Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/431

 9 h S. I. MAY 28, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

423

" This is one of Shakespeare's impressively abrupt commencements of scenes. It shows Othello in debate with his own soul on the fatal necessity for putting his wife to death, and striving to justify the deed by the cause which exists for its perpetra- tion. The iteration of the phrase * it is the cause ' serves admirably to denote the need he feels for urging upon himself the instigating motive for his purposed act."

R. M. SPENCE, M.A.

Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.

' HAMLET,' I. i. 158 (8 th S. xi. 224, 343 ; 9 th S. i. 83, 283). The use of "sing" to which R. R. calls attention is not peculiar to Lincoln- shire. I have often heard it in Nottingham- shire in such sentences as " If I catch you in mischief again I '11 make you sing"; "You'll sing to another tune if I get hold of you," &c.

A BARREL OF GUNPOWDER AS A CANDLE- STICK. Historical students, when called upon to criticize relations of events, especially those that seem in themselves unlikely, that are re- corded to have happened in the lives of persons whose careers are separated by a long period of time, when the said events have a very striking similarity between them, are wont to regard the first narrative as the proto- type, and the latter as a case of transference. Sometimes this may be the correct view to take, but it is commonly a dangerous proceed- ing to insist upon it. An example has occurred to me recently which illustrates this.

At East Butterwick, a village on the banks of the Trent, some eight miles north-west of this place, there lived, in the middle of the century, a shopkeeper named Marshall. He was a general dealer, supplying nearly all the wants of his neighbours. Above this man's shop and the adjoining outhouses was a long chamber, open to the roof, in which he kept such stores as he had not room for in his somewhat small shop. Among other things this room contained a mangle, which was at the service of such of the women of the " town " as made him a small payment. One winter evening several women were engaged in mangling when one of them knocked down their solitary candlestick, and, being probably of earthenware, it was broken. Work for the night was nearly over ; it did not seem worth while to fetch another, so one of the women took the still burning candle happily it was not a very short one and stuck it into some black dusty-looking stuff which she had noticed in a barrel standing near. Soon, however, one of these good dames had occa- sion to descend into the shop, and, encoun- tering Marshall there, naturally began to apologize for the candlestick having suffered,

We may conceive what was the shopkeeper's horror when he heard what was the substitute that had been found, for he knew at once that the candle was standing in a cask of gun- powder. He rushed upstairs, and was just in time. He made "a cup with his two hands," as he said, " so that no sparks could get to the powder," and drew the candle calmly out without uttering a sound. His words afterwards, when all danger was over, were, I have been told, of a kind not uncom- monly heard on board of keels and coal- barges on our rivers, but such as are dis- couraged elsewhere.

Marshall told me of this very soon after it occurred ; the date I am unable to fix, but am sure that it was before the year 1854. In the year 1861 ' The Depositions from the Castle of York...... in the Seventeenth Cen-

tury ' were published by the Surtees Society. In a note in this work by its editor, the late Canon Raine, the following passage occurs. The parallelism between the two narratives as to the way the candle was removed from danger is very striking :

Newcastle had a very narrow escape about 1684.

An apprentice, going up with a candle into a loft which contained many barrels of gunpowder and much combustible material, thoughtlessly stuck the candle into a barrel, of which the head had been knocked off, to serve for a candlestick. He saw the danger and fled. A labourer ran into the loft, and, joining both his hands together, drew the candle softly up between his middlemost fingers, so that if any snuff had dropped, it must have fallen into the hollow of the man's hand." P. 237.

EDWARD PEACOCK. Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsey.

RUSSIAN CAGE-BIRDS SET FREE ON LADY DAY. An open-air bazaar is annually held round the St. Petersburg " Gostinoi Dvor," where all sorts of home-made toys, knick- knacks, sweetmeats, &c., are sold during the five days ending with Palm Sunday. I took a stroll with my wife and family to view this fast-disappearing show on Wednesday, 25 March, O.S. (being the Feast of the Annun- ciation), and we witnessed a curious scene of which we had often heard. There were several booths appropriated to the sale of wretched canaries and more homely specimens of the feathered tribes, such as bullfinches, starlings, and other denizens of these climes. Quite a crowd had collected, and, in accordance with an ancient custom, some tender - hearted natives, mostly of the fair sex, were buying and releasing inmates of the little wooden prisons. The birds generally cowered in natural hesitation at their open doors, fearfu to exchange the certainty of a pinch of seed and a drop of water in captivity for the