Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/255

 9'" S. XII. SEPT. 26, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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excellent dictionary of the latter (Focke's which it appears that tonka is a negro word. The Arawak equivalent is cumaru, which explains why an acid obtained from this bean is called coumaric acid. The form Tonquin bean, which occurs in Rees's ' Cyclo- paedia,' 1819, and in numerous subsequent works of reference, is, of course, due to " popular etymology." JAS. PLATT, Jun.
 * Neger-Engelsch Woordenboek,' 1855), from

WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

PANJANDRUM. "Fitzgerald" is cited in Brewer's * Reader's Handbook,' s.-y., for the words " He was the great Panjandrum of the place." In the airy mode of quotation thought sufficient in pre-scientific days, no reference is vouchsafed to the particular work in which the words occur. Will some reader kindly supply the reference ? J. A. H. MUEKAY.

Oxford.

"PANIER." In Fairholt's * Costume in England ' (ed. 1860), Glossary, is the entry : osiers (like a hurdle or the paniers of ahorse), used for the protection of archers, who stuck them in the ground before them." This has been ** lifted " into recent dictionaries, appa- rently without verification. We have found no evidence for it, and have failed to trace it beyond Fairholt. It does not appear in French in Littre, Hatzfeld, or Godefroy. Can any one help us to ascertain whether the word was ever so used 1
 * ' Paniers. Large shields formed of twisted

J. A. H. MURRAY.

CISTERCIAN VISITATIONS. Are any Visita- tions of English Cistercian houses preserved anywhere, in England or abroad, in manu- script or in print ? R.

KING EDGAR'S BLAZON. Bodmin was a famous monastic centre in the west of Eng- land, and its name is said to signify Abode of Monks. One of its priors was buried in 1533. On his high tomb are shields of arms, all easily identified except one. That one is probably not a shield of arms, strictly speak- ing. It is a shield borne by an angel, and charged with the following device, which must be described rather as emblematic than armorial : On an orb a cross flory crowned (the foot of the cross rests on the banded orb). No label or inscription accompanies

it, and its charges much resemble those on a shield given by Dr. Heylin in his 4 Saxon Kings of England,' where for Athel- stan is entered : " Per saltier gules and azure, on a mound a cross botony crowned or." The town badge of Bodmin is an Anglo-Saxon king with sceptre, crowned, enthroned. It has been surmised that this king may be intended for Athelstan. The similarity of the shield on the prior's tomb to the shield attributed to Athelstan would encourage this idea, were it not that a sculptured shield of same device as that on the tomb is found existing on the arch of the same prior's country seat, Rial ton House, some miles away. There he set up a shield thus charged : Rising from an annulet (orb ?), a cross flory crowned, with the name " Edgarus " added in explana- tion of the blazon, and in the adjacent carving the prior also added his own initials. If, then, he intended this shield on his house to represent Edgar, the shield on the foot-end of his tomb must represent Edgar also, and not Athelstan. Will some of your readers kindly state instances of arms or emblems indicating Edgar the Anglo-Saxon king 1

It is well known that the so-called shields of arms of the kings of that period were never borne by them. They were not assigned to them whilst they lived ; they have been attri- buted to them since, as a convenient mode of commemorating and representing them. And to Mr. Fox-Davies is due the suggestion that in such instances as " Edmund, Edgar, Ed- ward the Confessor, and others," the shields were not so much intended to refer to them as kings as to be indicative of them as saints. The shield of a mere king would have a crown surmounting it, above the shield. The conjoined cross and crown on the shield have more of a saintly significance. Edgar was not famous for morality, but he was the great champion of the monastic orders, espousing their cause as against the secular clergy. He was consequently in Dunstan's high favour, and after death was kalendared as "Edgar, King and Confessor" (8 July), and miracles are said to have been performed at his tomb in Glastonbury. No Heralds' College existed to give him the crowned cross and orb on a shield, but such monasteries as that of Bodmin admired him then and in later times. The attributed blazons seem rather to have come from ecclesiastical mediaeval designers, as useful, in sculpture and stained glass, for special allusion.

Many of such shields are figured and de- scribed by Heylin in his * Help to English History,' 1671 ; also in Speed's map of Saxon England, &c., and in many other lists and