Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/257

 S. I. MAR. 26, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

249

MONASTIC RECORDS possess an index to

one with the pestle and mortar? The i mnor-house had a mortar, in which spices,

imples, and medicinal preparations were Bounded up. The magician and alchemist

Iso had mortars, in which the ingredients of love potions were pounded together or the necessary substances for practising the black ,rt. I shall be glad of references to the use of mortars in farmhouses and farm economy. R. HEDGER WALLACE.

WINE -PRESS. Could you give me a refer- ence where a wine - press is technically mentioned as an "agony " ?

W. F. HERBERT.

VANDERSEE. I three volumes of

monastic records compiled by Mr. Vandersee. By the style of writing, the collection was probably made in the last century, and would ippear to have been extracts from the Patent Rolls, chartularies, &c., relating to the various monasteries throughout the kingdom. The index is neatly bound in half - calf and lettered on the back. It measures 13 in. by 8 in., which probably is the size of the other volumes. As the index would be very useful the owner of the three volumes, I shall be mppy to hear from any one who kijows in whose possession they may now happen to be.

E. A. FRY. 172, Edmund Street, Birmingham.

SOURCE OF QUOTATION WANTED. Can any student of Shaftesbury give me an exact reference to the following passage, which occurs somewhere in the ' Characteristics ' 1

" Men's first thoughts on moral matters are gener- ally better than their second ; their natural notions better than those refined by study."

G. S.

ROBERT RAIKES. Who was the mother of Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday schools? All that is known of her, appa- rently, is that she was a daughter of a Rev. Richard Drew, and that she died in 1779. What was her Christian name ; and what is known of her father ? K.

REV. MR. MARRIOT. In the Gent. Mag., vol. ii. p. 979, is the following : " Died 17 Sept., 1732, the Rev. Mr. Marriot at Dulwich College, the Preacher at the Chapel there." Who was he ; what were his Christian names ; where was he buried ? The Rev. Randolph Marriot married Diana Fielding (a daughter of the fourth Earl of Denbigh). Who was he; when and where did he die ; and where buried? C. MASON.

29, Emperor's Gate, S.W.

SUPERSTITIONS.

(9 th S. i. 87.)

I HAVE always heard that in order that a house may be lucky the first human being to enter it in the new year should be a dark man, who should come accidentally. That he should be the first person spoken with seems a variant of the idea, held by people suffi- ciently corrupt to tempt the luck-bringer with filthy lucre. If V. will accept a suggestion where certainty in explanation seems unattain- able, I would remark that a dark-haired man (formerly known in colloquial parlance as a "black man") was esteemed exceptionally amorous. In support of this I put forward the following verse :

With a red man rede thy rede ;

With a brown man eat thy bread ;

From a black man keep thy wife ;

With a pale man draw thy knife.

If, then, the black man be accepted as a symbol of fertility, a desire that he may enter the house with the dawning life of the new year is explicable. It is but one mode of grate- fully recognizing the fact that the generative influence of the sun is resuming its potency, a phenomenon which has been the occasion of so many kindred observances.

As to starting a journey northwards, I seek to explain the desirability of the proceeding by a citation from Mr. Hargrave Jennings's ' Live Lights or Dead Lights ' (second edition, 8vo., London, 1873), where it is said that "the ancient theosophical mystics and mystical astronomers agreed that it was from the northern direction that evil came" It is true that he adds, as a gloss, " and therefore the circuit of all religious promenading and processions was in a direction away obviously from the evil, and not to meet it " ; but once admit that a given direction is beset with danger, and it is evidently as logical to face it as to shirk it. Allow that the north was the source of evil, admit that it may have been approached either in defiance or in pro- pitiation, and I am not concerned to evolve a genealogy of the myth \ but I may hint that to a worshipper of the sun who faced it when rising the sword-arm would be towards the south, and the left or northern the more unprotected side, and that malignancy was associated with the left side, the left eye and left arm being dominated by Venus, and the left ear and left foot by Saturn (Belot cited by Jacob, ' Curiosites des Sciences Occultes,' 8vo., Paris, 1862). Remember the climatic conditions incident to the northward progress