Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/290

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. OCT. 8, J 98.

especially the method of roofing, so different from the beehive vaulting characteristic of early Irish buildings in Ireland, are markedly unlike anything we have at Heysham. This view was most strongly maintained by Dr. Munroe, an excellent authority, as well as myself.

Fourthly, the Irish missionaries who came to England in the seventh century appa- rently built no stone churches at all, and Bede especially Contrasts the wooden churches built by the Irish monks with the stone chui'ches built in the Roman fashion by Benedict Biscop, so that we have no evidence whatever to support the theory that the ruined church at Heysham is an Irish build- ing. The same applies to the little ruined chapels in the Isle of Man known as "Preen" chapels, which are built, not in the Irish fashion, but in the Romano-British fashion, and were therefore, in all probability, erected by missionaries not from Ireland, but from Great Britain.

Lastly, it was the fashion in early Chris- tian times in these realms for the mission- aries to make perambulations of the country, planting a cross of carved stone Avhere they preached or baptized. Afterwards on these sites churches were built and dedicated to the memory of these missionaries, who had be- come saints. Thus we can mark the itinerary of more than one of them, and I urged at Heysham that the most probable explanation of the fact was that the little ruined church dedicated to St. Patrick was one of a small series of relics others of which, in North Lancashire, were mentioned at the time by Miss Grafton which marked the itinerary of St. Patrick, and that the Preen chapels in the Isle of Man dedicated to him mark other stages in his itinerary ; they have nothing to do with Ireland beyond being dedicated to a Briton who afterwards became an Irish saint, and they are relics of Romano-British Chris- tianity, and not of Irish.

In regard to the graves at Heysham, I said they seem to me to be much later than had generally been supposed, and to have been made to contain bodies wrapped in lead in the mediaeval fashion, and to be like early Norman sarcophagi, except that they are scooped out of the solid rock instead of being detached. This view, I think, is the most probable. That they should have been the graves of piratical heathen Norsemen, as suggested by J. B. S., seems to me a con- clusion at issue with every canon of genuine history.

Perhaps you may print this communication, and if you do so your readers may conclude

that the kind of archaeology which I have been taught, and which I oelieve in, is per- haps not so elementary as J. B. S. would suggest.

I really think that in these days it is intolerable that people should write in a journal so highly credited as your own and in criticism of others before they have got beyond the spelling - book stage of these studies. HENRY H. HOWORTH.

30, Collingham Place, Cromwell Road, S.W.

" JIBBA."

IN the report of the battle of Omdurman, as published in the newspapers, occurred the sentence : " The ground was absolutely white with jibbas of the slain" (see the Daily Chronicle, 24 Sept., p. 6, col. 2). Perhaps a note on this word may be of interest.

It is given in the ' Century Dictionary ' with the spelling jubbah, and a reference to Sir R. F. Burton's ' El-Medinah,' p. 30, where it appears as jubbeh. It is defined as a long outer garment, usually of cloth, similar to the caftan, but with shorter sleeves and open in front, worn by respectable Mohammedans in Egypt, Arabia, and Hindustan. As the outer garment of Moslem women, it is made less full than that of the men, and commonly of more delicate material.

The Arabic word is given in Richardson's ' Arabic Dictionary ' (ed. Johnson, p. 494) as jubbat, the final t being mute, and is defined as being " a waistcoat with cotton quilted between the outside and lining."

In Devic's ' Supplement to Littre,' p. 44, we have the following explanation of the F. jupe :

"Jupe; Span, juba, chupa, a vest, aljuba; Port. aljuba, a Moorish cassock ; Ital. giuppa. From Arab. jubba(t) ; see Dozy, ' Diet, des Vet.,' p. 107."

To this is added a quotation from Niebuhr, ' Voy. en Arab.,' p. 210 :

" Par-dessus le caftan, les Turcs mettent une juppe ou surtout a manches tres-courtes."

The jubbah must have been perfectly familiar to the Crusaders many centuries ago ; and there seems to have been then, as now, some difficulty in apprehending the sound of the principal vowel. Consequently we find in Godef roy's ' Old French Dictionary ' the spellings jupe, juppe, jube, jubbe, as well as gipe, gippe. Godefroy explains it by tunic, and quotes from Viollet-le-Duc to the effect that there was a marked difference between the coat (cotte) and the jupe. Both were under garments, a second shirt common to all classes. Nevertheless they put the jupe, like the cotte, outside the armour ; whilst in