Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/390

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9- s, 11. NOV. 12, w.

whose unnamed portrait is at Hampton Court. The latter, however, though Porter may not have been Serjeant Porter, and the same may be said of other giant Porters we hear of, viz., Walter Parsons (who may have been Traherne's immediate successor as he died in 162-) ; "William Evans, who followed as Porter to Charles I. ; and Daniel, Porter to the Pro- tector, Oliver Cromwell.* Keyes as wrote Secretary Cecil was " the biggest gentleman in the Court," and all the others are said to have been very big men ; Fuller (of the 'Worthies') gives Parsons's length as 2 yards, and the Hampton Court catalogue states the height of the anonymous Porter there por- trayed as 8| feet ! Thus Traherne may have had the apparently necessary qualification of stature ; but this can scarcely be judged from his half-length effigy in St. Saviour's, although it exceeds considerably that of his wife.

He is mentioned though not his office -in a list of annuities and pensionst as receiving 3s. ll$d. per diem (not a mean pension at that time), in virtue of the king's warrant of 12 July, 1618. But he was not long on the list, for, as shown on the gravestone, he died three months after being pensioned. His burial, as I have said, is not in St. Saviour's register; but in the parish vestry minutes there is this entry, under 15 Oct., 1577, "John Trehearne of Bankside pays double for with- holding his ty thes." This is scarcely consistent with the estimate of his character derived from his epitaph ; but in 1577 he was young, and perhaps rash, and itwas many years before he had reached the dignity of Chief Gentle- man Porter. Testimony to his probity is found in the fact that in 1611, when King James granted (? sold) the rectory, glebe lands, tithes, &c., to the parishioners, the letters patent name "John Traherne the Elder " as one of four trustees charged with the payment of the two chaplains and other obligations.} W. L. BUTTON.

[See infra, p. 392.]

BOLD ECLECTICISM. IN 'N. & Q.,' 8 th S. vii. 129, ME. JONATHAN BOUCHIER put a query regarding Allan Bamsay's description of the precentor in a Scottish church as

The Letter-Gae of haly ryme.

1868.
 * 'Giants and Dwarfs,' by Edward J. Wood,

f Public Record Office, Exchequer Accounts, Payments by Cofferer, 15 & 16 James I., Bundle 434, Nos. 5 and 6.

' Hist, and Antiqs. of the Parish of St. Saviour s, Southwark,' p. 171, by M. Concanen, Jun., and A. Morgan, 1795.

Beplies from SIR OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR and myself appeared at p. 189 of the same volume, and the matter was further discussed at p. 258 by FATHER ANGUS and W. C. B., and at pp. 475-6 by MR. PICKFORD and MR. E. WALFORD. It turns out that all these articles were boldly and unscrupulously utilized in Household Words of 16 April, p. 477. No one, probably, would object to quotations being made from anything he might write; but the deliberate wholesale appropriation of matter without acknowledg- ment is another and more serious question. In the present case the ipsissima verba of the different writers have simply been lifted and fitted together to make a little essay of three paragraphs, filling a column of the periodical. Let us see the writer's method of putting forth his knowledge.

The article in Household Words is entitled ' The " Letter-Gae," ' and the stanza which I quoted from Bamsay in my reply is printed underneath the title. SIR OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR'S reply opened thus :

" The precentor in Scottish churches was thus quaintly called because his function was to 'let gae ' (go), or give out, the words and tune of the

psalms sung in public worship In the country

church of my youthful days, the words of the psalm were given out verse by verse by the minister ; the precentor's office was confined to ' raising ' the tune, the name Martyrs. Dundee, &c., as the case might be being previously notified to the congregation by a board or placard which rose automatically, as it seemed to us, from his little pulpit."

My own communication opened with these sentences :

"The leader of psalmody, or precentor, in the Church of Scotland, used to read from his desk in front of the pulpit the successive lines for con- gregational singing. He was the ' letter-gae,' i. e., he that let go or started the praise, and his desk was called the ' letteron ' (lectrinum). Pitching his voice to the first note of each line, he proceeded to chant the words in a slow, drawling monotone,

Erolonging the last syllable for a little, and then reaking, at the head of the congregation, into the music set to the words thus delivered. The effect of this would, no doubt, be frequently more curious and entertaining than edifying and. solemn, and strange developments must occasionally have oc- curred. The position tested not only the musical qualifications, out also the literary attainments of the leader, and there are passages in the metrical version of the Psalms as used in Scotland which must have put rural precentors on their mettle."

SIR OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR further stated that in the parish church on which his reminiscences rested the precentor "officiated as village cobbler during the week"; and I said that the official " might be the village school- master or a substitute." With these state- ments and descriptions before him the essayist in Household Words starts as follows :