Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/125

 9* s. iv. SEPT. 217 NOTES AND QUERIES. land, although of no legal significance, for the lady at the marriage ceremony to have a large gown or cloak under which the children were covered. This was vulgarly considered as giving a retrospective sanction to the mar- riage tie. A. G. REID. Auchterarder. BUMBLE-PUPPY (9th S. iv. 120).—With all deference to our worthy Editor, 1 cannot agree with the note at this reference. " All that is known about this game" is assuredly not to be found in Dr. Murray's dictionary, great and comprehensive as tnat dictionary certainly is. If THORNFIELD will refer to the Graphic of 20 February, 1892, he will find an account of the game, with a view of the " alley," by my unworthy pen. JULIAN MARSHALL. THE HELL OF THE POETS (9th S. iv. 126).— la not MR. YA_RDLEY rather hasty in accus- ing Homer of inconsistency in his treatment of hell, whatever we may think of his imi- tator Virgil ? It is not always noticed (or admitted T) that in Homer the dead have no consciousness. This is clear from 'Od.,' x. 494, where Teiresias is mentioned as the only one to whom Persephone had granted sense (voov), and .whose midriff, the seat of con- sciousness, remained. So in 'Il.,'xxiii. 104, the shades are said to be without conscious- ness :— drdp pivK OVK ivi ira/way. Hence it is that Teiresias recognizes Odysseus at once ; but the other shades have to lie revivified by drinking the blood. Elpenor at once recognizes Odysseus, but that is because in the Homeric sense he is not fully dead. His body still lies unburied and un- burnt. Tityos and the others in torment are no real exceptions. They are not ordinary mortals, but giants or Jemigods. Perhaps Homer was something more than a syndicate, but in any case we must consider the possi- bility of interpolation before questioning the consistency of the account. It is worth noticing that Merry and others consider the episode of Elpenor in book xi. to be inter- polated, while the curious incident of Herakles (xi. 601, ff.) was doubted even in ancient times. ERASMUS THOMAS. I have an imperfect recollection of Dante's ' Inferno,' and I have read only a translation of it. A ghost, however, cannot be sub- stantial. It is mere spirit. A vampire is an animated corpse; but nobody has supposed that Dante's dead are vampires. It the prisoners in the 'Inferno' are substantial they are not ghosts. Homer's dead in- habitants of the infernal regions are ghosts— for ho calls them so, and makes them so, though he spoils this conception of them by giving some of them substantiality. The ghost of Hamlet, which comes from purgatory, not from hell, " is as the air invulnerable." Yet it says :— My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. Here is confusion of spirit and matter. A ghost is so immaterial that it cannot suffer bodily pain. It ought to be unable to speak. The witch of Encior raised the body of Samuel, which, when revived, would have the power of speaking. The spirit without the body should be aumb, though nobody will wisn that the poets had made their ghosts so. And when one impossibility is allowed, we need not consider other impos- sibilities closely. E. YARDLEY. " LONDON " AND " LONNON " (9th S. iii. 304, 416 : iv. 31).—Rome in the last century was made to rime indifferently with room, crown, doom, and other words as the exigencies of the case required, and the name of the city was by some persons pronounced Room. A modern minor poet has deprecated this pronunciation in the lines on the Carnival at Rome written in 1849 :— I had myself the honour of receiving A nosegay from the hands of Queen Christine, Who (like her Polish namesake), finding home Too hot to hold her, comes abroad to Rome Or roam, for either word will suit my Muse, The rhyme's as good, the reason much the same : I leave the gentle reader free to choose Whiche'er he pleaxe—so I am not to blame ; I only hope that he will not abuse My licence, which would be a crying shame, And call it Room—a hypercriticism Which shocks my Muse and spoils a witticism. In the'Muse's Farewel to Popery' (1688) 'The Old Man's Wish,'a popular piece, is imitated under the title of' The Pope s Wish,' in which crown, doom, and Rome are made to rime with each other. JOHN HEBB. Gray, discussing with Walpole that line in'The Bard,' Ye Towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, says, "If you will be vulgar and pronounce it Lunnun instead of London, I can't help it" (1757).—'Gray,' by Mason, 1827, p. 349. W. C. B. BLIOH (9th S. iii. 427 ; iv. 33, 97, 150).—The birthplace of Admiral Bligh is one of the vexed questions in Cornish history. Any person interested in his career, or in the particulars of his family, should consult Sir