Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/181

 xii. AUG. 29, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the Dial! of Life, So we shall Dye all. For Mors ultima lineal "

Mrs. Gatty's book gives the sundial mottoes on pp. 377-8 and 536, " We must and shall ere long dyall," 1647; " We shall," 1693 (scil. dial, ie., die-all); "We shall die all," pro- bably eighteenth century ; and at the last reference a Cornish one, " We shall die all," on St. Eval Church, Cornwall, 1724.

No example of all four lines, as in the supposed epitaph, is given.

ADRIAN WHEELER.

GILLYGATE AT YORK (9 th S. xi. 406, 457,

518; xii. 50) Francis Drake, whose admir- able work on York does not profess to be infallible, merely wished to place on record such facts as had come to his knowledge almost a century after the siege of York, shortly after which event the moat was filled up in that part called Gillygate and built upon. The first record of a house on that side of the street which I can find is 1667. The deed, in Latin, was issued by the Minster authorities, all Church lands being restored after the Restoration. He traces the name of St. Giles to the time of Henry V. (1441). But Lilium goes back to the time of Julius Caesar, and was apparently a native device to stave off the enemy (see Smith's ' Lat. Diet.')- Drake in 1736 may have seen Littleton's codification of the laws of England and Coke's commentary thereon. If so, it is quite clear that he had not realized the effect of the dogmatic words so often quoted from him ; since the principles of the law were the same as they are now, that a parish once made cannot be unmade except by Act of Parliament. He conjoins the words St. Gilligate (p. 597), so that the parallel of W. C. B., who instances Gillygate, near Dur- .ham, is not quite perfect. The Corporation of York have still further unsettled our belief in local traditions by affixing a tablet to Monckbar (as on the other bars) saying that the usually received derivation is "erroneous," while suggesting the name of a monastery in a vague kind of way. I am therefore really glad to hear from ST. SWITHIN that there is some authority he knows of who can put a dot on the spot. My experience of maps and I have had much is that unless made from actual survey they are not always trustworthy. I have verified his statement now.

The local maps show a gap in the wall of St. Mary's Abbey, which turns out to be the inside of a tower, while what I term the veritable Gillygate is not even noticed, although it has been there since 1503 at least ; for I always keep in mind the primary

meaning of " gate " something guarded. The Barbican of Bootham was taken down in 1831. The Wai m gate Barbican only remains. Pre- suming that the four were all alike that is twenty yards long this would leave twelve yards (the width of the base of the counter- scarp) from the gateway, which, after the king and princess were gone away, except for the small guard-house, would have been defence- less but for the supposed Giglio, while the city had both barbican and bar. Why, then, did the Parliamentarians not assault when they attacked the abbey in 1644, but, in- stead of that, attacked the tower, a hundred yards higher up 1 The memorial on the tower says that when pursued " they were caught in a trap." Is this figurative or a statement of fact ? We might have known more of the matter if the documents relating to the whole of the North that were in this tower had been saved, and no one need have jeopardized either name or fame in trying to find it out. There is reason to believe that a road of some kind existed before 1124, when Wace records the fact, as translated by Layamon 1155, that " the king lette deluen senne die al abuten [new text, " aboute "] Eouerwic" (Layamon, ii. p. 277). If this canal or moat was like any other I have ever seen, including the dykes in Holland, it would have a walk of some kind all along it (a couple of miles at least) ; therefore a road did exist for at least 300 years before the erection of either the church or parish of St. Giles, and it is a mere quibble to say, " Oh, yes ; but that was on the top of the dyke, while this was at the foot of the counter-scarp," for the distance could not be more than twenty yards. I would not have written a syllable about this matter but that it seemed to me to place the linguistic know- ledge of my countrymen at such a low level as to make foreigners laugh at us. Nor would I have ventured these opinions but that I have found no mention of it in any of the great authors ; and having only a small private collection of books, I naturally appeal to those who either know more or have access to other works. And with a town council who are just now seriously meditating a repetition of the exploits of the JSTurembergers in H. C. Andersen's fairy tale ' Under the Willow ' in the old rnoat, it is hopeless to think of getting them to take an interest in the archway, which I still wish to think has some connexion with Gillygate.

P. M. CAMPBELL. 33, Vyner Street, York.

There was a Gilligate at Pontefract, where also was a chapel of St. Giles; see Surtees Soc., vol. xcii. pp. 273-6. W. C. B.