Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/313

 9 th S. II. OCT. 15, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

305

tember, may perhaps be added to the vast amount of matter on the subject in the columns of ' N. & Q.' :

"The ghastly practice known as 'hanging in chains,' which was carried out with all its attend- ant brutalities as late in the present century as the year 1834, will be recalled to mind this afternoon, when a complete set of gibbet-irons, formerly kept in Boston Gaol, Lincolnshire, will be sold in a well- known auction -room in Covent Garden. In the older county maps it was customary to denote the exact spots upon which these horrible instru- ments of torture were erected, which, in the year above mentioned, were finally abolished by Act of Parliament."

It will be noticed that the writer speaks of these gibbet irons as "horrible instruments of torture." This is surely a slip of the pen. for the criminal was not enclosed in them till he had previously undergone death by sus. per coll. There are legends to the effect that men have been hung in them alive, but this has certainly not happened under British civil law. These Boston irons, I should imagine, were never used, for they are in good condition, whereas, owing to trie opera- tion of the weather, gibbet irons which had fulfilled their gruesome duty were soon a mere collection of rusty iron bands, quite unfit for further use. The Boston local authorities doubtless got them made with the laudable object of being forward with the means of accommodating some prospec- tive murderer, but the occasion never arose. In the museum at Norwich Castle may be seen two sets, or portions of sets, of these irons. One of them, as narrated by Mr. Hartshorne in his interesting little book 'Hanging in Chains,' was found by Mr. Haggard (father of Mr. H. Rider Haggard, the novelist) at the corner of East Braden- ham Common in 1882. As an additional at- traction to the student of this dismal sort of curiosity, it may be mentioned that a portion of the skull of its inmate one Watson is still retained in its frame. An old lady who lived in the neighbourhood used to relate that she saw a starling building its nest in the ribs of his skeleton. The irons in ques- tion^ I may add, were sold at Stevens's auction-rooms, King Street. Covent Garden, for 4. 17s. Gd. on 13 September.

R. CLARK.

Walthamstow.

[See 4* S. x. 382, 459, 525 ; xi. 83, 124. 354, 413, 475 ; xii. 38, 298 ; 5 th S. i. 35 ; iii. 378 ; iv. 37, 98, 157 ; 6 th S. viii. 182, 353, 394, 501 ; ix. 116 ; 7 th S. x. 347 ; 8 th S. i. 332 ; iv. 447, 514 ; v. 116.]

ALEXANDRE THE VENTRILOQUIST. At the beginning of this century a Frenchman of this name travelled over England exhibiting

tiis marvellous mimetic powers in so-called ventriloquy and t sleight of hand. Are any particulars of him known? The following epigram in the 'Sabrinae Corolla' (editio prima, p. 309), written by J. P. (John Price), who graduated at Cambridge in 1826 from St. John's College, has reference to him :

Ad Alexandrum Ventriloqvum.

Crudeli lingvam Philomelae vulnere JTereus

Abstulit ; infandum ne memoraret opus ;

Talis, Alexander, tibi nil nocuisset egestas,

Qvi potes, occluso gutture, ventre loqvi.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

ACORUS CALAMUS. In an interesting little pamphlet on the old manor house at Har- vington, near Kidderminster, by Mr. Geo. K. Stanton, it is stated :

" The drawbridge has now given place to a more modern stone bridge, which spans across the waters of the moat, in which grows luxuriantly the sweet sedge (Acorns calamus), a scarce plant in Worcester- shire, and which was formerly much used for strewing upon the floors of halls and chapels."

A Worcestershire correspondent (E. J. R.) sends me the following note on this pas-

"Aconu co/am?w, or sweet-scented sedge ; origin- ally a native of the Norfolk fens, where it grows freely. The inhabitants of the fen-country monas- teries and castles dried it and spread it upon the stone floors ; till recent times the floor of Norwich Cathedral was strewn with it once a year in memory of the day when in old times the litter was cleared away and fresh sedge laid down annually. In the Middle Ages visitors to the fen country from the Midlands, being pleased with this fragrant floor covering, took the plant home and grew it in their moats for a similar purpose. It is found at Wootton Bassett and in several pools and moats close to Early English (?) and Tudor houses in Worcester- shire."

JOHN HEBB.

Canonbury Mansions, N.

DOUBTFUL GRAMMAR IN THE A.V. AND IN THE PRAYER BOOK. The Authorized Version and the Book of Common Prayer are justly regarded as reaching the high- water mark of prose style in English. But it is carrying our admiration to a foolish idolatry to regard any expression in our language as justifiable so long as a precedent for it can be pointed out in either of these two great standard works. Can the following, for example, be in any way defended, or are they not simply glaring solecisms? (a) "A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty ; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both" (Prov. xxvii. 3). How can than govern a case? (b) "If this

people go up to do sacrifice they shall kill

me (1 Kings xiii. 27). How can shall in the third person be used of an act of voli-