Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/213

 9 th s. i. :

MAR. 12, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

205

j ist a century ago (' Select Poetical Works of . T. Coleridge,' p. 70, London, H. G. Bohn, ] 352), I make the following extract : ] ut never elsewhere in one place I knew o many Nightingales : and far and near, 1 1 woou and thicket, over the wide grove, They answer and provoke each other's songs Witn skirmish and capricious passagings, /aid murmurs musical, and swift jug, jug,

sound more sweet than all

Stirring the air with such a harmony,

That, should you close your eyes, you might almost

Forget it was not day.

These are exquisite lines, it will be allowed, and full of a poet's rapture. I now bespeak attention to those of John Skelton, who " was buried in the Chancel of the Church of St. Margaret, within the City of Westminster, in 1529, 21 Hen. VIII." They are taken from ' The Crowne of Lawrell ' and are addressed to " Maistres Isabell Pennell ":

Sterre of the morowe graye,

The blossome on the spraye,

The fresheste flowre of Maye. Maydenly demure,

Of woman hede the lure,

Wherfore I make you sure It were an hevenly helthe,

It were an endlesse welthe,

A lyfe for God hymselfe, To here this nyghtyngale

Amonge the byrdes smale,

Warbelynge in the vale

Dug, dug, iug, iug,

Good yere and good lucke,

With chucke, chucke, chucke, chucke.

It is impossible to deny the freshness and spontaneity of these verses, and I am very much inclined to think that Coleridge must have seen them. The sounds "jug, jug " are of themselves, I think, almost conclusive of the fact. In the extract given I have copied literatim et verbatim from the edition I possess, which is the only one I have seen. I see from Percy's ' Reliques,' vol. i. p. 71 (Lon- don, Ed. Moxon, 1846), that there is an edition in black letter, 1568, and, from another source, that Skelton's works were edited by Mr. Dyce in 1843. JOHN T. CUBBY.

[Lyly, in ' Campaspe,' has

What bird so sings yet so does wayle ? 'tis the ravished nightingale- Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu shee cryes.]

ITALIAN PRECAUTIONS AGAINST VAMPIBES. "What have they not done ! Candia told of all the different means they had tried, all the ex- orcisms they had resorted to. The priest had come, and, after covering the child's head with an end of his stole, had repeated verses from the Gospel. The mother had hung up a wax cross, blessed on Ascension Day, over the door, and had sprinkled the hinges with holy water, and repeated the Creed three times running in a loud voice ; she had tied up a handful of salt in a piece of linen and hung

it round the neck of her dying child. The father had 'done the seven nights' that is, for seven nights he had watched in the dark behind a lighted lantern, attentive to the slightest sound, ready to catch and grapple with the vampire. A single prick with a pin sufficed to make her visible to the human eye. But the seven nights' watch had been fruitless, for the child wasted away and grew more hopelessly feeble from hour to hour. At last, in despair, the father had consulted with a wizard, by whose advice he had killed a dog and put the body behind the door. The vampire could not then enter the house till she counted every hair on its body."' The Triumph of Death,' by Gabriele D'Annunzio, translated by Georgina Harding, 1898, p. 265.

WILLIAM GEOBGE BLACK. 12, Sardinia Terrace, Glasgow.

"ON" OB "UPON." It will no doubt have been observed by many readers of 'N. & Q.' that the use of these prepositions in place- names savours very much of personal pre- dilection. One person will write Newcastle- but another will favour Newcastle- e. Now one or other is right or wrong. The difference is not confined merely to the North-Country capital I name, but extends to other English towns which will be readily recalled to mind. I do not know whether the point has ever been discussed previously in these columns, but I should like to have the opinions of readers on the matter. C. P. HALE.

MB. BUMBLE ON LITEKATUBE. I have not a copy of ' Oliver Twist ' at hand, and I am sorry to say I have forgotten much of my Dickens. Will the ever-ready correspondent of ' N. & Q.' say why Mr. Bumble should be expected to scowl at Messrs. H. S. Nichols & Co.'s issue of a series of "Court Memoirs"? I can quite understand why Mr. Pecksniff and another might frown. Thus the Court Cir- cular of 9 Jan. :

"Seriously, Messrs. Nichols, you have a long vista of usefulness yet before you. You are at present only on the threshold of your triumphs at least we hope so, for you have so whetted and stimulated our appetites that we are loudly asking for more, despite the frowns of the British matron and the scowls of the Bumbles and the Pecksniffs."

ST. SWITHIN.

YOBKSHIBE SCHOOLS. Some time since a correspondence was published anent the his- tory and ancientness of the class of schools in Yorkshire which Dickens described minutely under the title of Dotheboys Hkll, when that establishment for young gentle- men had Mr. Squeers for its head master. I think no very old academy of this nature was mentioned in * N. & Q.,' although it is mani- fest that more than one was well known long