re- ferences. The last he has not, and I think in many other instances he has not made the best use of the excellent notes with which Mosheim has enriched his translation. II. B. C.

U. U. Club.

THE OLD ENGLISH ALB. (2 nd S. L 113.)

Quoting from Mr. Digby's Mores Catholici these words :

" The priests of England bore upon their albs, on the ( left shoulder, Quasi socipes de panno serico assutas,' I the upper closed in sign of their (there?) being but one I been twice converted to the faith," &c.
 * faith, but the lower divided, as a sign of their having

j CEYREP asks, " Can any light be thrown upon this ornament of the alb from any existing se- pulchral monuments, brasses, or stained glass windows? Do any English liturgical writers notice it, or can we find any clear allusion to it in our numeral lists of albs belonging to English churches and cathedrals ? "

1. CEYREP, I fear, will look in vain amid En- glish art-works for a satisfactory illustration of what he is seeking. Of priests' figures clothed in the alb only, that is, without a cope or a chasuble over it, I know very few, and in none of these can I bring to mind that the shoulder apparel is shown.

2. Mr. Digby's sole authority for any apparel having been worn on the left shoulder of the old English priestly alb is a passage from the Chro- nical of St. Bertin's Church, written by John of Ypres, an abbot of that house, and who died A.D. 1383. Mr. Digby and CEYREP, while they unhesitatingly adopt, give the word socipes without any attempt at translating it, and wisely too. The volume of that valuable work in which the Chro- nicon Ecclesice S. Bertini \s printed now lies open before me, and I see that its editor Martene, him-

with this very word, suggests, as another reading, forcipes, which to me does not seem a happy guess. That socipes is a blunder which dropped from the pen of the old writer himself, or of his transcribers, cannot be doubted, as it is nowhere to be found in any other monument of classic or of mediaeval Latinity. To conclude, then, at once that an ornament worn on the left shoulder of our old English alb was called by the unheard-of term socipes is unwarrantable. But a few lines before, for the Welsh people, we have Ubalenses instead of Walenses, affording some presumptive evidence that Abbot John did mistake in names ; to my thinking he also fell into a mistake about this very fact that it was on the left shoulder only that an apparel was worn here in England.
 * self a celebrated writer on the liturgies, dissatisfied

That at one period in England there was worn down behind and from both shoulders, and not merely from the left, as the Chronicle of St. Bertin's affirms, a particular sort of apparel is certain. This we learn from an Englishman writing in England, and for the especial instruction of the English people, at the very time albs so ornamented were in use ; this writer is thought to