Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/60

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9*8. 1. JAN. 15, '98.

applied to literature. A writer recently in the Standard used the term to express that a play had not been bowdlerized either in the words or the action. H. A. W.

THE WALDRONS, CROYDON (8 th S. xii. 508). J. Corbet Anderson, in his * Chronicles of Croydon,' 1882, says :

"Nor were there any buildings on the Waldrons, for seventy years ago the Waldrons, as its name imparts, was a wild waste, in which gravel was dug, and rabbits ran wild, with plenty of snakes, adders, and newts."

ALFRED HOPKINS.

Thatched House Club.

HOWARD MEDAL (8 th S. xii. 129, 177, 334). Connected with this subject maybe mentioned a Chichester and Portsmouth halfpenny token with portrait of Howard on the obverse, issued in 1794 (' Sussex Arch. Colls./ xxxviii. 202). EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

Hastings.

HAND OP GLORY : THIEVES' CANDLES (4 th S. ix. 238, 289, 376, 436, 455 ; x. 39 ; 8 th S. x. 71, 445; xi. 268, 397, 458; xii. 74, 274). Walter Thornbury, in ' A Tour round England ' (Lon- don, Hurst & Blackett, 1870), vol. i. p. 85, under the heading of 'The Mummy Hand,' has the following passage :

" Swift away on our black wing [i.e., the cicerone crow's] after this short resting to where the blue smoke rises over Reading like the smoke of a witch's caldron. Let us perch first on the abbey gateway. This abbey, founded by Henry I., and endowed with the privilege of coining, attained a great name among the English abbeys, from the 'incorrupt hand' of St. James the Apostle, presented to it by Henry I. After working thousands of miracles, raising cripples, curing blindness after millions of pilgrimages had been made to it, and it had been long incensed and in every way glorified the hand was lost at the Dissolution. No one cared about it then ; it was mere saintly lumber. In the general scramble of that subversive time some worshipper who still venerated it hid it underground, where it was found centuries after. It is now [1870] pre- served at Danesfield, a Roman Catholic family still honouring the uncertain relic. It will for ever remain a moot point whether the hand at Danes- field, however, is the hand of St. James, or a mere chance mummy hand, such as mediaeval thieves were wont to use as candlesticks and talismans ; 'hands of glory,' the rascals called them. This hand of St. James made the fortune of the Abbey at Reading, and was an open, receptive hand, no doubt, for all current coin of those days, from the groat to the broad piece. Bells rung, incense fumed, priests bore the cross, and acolytes swung the thurible in the Abbey at Reading, and all encouragec by the dclat of the incorruptible hand."

Without subscribing to the tone of per siflage in the above remarks, I would suggesi that the paragraph brings on the scene a mummy hand of high interest, and might

Dossibly, therefore, be admitted to a corner n the valuable collection of ' N. & Q.' under
 * he above headings. H. E. M.

St. Petersburg.

" TWM SHON CATTI " (8 th S. xii. 155, 504). This Welsh worthy did indeed lead a wild ife in his youth, and is popularly said to lave even done a little in the way of horse stealing. But he was a gentleman by birth, and in his later years enjoyed a reputation aot only for general respectability, but also for skill in Welsh genealogies. At the Cardiff Free Library (Tonn Collection) is a MS. of Welsh pedigrees compiled by him, large por- tions of which I have transcribed.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

Twm Shon Catti, i. e., Thomas, son of John and Catharine, was a celebrated cha- racter in Cardiganshire in 1580. There is some account of him in Meyrick's ' History of Cardiganshire.' His real name was Thomas Jones, of Fountain Gate, near Tregaron. Besides being " a master thief," as MR. HOOPER styles him, he was a well-known herald and genealogist, and was held in high esteem by Lewis Dwnn. His contemporary Dr. John^David Rhys, in ' Linguae Cymrsecse Institutiones Accuratae,' says of him :

'In the science of heraldry the most cele- brated, accomplished, and accurate (and that beyond doubt) is ' Tomas Sion,' alias ' Moetheu,' of Forth yFfynnon, near Trev Garon (Thomas Jones of Fountain Gate). And when he is gone, it will be a doubtful chance that he will be able for a long time to leave behind him an equal, nor indeed any genealogist (with regard to being so conversant as he in that science) that can even come near him." His fame is yet alive in Cardiganshire to this day. WILMOT VAUGHAN.

Paris.

I have not read Borrow's ' Wild Wales,' but I know that my " Twm Shon Catti " (Thomas Jones, in English) was a well-known Welsh genealogist. Of course I should have written the " Twm Shon Catti Collection." I acknow- ledge my transgression. PELOPS.

CLARET AND VIN-DE-GRAVE (8 th S. xii. 485, 512). Many young travellers on visiting Bordeaux have been struck by the fact that "the word claret as applied to red wine is unknown in France." But, if readers of ' N. & Q.,' they have had the opportunity of becoming aware, eveninpre-' Historic-Diction- ary ' days, that Basselin in the fourteenth cen- tury used the word clairetoi the wine produced about Tours, and that his memory was kept ruby down to the present century in a version of one of his songs Englished as ' Jolly Nose.'