Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/289

 II. OCT. 8, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

281

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1898.

CONTENTS. -No. 41.

NOTES : Heysham and St. Patrick, 281 "Jibba," 282 Lady Arabella Stuart The Latin Psalter The Manor of Lisson, 283 The Etymon of Bodvoc Gracechurch Street "Ceiling" Shakspeare's Welshmen Conversation of Shakspeare, 284 Richie Moniplies and B. W. Elliston Maelstrom Wooden Pillars in a Church Leatherhead : Maidenhead : Thickhead, 285.

QUERIES: "To eat humble pie," 286 " Humbug " "Afterthink" 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay' 'The Three Little Pigs ' ' The Lake of the Dismal Swamp ' An Old Cupboard Herbert's ' Memoirs of Charles I.' Arms of Grigson Walpoliana, 287 Mr. John Blake Dalproon Gautherot : Tremean ' Le Philadelphien a Geneve ' Hebrew Numerals Marlborough William Prynn The Judge and the Treadwheel Jacobite Swords Stambuloff, 288 Sheepfold Wyatt Rev. Q. Eltonhead Dixons of Eainham Authors Wanted, 289.

REPLIES : What is Style ? 289 Cedar Trees, 290 Thomas Taylor Female Terminations, 291 Tickhill : " God help 'em " The Skelts Honourable English Translation- Poem on Abraham Lincoln Monkish Chronology, 292 Reade Some Arthurian Puzzles Signature as Mark of Ownership Heron Algernon, 293 Marston and Shak- speare Macaulay and Montgomery Shropshire Names, 294 Robert Burton " And now, O Father " " Who sups with the devil," &c. Rivers' Banks, 295 Churchyards A Church Tradition J. F. de Waldeck Surrey Etymo- logiesFrench Village Names. 296 S. Andrea delle Fratte London and Essex Clergy Tintern Abbey, 297 Edition Eleanora di Toledo Book-Borrowing, 298.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' Dictionary of National Biography, 1 Vol. LVI. Reviews and Magazines.

Notices to Correspondents.

HEYSHAM AND ST. PATRICK. (See ante, p. 222.)

I SHOULD not have replied to J. B. S., for it has been my long practice not to discuss literary or scientific questions with anony- mous writers, especially with those who think it funny to be impertinent ; but the issue raised is one sufficiently interesting perhaps to allow ine to place it again before your readers in the way I placed it before the archaeologists at Heysham, over whom I had the honour to preside.

Jutting out into Morecambe Bay is a rocky promontory covered with trees, immediately facing the Isle of Man, which can be thence seen. On this promontory, known as Heys- ham, are two small churches, one unroofed and the other in which service is still held. That which is unroofed is obviously of very early date, and was supplanted by its neighbour, which is situated on lower ground. This neighbour contains remains of early Saxon date, a fact which had been long known, and which was amply confirmed on the ground by my friend Mr. Micklethwaite, a vice-president of the Society of Anti- quaries, and the best living authority on the subject. This puts back the date of the

unroofed church to very early times indeed, a conclusion amply confirmed by its shape, size, rough walling, doorway, &c. There is nothing about this church which is in any way recognizable as Saxon, and the fact of there being early Saxon remains in the other church makes it probable that when the Saxons built the new church on the lower ground, the old church on the upper ground was already old and perhaps ruined.

The fact that this older church is dedicated to St. Patrick seems to me to show conclu- sively that the hypothesis here stated is the true explanation of the facts. I cannot believe it possible that the Saxons, or rather the Anglians, would have dedicated a church to St. Patrick, nor do I know a single instance of such a dedication in Saxon times. Everything points, in fact, to this ruined church being pre-Saxon, and I see no reason whatever to doubt its having been contem- porary with St. Patrick, or built soon after his death.

Secondly, if this be granted, the next question that arises is in regard to the origin of this church. Now it is a very elementary fact that the first traces of Christianity we have in this country after Roman times are to be found in the ancient kingdom of Cumbria. ^ It was here that St. Ninian founded his missionary church, and Candida Casa, the " white house," by which, no doubt, some stone building is meant, which was his famous foundation in Galloway, is one of the most sacred spots in these realms. It is exceedingly probable that St. Patrick and his family, who came from Strathclyde, were members of the Christian community founded by Ninian. The unroofed church at Heysham has all the appearance of such a building as might have been erected in Ninian's diocese by the rude masons who retained traditions of Koman building. It is matched, if it be matched anywhere, by some of the very early Welsh and Cornish ruined chapels dedicated to very early Welsh and Cornish saints, and seems to me to be, in fact, a typical specimen of a Romano-British church of the fifth or sixth century.

Thirdly, the earliest Irish stone buildings have been described in recent years with great scientific precision by Lord Dunraven, Miss Stokes, and others ; and we probably know more about the method in which they were built and their style than we do of those of any other buildings, and what is most plain is that nothing can be more different than the earliest Irish buildings just referred to and the unroofed chapel at Heysham. The ashlar, the doorway, and