Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/384

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. Nov. 5, '

to anything in the room. I found, however, that I could get no coloured rays of the faintest description through the stained-glass blinds (old pieces of cathedral glass, &c.) in my bed- room on to anything whatever. I am afraid that it was a poetical licence on the part of Keats. C. R. T.

'NOTES ON MEDIAEVAL SERVICES IN ENG- LAND ' (9 th S. ii. 160). Is the reviewer of Mr. Wordsworth's book aware that in one place at least in England the form " St. Jacob is still retained ? The church of St. Philip and St. Jacob, at Bristol, is perhaps unique in pre- serving this peculiarity.

EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

A RHYMING WARNING TO BOOK-BORROWERS (9 th S. i. 366, 512; ii. 115). When I was at school we had two of these in vogue, only one of which has survived in its entirety the lapse of time. It ran :

Hie meus est liber,

And that I will show ;

Si aliquis rapiat

I '11 give him a blow.

Of the second, two lines only remain in the memory, thus :

I swear I will fell um (him) Si aliquis rapiat meum libellum.

TENEBR.E.

The following macaronic version, preserved among the ex-libris in the museum at Nuremberg, is worth recording, if only on account of its oddity :

Hie liber ist mein,

Ideo nomen meum scripsi drein.

Si vis hunc librum stehlen,

Pendebis an der Kehlen ;

Tune veniunt die Raben

Et volunt tibi oculos ausgraben.

Tune clamabis ach ! ach ! ach !

Ubique tibi recte geschach.

ARTHUR MAYALL.

In my copy of 'The Odes and Satyrs of Horace,' " that have been done into English by the most Eminent Hands " (viz., the Earl of Rochester, Roscommon, Cowley, Otway, Pope, and others), Dublin, 1730, there is written (circa 1780) :

If this I lend to any One

Pray Keep it not too long Keepe Clean and fair and send with care

To whom it doth Belong.

And in a copy of Terence's comedies, London, 1718, I recently found this verse,

/jated 1723 :

fielu Here dp I put my name for to betraye

would! 16 .^^ 6 y* steals my booke away.

whether Sandla WM. GUSHING BAMBURGH.

or running streaiL

In a copy of Bunny's ' Parsons's Booke of Christian Exercise,' 1615, I find this, in a seventeenth-century hand :

Valentine Lawrence oweth this booke

& he that stealeth it shalbe hanged on a crooke.

RICHARD H. THORNTON.

Portland, Oregon.

In my French schooldays we boys were in the habit of sketching inside the cover of such books as we prized a little man hanging from the gallows, and underneath it this quatrain :

Aspice Pierrot pendu

Qui hoc librum n'a pas rondu ;

Si hoc librum redidisset

Pierrot pendu non fuisset.

It is certainly not very clever, and must be taken only for what it is worth.

L. J. DE BELABRE. Malta.

Here is another and a very true formula against book-borrowers or book-lenders, by Charles Nodier :

Tel est le triste sort de tout livre pre'te' : Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate.

MYRMIDON.

TENNYSON AND SCOTT (9 th S. ii. 146). E. G. A. writes :

"Mrs. Oldfield states that on one occasion, when discussing hymnology, Mr. Gladstone said he con- sidered Scott's hymn on the day of judgment the finest in the English language, and that he had repeated it to Tennyson, who had never heard it before. This hymn is at the end of the ' Lay of the Last Minstrel,' and it seems incredible that a Poet Laureate should not have been familiar with this well-known poem of Sir Walter Scott."

It seems indeed incredible, and I doubt that either Mr. Gladstone or the Laureate made any such statement as above related. Sir Walter Scott never laid claim to this hymn as his own, it being merely a transla- tion of three verses of the well-known hymn ' Dies Irse.' It is introduced in the poem by six lines that run thus : Dies Irse, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla ; While the pealing organ rung : Were it meet with sacred strain To close my lay, so light and vain, Thus the holy Fathers sung.

Then follow three verses of this glorious old Catholic hymn, one of the best known in all hymnology, and translated by some of our greatest poets from Roscommon down to Macaulay. To say Gladstone attributed it to Sir Walter Scott is simply incredible, and not to be entertained for a moment.

EDWARD MCGRATH. San Francisco.