Page:Notes and Queries - Series 7 - Volume 5.djvu/21

7 S. V. 7, ’88.] vowed herself to chastity; being sought in marriage by Ewen, son of the King of Cumbria [i.e., Urien Rheged], ‘juvenis quidam elegantissimus,’ on her continued refusal her father sent her to a swineherd, that she might be disgraced. The swineherd, a secret Christian, preserved her honour; but, at the instigation of a woman, she was forced by a beardless boy in woman’s clothes. On the results of this becoming manifest, her father ordered her to be stoned and cast in a chariot from the top of a hill. Miraculously saved, she was put into a boat made of twigs and pitch, and covered with leather, at Aberledy, and carried out to the isle of May, whence, attended by a company of fishes, she was wafted to Culross, where she brought forth S. Kentigern, and where both she and her child were regenerated in the sacred font by S. Servanus. She came to live at Glasghu, where she was honourably buried.”

Bishop Forbes adds:—

As it does not happen to every one to possess Bishop Forbes’s ‘Kalendars of the Scottish Saints,’ I have transcribed his abridgment of St. Thenew’s history. In Adam’s ‘King’s Kalendar,’ given in Bishop Forbes’s ‘Kalendars,’ she is styled “S Thennow vidow mother of s. mungo vnder king Eugenius 2 In Scot.” In ‘Menologium Scoticum,’ on July 18 occurs, “Acta Thennae viduæ S. Kentigerni matris, miraculosae mulieris.” On the same day, in the “Scottish Entries in the Kalendar of David Camerarius” is this, “Sancta Thametis, aliis Thennat Scotorum Regina, & in Glottiana præsertim Scotiæ prouincia celeberrima.”

It may be added here that in ‘Vita S. Kentegerni Ep. et Conf.,’ edited by Mr. Pinkerton, it is stated that St. Servanus gave the name Taneu to the mother, and Kyentyern, which means Capitalis Dominus, to the child at their baptism, and that he grew so fond of Kentigern as to address him in a term of endearment Munghu, which means “dear friend”; a name by which S. Kentigern is now best known in Glasgow as the patron saint of the cathedral. Mr. Pinkerton also notes that Cambria is Strathclyde, and Laodonia Lothian; and that at Culross, in Fife, existed in 1789 a chapel dedicated to St. Mungo or Kentigern. Another account mentions that Eugenius III., King of the Scots, was the father of St. Kentigern. See Baring Gould, ‘Lives of the Saints,’ July 18.

(7 S. iii. 48, 214, 377, 454; iv. 78, 278, 371).—Your contributor’s statements (7  S. iv. 371), (1) that no one has disputed the non-existence of the cod in the Mediterranean; (2) that the Ital. merluzzo and the French morue “undoubtedly designate the same article”; (3) that merluzzo means undried cod; and (4) that, on the authority of Mr. G. Dennis, merluzzo is in Sicily applied even to whiting—although this fish, occurring in the northern parts of the Adriatic, has never been found on the Sicilian coasts—make up an ichthyological puzzle which will probably remain unravelled for a long time to come. Remarkable as this puzzle is, however, it is perhaps not more so than the ingenuity which twists my statement (7 S. iv. 278) that the Italians “have no term for fresh cod—I mean a word denoting the cod proper and no other fish” into an assertion that they “have no term for cod.”

(7 S. iv. 285, 475).—The passage from Aulus Gellius is most interesting, and I must retract my suggestion that the vein theory may have been invented to account for the ecclesiastical custom, though I still think it is “just the sort of thing that would be invented later on.” There can be no doubt that the Church’s use of the fourth finger is to be traced through Aulus Gellius (cir.  150) and Apion (cir.  40) to Egyptian antiquity, and that the words “In nomine,” &c., have been adapted to it by a most happy coincidence.

(7 S. iv. 252, 366).— note is misleading. The ‘Last Poem’ is in the collected edition of 1880, published by Macmillan.

Kingsley’s poem to which Mr. Warren refers appears under the title of ‘Lorraine’ in a collection of poems published by Canon Farrar, and entitled ‘With the Poets.’ An American edition of the Canon’s book was published in 1883 by Funk & Wagnalls, New York.

(7 S. iv. 449).—A few illustrations, for which I am mainly indebted to your past good records, occur to me. As to the mere saying, it probably turned up some sixty years ago. Certainly Canning, in a speech of his, used the expression derisively, as of three busybody tailors who affected to speak in their collective capacity on behalf of the “people of England.” Punch some years ago gave a racy sketch of the three, each riding on a goose, and armed with scissors. Shakespeare, in ‘Twelfth Night,’ puts it, “Did you never see the picture of we three”? which, as afterwards explanedexplained [sic], is, the planting “you two, and to let the fool make a third.”

For aught I know to the contrary, Shakespeare may have noted the old sign in Tooley Street, “We Three”; or, to be more exact, from the Beaufoy Collection of Trade Tokens, No. 1025,