Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/453

 9 th S. I. JUNE 4, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

445

mt, must have followed out something like this line of argument :

" This ugly, flat - nosed brute of a featherless quadruped had only to howl and squeal to bring everybody running to his aid with caresses and tit-bits, whereas my reiterated appeals are being wasted on the desert air. I will e'en try the dog's dodge too."

Well, poll was rewarded for his ingenuity, and the best of it is that from that day to this, though he adheres in moderation to his rapping, &c., when admitted to the dining- room, and never apes the dog there, yet he always commences the action by yelping and squealing when away in the background, bringing up his reserves of raps, bows, and how-do-do's only when somebody answers his summons. Moreover, he never raps, bows, salutes, barks, or squeals except in connexion with the commissariat question. I could add many details of this parrot's intelligence, as distinguished (by some) from instinct. For instance, though fast friends with our house- hold cat, he intensely abhors strange ones, and always clamours for their expulsion by loud cries of "Kiss, kiss, miaou, miaou," in violent alarm and with ruffled plumage. He will extract the wooden peg of his water-pan, sharpen it with his adamant beak (with which, however, he has never bitten any one, save in the way of kindness), and employ it as a comb to scratch his poll with. He also, by a clever twist of his beak, sends spinniiig round the large brass ring suspended in his cage, and as it assumes a pendulum motion in its oscillations, he stoops cautiously down and gives a flat back, like a cuckoo when

Ereparing to bundle out his foster brothers
 * om their invaded nest. In this manner he

gets his back gently stroked, of which he is very fond.

I think the above account, which is literally true and ungarnished, goes to prove that birds, like some men, know what they want to say, though they may not always know how to say it. H. E. M.

St. Petersburg.

" SABLE'SHROUD." In David Mallet's ballad entitled ' Margaret's Ghost,' which has a place in Bishop Percy's ' Reliques of Ancient Eng- lish Poetry,' we read that when the lady's grimly ghost stood at William's feet, Clay-cold was her lily hand, That held her sable shroud.

There seems no doubt that what is indicated is the garment in which the corpse had been buried, though, of course, shroud has other meanings. If this be so, one would like to know whether it is described as sable by

poetical licence, for the sake of intensifying the grimliness of the apparition, or whether the writer was describing what he had seen or heard of. In former days, as at the present, corpses were sometimes buried in the garments they had been accustomed to wear during life, but when this was not the case I think the shrouds were almost always white or the natural colour of woollen. The form " sable shroud " caught the popular ear. I have often met with it in verse of later date than Mallet's ballad. An example of it occurs in some lines by Lady Gilbert, which are quoted in the Weekly Register of 7 May (p. 585) :

I travelled on a windy cloud

That sailed the midnight sky, And saw, wrapped in a sable shroud, This world go wheeling by.

ASTARTE. [And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

Milton, 'Lycidas, 3 !. 22.]

A LOST BRASS. A small monumental brass of a priest was found some years ago in the ruined chapel of St. Nou, near St. David's, and up to about the year 1859 is reported to have been in the possession of Archdeacon Davies, Canon of St. David's. Inquiry of the present representatives of the family fails to elicit any trace of its present whereabouts. I know of two rubbings, taken about 1851, and have a print of one, kindly supplied me. The brass dates from the fourteenth century, and shows chasuble, apparels, and maniple. Can any correspondents give any information likely to lead to its locale 1 It would be very interesting to get it, if possible, placed in the cathedral, now being slowly restored, parti- cularly as there are but some thirteen brasses altogether known in Wales.

ALFRED HALL.

Swansea.

" POLLICE VERSO." (See 5 th S. i. 378.) Why do not painters, before they finish their classical pictures, consult their 'N". & Q.,' instead of an anonymous history of Rome? Had the painter of No. 328 in this year's exhibition of the Royal Academy done so, he might even at a late moment have turned the thumbs of his cruel women as well as of his compassionate woman in the directions required to give effect to their respective emotions. But he has preferred to follow Ge'rdme and the Roman historian, with most erroneous result. KILLIGREW.

HASTED'S 'HISTORY OF KENT.' In the British Museum Catalogue the Read ing- Room copy is described as " Imperfect, want- ing pp. 249-250 of vol. ii.," the inference being