Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/329

 9fts.xLApHiL25,i9Q3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

321

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 191-S.

CONTENTS. -No. 278.

NOTES :" Hagioscope" or Oriel? 321 Notes on Burton's ' Anatomy.' 322-Shakespeariana, 323 " Promotion " - D'Arcy Family Somerville, 325 Stuart and Dereham " Monbain "Mistakes in Printed Registers : Jugge, 326.

QUERIES: "Uther" and " Arthur " Mottoes : their Origin Archer, M D. Marriage Markets "My orna- ments are arms "Hume or Home Family Kemeys and Chepstow Castle, 327 Sheffield Family Goffe or Goff Family St. Sebastien at Caumont Kyre Penreth Johnson Strewing Churches Crawford, 328 General Richard Hope Bagpipes "The Devonshire Dumpling " Lucas, 329.

REPLIES : Origin of the Turnbulls, 329 German Author Wanted Historical Rime, 330-" Overslaugh" Retarded Germination of Seeds Henslowe's 'Diary' Lincoln Proverbs, 331 -Quotations Wanted Fireback- Arms of Eton and Winchester Colleges, 332 " Tottenham is turn'd French "Shakespeare's Geography " Nothing," 333 Robert Scot Hedgehog, 334 Cope " Bletheram- skite," 335 Parallel Passages Paucity of Elizabethan Books, 336 Bacon on Mechanical Inventions French Phrase Centrifugal Railway Adelphi Society of London " Pillow-ber,"337 Hell-in-Harness " Indigo "in Dante " Bagman " Thackeray and 'Vanity Fair ' " Cycle- alities "Map Queries, 338.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' Dictionary of National Biography Index and Epitome' ' New English Dictionary' Rigg's ' Decameron of Boccaccio ' DobeH's ' Sidelights on Charles Lamb.'

Notices to Correspondents.

"HAGIOSCOPE" OR ORIEL?

(See ante, p. 301.)

THE numerous writers who expatiate so confidently about " hagioscopes " and " hagio- scopic arrangements " hold themselves well together. But they never produce one jot of evidence from old records. These openings, as I have shown, cannot have been intended to afford "a view of the elevation of the Host," and hence they are wrongly called " hagioscopes."

There is no great difficulty in ascertaining what the real purpose of these apertures was. When we remember that the chancel of a church anciently belonged to the lord of the manor, that it was known as gescot (i.e. a shut-off building), that it had a separate door, that entrance thereto from the nave and aisles was barred by screens or lattice- work (cancelli}, we may at least conjecture that the openings which we are considering were intended to afford a means of communication between persons outside the chancel and the lord or his deputy sitting within. And this conjecture is made the more probable by the fact that these openings, whether from the inside or outside of the building, are usually in the south, and

near the place where the rector or procurator sat.* It is also made more probable by the fact that the openings on the south side of the chancel arch usually point obliquely to the door on the south side of the nave, as if intended to afford communication between the doorkeeper, who was a well - known officer in churches, and an officer sitting in the chancel.

The true name of these apertures was oriel. When we hear of an oriel being made over a cellar doort we may guess that it was a "lattice" intended for ventilation. And if we turn to an English-Latin dictionary of the year 1440, we shall find that our guess is right.:}: Before that time, however, a change of meaning had taken place. The little room or closet which was ventilated by a latticed window, or contained a grated opening for other purposes, came itself to be called an oriel, and the same terra came also to be applied to a porch or anteroom, con- taining probably a screen or lattice-work. But we must not conclude from this that " lattice " was the original meaning of the word. A poem in Ritson's ' Metrical Romances ' appears to show that the true name of the so-called " hagioscope " was oriel :

When ye here the Mas-belle,

Y shall hur brynge to the Chapelle,

Theriur sche schall be broght.

Be the Oryall syde stonde thou stylle,

Then schalt thou see hur at thy wylle,

That ys so worthyly wroght.

Here it seems as if the man stood by the side of the oriel, and, when the lady had entered the chapel, looked through the aperture to see her.

I have met with a passage in the ' Rotuh Hundredorum ' (i. 168 b) which proves that these so-called "hagioscopes" were oriels, and also gives us the etymology of the word oriel. It appears that in 1272 certain rumours had come to the ears of Philip Bacun, bailiff of Henbury, in Gloucestershire, about a dead woman who had been found floating on the river Severn. Thereupon the bailiff sent for five men, whose names are given, including one Roger de Horsinton, and (with the exception of one of the five) clapped them in the stocks (in ceppis) to inquire con-

the screen in the south.
 * In college chapels the "Head" still sits nar

t " Unum novum oriell supra hostium selar'." Account, dated 1456, relating to a house at Maccles- field, quoted in Archceologia, xxiii. 106.

J " Oryel of a wyndowe. Cancellus, intendicula." 'Prompt. Parv.'

' The Legend of the Earl of Toulous,' cited in Archceologia^ xxiii. 110.