Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/333

 ,

s. i. APRIL 23, m] NOTES AND QUERIES.

325

Snglyshed by Barnabe Googe, 1570," which yas issued under the editorship of Mr. R. C. Hope in 1880. Irrationally violent as the >ook must seem to the modern reader who is possessed in any degree with the historic ipirit, it is a mine of information as to the customs of the latter Middle Ages.

After denouncing feast days as heathenish survivals Googe speaks of the people As men that haue no perfite fayth nor trust in God

at all, But thinke that euery thing is wrought and wholy

guided here By moouing of the Planets, and the whirling of the

Sp[h]eare. No vaine they pearse, nor enter in the bathes at any

day, Nor pare their nayles, nor from their hed do cut the

heare away; They also put no childe to nurse, nor mend with

doung their ground, Nor medicine do receyue to make their erased

bodies sound,

Nor any other thing they do, but earnestly before They marke the Moone how she is placde and

standeth euermore And euery planet how they rise, and set in eche

degree, Which things vnto the perfite fayth of Christ

repugnant bee. P. 44.

As bathing is classed in the same list with cutting the hair, taking medicine, and manuring the land, it is evident that the author knew it to be a habit with those against whom he directed his satire. The fol- lowing notes on mediaeval baths and bathing may be of service to inquirers :

' Accounts of Lord High Treasurer of Scotland,' i. cciii.

Archceologia, xxvi. 279; xxxv. 465.

Thiers, ' Trait des Superstitions,' i. 257.

Lee's ' St. Kentigern,' 331.

Hen. Gaily Knight, ' Normans in Sicily,' 325.

Paul Lacroix, 'Science and Literature in the Middle Ages and Renaissance' (Eng. trans.), 148.

Milman, 'Hist, of Latin Christianity,' ed. 1854, iii. 273.

Archer and Kingsford, ' The Crusades,' 295, 297,

EDWARD PEACOCK.

VIRGIL AND LORD BURG-HCLERE. Doubtless many people have read with admiration Lord Burghclere's beautiful English version of Virgil's first 'Georgic,' 11. 311 to 514, which appears in the Nineteenth Century. That version, however, contains one line which it is to be wished that the author would amend. It occurs in his thirteenth stanza, and is his rendering of 1. 383 of his original. It runs thus :

In Asian fields near Cayster's pleasant pools. Now the word " Cayster " is not a dissyllable, and ought not to be presented as such, since it is, and necessarily must be, a word of three

syllables, with two dots representing the diaeresis over the y. Thus, in the original, Dulcibus in stagnis rimantur prata Caystri. And in Homer, 'Iliad,' ii. 461, which Virgil mitated :

'Ao~t<> fv Aei/Awvt, KCTUO~T/OIOV i<t peeOpa. The whole rendering is so admirable that it is a pity it should be marred by even this slight blemish. The line could easily be rectified as follows :

In Asian fields by sweet Cayster's pools. Or, possibly, in other and better ways.

PATRICK MAXWELL. Bath.

AN UNWARRANTABLE TRAVESTY. In a recent number of the Manchester Weekly Times, which has been extensively quoted, an interviewer of Mr. William Le Queux says that he saw on that gentleman's table a card " on which was written the quotation : Pleasures are like poppies spread ; a gust of wind

their bloom is shed ; Or like a snowflake in the river, one moment white

then gone for ever."

The report proceeds to explain that these lines constitute Mr. Le Queux's " motto "- apparently his monitor or daimon on which he looks, and is straightway supported, when in a weak moment a fine afternoon tempts him to leave his work and " go over to Monte Carlo." The matter is invested with an air of importance that might have befitted the intimation of a discovery regarding William Shakspeare instead of Mr. William Le Queux.

Still the record is in itself, and for its immediate purpose, wonderfully artistic and touching, and it will, no doubt, have its appropriate effect. But it may humbly be asked why a manifest travesty of a familiar passage in "Tarn o' Shan ter' should be de- scribed as if it were a careful extract from the original poem. Burns is responsible for much, but it is surely a somewhat arbitrary measure to present his lines as amended for private use DV Mr. W. Le Queux, and calmly style the product a " quotation."

THOMAS BAYNE.

Helensburgh, N.B.

"THE DEVOUT FEMALE SEX." In a recent debate in Convocation, Canon Bright took exception to the phrase " devout female sex," which, he said, obtained in "the Koman Communion." I suppose that Canon Bright had in his mind the popular rendering of the words " intercede pro devoto femineo sexu," which occur in the Commemoration of the B.V.M., an antiphon said, or sung, at the end of Vespers and Lauds on semi-doubles or