Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/244

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

x. SPT. 20, 1902.

is not prepared to admit that the modern periwinkle is sufficiently decorative to be used either as a jewel fastened in the hair or even on a coronet. But this objection does not apply to other and handsomer convoluted shells which might thus be employed.

J. DORMER.

The periwinkle was formerly much esteemed both for its beauty and for other reasons. Chaucer twice speaks of it with great affec- tionthe "fresh Pervinke, rich of hewe"- and ranks it high among the loveliest flowers. It was, moreover, the emblem of sincere and unchangeable affection, and was thus doubly esteemed. Its old French name, pucellage, again, signifies much that may explain the passage from 'Sir Degrevant,' as another of its names, violette des sorciers, may, possibly, the passage from Lydgate. The use of the flower in chaplets and gar- lands for the dead may also have some bear- ing on the subject of MR. MOUNT'S queries.

C. C. B.

The following is taken from Johnson & Hogg's ' Wild Flowers of Great Britain ' (1863) :

"In Italy the peasantry usually designate it [the periwinkle] Fior di Mprto, Death's Flower, using it for garlands to entwine the bodies of their infant dead. It might have been intended for Sir William Eraser's ' Death Flower,' when he was led to execu- tion 'with a garland of Periwinkle in mockery placed upon his head.' Sir William was the last destroyed of Wallace's adherents."

JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

MR. MOUNT appears to have ignored 1 st S. i 77 ; v. 332, when he wrote " 1 find nothing in the Indices of 'N. & Q."'

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

CHARLES II. IN WEST DORSET (9 th S. x. 141). MR. UDAL is mistaken, in his very interesting article, in saying that Capt Ellesdon's account of the king's escape is given in the thirteenth book of Clarendon's ' Hist, of the Rebellion.' The historian does indeed, mention him, under the name oi Ellison, in that book, 97, with some of the

garticulars, but it is in the ' Clarendon State apers ' that Ellesdon's narrative is printed vol. ii. pp. 563-71. W. D. MACRAY.

BELL INSCRIPTION (9 th S. x. 168). The fol lowing is an addition to the account of Alice Stury. John Baysham, rector of Olney, was perhaps a Worcestershire man, for he hac relations and property in the city of Wor- cester, and made a bequest to the church

of Hampton Lovet. Moreover, Lady Alice Stury bequeathed to him some plate, which

e gave to the Prior of Worcester, and he ordered masses for James Blount and Alice Stury. His will is dated 1426 ; Gibbon,

Early Lincoln Wills,' 1888, p. 156. The pedi- gree of Stury of Rossall, co. Salop, is printed

n Haii. Soc., xxix. 448, but does not men- tion Alice. W. C. BOULTER, M.A. Norton Vicarage, Evesham.

MEDALLION OF WALTER SCOTT (9 th S. vi. 229, 332, 391). At the first of these refer- ences a description was given of a medallion of Sir Walter Scott, round the edge of which were incised the words (] in Roman capitals) "Bardorum citharas patrio qui reddidit istro," and an interpretation of istro was asked for. The three suggestions elicited by this query were all basecT on the assumption that istro was a misreading of the inscription or an error on the part of the engraver. Why should not the word be understood as the dative case of Ister, a common, if less correct, way of spelling Hister, the Danube, or, more precisely, the lower course of the Danube? The river Hister is not unfre- quently mentioned in Latin poets as a typi- cal northern river, at times almost equivalent to "the North." Could not the name do duty here for the Tweed ? The meaning of the line would then be : Who restored the minstrels' harps to his (and their) native Tweed. The line would be especially appro- priate if referring to the ' Border Minstrelsy,' but, as the date of the medallion is 1827, Scott's own achievements with the " Harp of the North " may be meant.

EDWARD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, South Australia.

THE EVOLUTION OP A NOSE (9 th S. ix. 445 ; x. 34). INVESTIGATOR, with somewhat less than the usual tolerance of the opinions of others which one associates with the pages of ' N. & Q.,' roundly contradicts my state- ment that the " Somerset nose ' was brought into the family by the Leveson-Gowers, and asserts that it came by the marriage of Eliza- beth Boscawen, a generation earlier, to the fifth Duke of Beaufort. My authority in the matter was my great-aunt, the late Countess of Glasgow, who was also the aunt of the third Duchess of Sutherland. Lady Glasgow, who died a few years ago almost a centenarian, was a mine of curious information on all matters concerning her innumerable relatives and connexions. My object, however, in send- ing you this note (belated through my absence abroad) is to say that I now believe both my view and (I am happy to add) INVESTIGATOR'S