Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/486

 478

NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. DEC, 10, '98.

auxiliary to the assailing Turks. The autho- rities cited, however, are all secondary, and most of your readers are beyond reach of a bullary. I therefore write to beg some cor- respondent who dwells under the eaves of the British Museum to copy for you and us outer barbarian illiterates the ipsissima verba of Calixtus. The best fountain known to me for him to "draw from is the ' Bullarium Magnum Romanum a Leone Magno usque ad Benedictum XIV.,' Luxembourg, 1727-58. JAMES D. BUTLER.

Madison, Wis., U.S.

PARISH REGISTERS DATING FROM THE FEAST OF ST. JOHN (9 th S. ii. 427). Your correspond- ent's date is in error. Cromwell issued his injunction on 8 September, 1538 (not 1558), from which year, by Burn's ' History of Parish Registers,' taken from the ' Parish Register Abstract,' 812 registers begin.

As no date was prescribed in the order, it would come into operation immediately it was issued.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

OLD POSTAGE STAMPS (9 th S. ii. 425). Why should they not go to stamp collectors'? Every philatelist holds more common stamps than he affixes, and it is possible that the 300,000,000 were not all of the same design. Old postage stamps are among those articles of commerce that are mainly valuable on account of the labour spent in putting them into marketable shape. The cutting out and making up of even penny or ten - centime stamps gives them a value. The middleman who gets 625 for a penny can make a profit from the stamp dealers, and the latter can dispose of 300,000,000 in seven years among the world's collectors. But if the stamp dealer were to employ paid assistants to cut out the stamps they would be valueless, in consequence of costing more than they would fetch. ARTHUR MAY ALL.

THE BIRDS OF CIRENCESTER (9 th S. ii. 66, 249, 369). In the legend of the ' Enchanted Tower of Toledo' a bird appears as a fire-raiser. When Roderick, King of the Goths, left the tower, an eagle, so soon as he was come out, dropped a firebrand upon it, which con- sumed it to ashes. E. YARDLEY.

HuMPTY-DuMPTY (9 th S. ii. 307, 357). This nursery name can be carried back for DR MURRAY to a much earlier date than that which my friend MR. PEACOCK supplies. The familiar rhyme is found in Ritson's ' Gammer Gurton's Garland,' published in 1810, and cer- tainly therefore goes back in to the last century

_'n Halli well's ' Nursery Rhymes ' there is also another quatrain in which Humpty-Dumpty appears. W. D. MACRAY.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Foundations of England. By Sir James H.

Ramsay of Bamffj Bart., M.A. 2 vols. (Sonnen-

schein & Co.)

Six years have elapsed since the appearance of the irst instalment which happened, rather curiously, jo be the concluding portion of Sir James Ramsay s ambitious and arduous task. When completed, his work, which is truly national in character, will supply a "connected narrative of the first fifteen hundred years of the history of England." Twelve centuries extending from B.C. 55 to A.D. 1154 are covered by the volumes now before us. The period between 1399 and 1485 was dealt with in ' Lancaster and York,' for which see 8 th S. ii. 19. A third portion, with possibly a fourth, will be concerned with the years between 1154 and 1399, or from the accession of Henry II. to that of Richard II. Of the three or four or more sections which will con- stitute the whole, the first is not only the longest, but the most difficult, exacting from the author the most profound and varied erudition. Besides dealing with successive waves of invasion Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman he has to discuss the most difficult problems of ethnology, language, custom, law, property, religion, and the like. So wide is the amount of ground covered that the critic shares a portion of the trouble and per- plexity of the writer, the discharge of whose task represents something making a respectable approach to omniscience. From one point to another, some of them challenging discussion, we have to follow Sir James, scarcely knowing when to halt and take breath. Voluminous, accordingly, as is the work, matters, each of which furnishes materials for a volume or volumes, have to be dismissed in a few pregnant sentences. Things cannot be otherwise ; and the task assigned himself by Sir James is loyally and competently discharged. It is in the early portion, however, that he occasionally nods, though only as regards his attention. Twice on the same page we meet with "Ansonius" for Ausonius obviously a printer's error, but a regret- table oversight all the same in a work of so much importance and once, to our surprise, we read of the "Cumsean Sybill." As a whole, the work is commendably correct as well as heroical in dimensions.

One turns with interest to see what Sir James says concerning the Arthurian legend. Natural'y he will none of this, holding that the absence of the name of Arthur from the chronicle of Gildas, who wrote only four years after the siege of the Mons Badonicus, and the successful resistance of Am- brosius to the Saxon advance, relegate the whole into the domain of pure myth. It was the mis- fortune, he holds, of Ambrosius to " have his glory transferred to a hero of romance." Sir James's theory is that the Arthurian legend is merely "a reissue of Ossianic myths, brought over by the Dalriad Scots, disseminated through the agency of

the Columban missionaries and appropriated

and adapted by the Celtic people of Great Britain."