Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/181

 9" s. iv. SEPT. so,-99.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 261 LONDON, SA TVSDA V, SEPTEMBER SO. 1899. CONTENTS.-No. 92. NOTES :-Orientation, 361—Irish Device Anticipated, 262— Macaulay and Coligny— Lawrence's Portrait of Warren Hastings—"Many a seven" — Subjugation of Ireland— Granite Tramway, 263 — Elizabeth, Lady Harrington- Horns—"Sent to Coventry " — Angelina (Jushington, 264 —" Le root de Cambronne '—' Hohenlinden '—Last of the pre-Reform M.P.s—Pluto In Shakespeare—"The morn," 265-Discovery of Roman Remains — Second-hand Mar- riages—"Bouzlngot," 286. QUERIES :—Htnshull, Tarbock, and Caldwell Families, 266 —Little Gidrting Church—Cutbbert Bede—'Pyramus and Thisbe'—Browne-Mill — Jehoshaphat, 267 —Russian Lan- guage—Arms of Gerrish—' The Faithful Shepherdess'— Crouch Family—Welsh Nonjuring Bishop—Miles Family — "Bold Infidelity," Ac.— "Ugly mug — Rutherford— Edward Edwards—Livry—Card Terms—Thos. Houghton, 268-Askell Family—Criticism on Raine's 'St. Cuthbert' —John Alexander—Story of Athanasian Creed, 269. HEPLIB8 :—Aldgate and Whitechapel, 289 —First Half- penny Newspaper—The Dings in York, 270-Foster Pedi- gree—Old Bellringer-Peerless Pool—Pens: "Nibs"and "Nebs," 271 —"Scandal about Queen Elizabeth "—Bank- ing—Amen Court—Magnetic Pole—Gaunt Family—Early History of the Bicycle, 272 — Hebrew-Italian Sonnets- Holy Communion — Lance -Corporal, 273 — Henbane — Mummy Wheat — Alien Priories — Ford Family, 274 — " Steading "—"The cloud-capped towers "— Cox's Museum —Armorial : Harbron — Links with the Past— " Fey" — Brick dated 1383, 275 — Cromwell and Music — Maize — "Tiger," 276—"The island of the innocent"—" Soam of hay —Licences for Prostitution—Dyddian'r Cwn, 277— Bussian Word-"Housen," 878-Knights, 279. NOTES ON BOOKS :-Wood's • Registers of Whlckham '— Galrdner and Brodie's • Papers of Henry VIII.' Notices to Correspondents. gotti. ORIENTATION. THE very word seems to indicate the east aa the principal cardinal point. But to us the north is the main cardinal point. The compass points to the north, and our sea- faring ancestors steered by the Little Bear. To the old Christians of North-Western Europe the cardinal point may be said to have been the east, possibly a survival of a worship of the rising sun. Gothic churches are orientated; Italian churches are not. The priest who entered the Temple of Jerusalem faced the west, that is to say, the entrance was at the eastern end. The reason of this was probably that the Temple, being the habitation of the Deity, and not a place of assembly, was orientated like a human habitation. The most con- venient place for the door of a hut or tent was on the eastern side, where the morning sun could enter. Some early people in India, speaking an Aryan language, must have had the east as their main cardinal point, for the word Deccan is believed to correspond with dexter, the right hand, that is, the region to the south of us •when we look to the east. In Hertfordshire I have noted that most of the large old farm- houses have the enclosed cattle-yard to the south, and a line of barns beyond that further south. I think the Italian Benedictine abbeys have the cloister to the north of the church for shade, and that the earliest abbeys built in North Europe had the same arrangement; but it was soon reversed and the cloister built on the south side, for in our dark northern lands sunshine is rarer and more precious than shade. Early British round dwellings, which were partly below ground level, had, I believe, their doors facing east. Was it in order that the rising sun might rouse the inmates to their daily work ; or because, built thus, the western storms would not beat in 1 Reasons for east-and-west orientation are universal over the globe. These points are more clearly marked by sunrise and sunset than south and north are by culmination of the sun and by the Pole star ; whereas in changing from one hemisphere to another north and south may be said to change values. There seems an obviousness in imagining in old time the west to be the region of departing spirits, who are setting, as it were, to this universe of things seen. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection, reversing this pagan ignor- ance or vagueness of hope, might almost as easily lead to the fancy tnat the west was the bad direction as the east was the good. Suffer me to add a word on the orientation of Scotch houses. Following the late Prof. Skene, I suppose the earliest permanent dwellings to have been beehive-shaped, with no window or chimney, but with one entrance door on the east side; the roof in no case truly domical, but either of flat stones, each horizontal circle smaller than the one below, or, often, of turfs, or peats. As manners advanced, two chambers, the outer shared by the poultry, dogs, pigs, &c., would be required, the entrance door still from habit most frequently facing east. The ben, as the parlour or principal living room is called, with the hearth, and the principal family bed in a recess opposite the fire, is normally, so far as my observation goes, to the left of the little passage never absent, and usually protected by a wooden porch—i.e., the ben is normally to the south, the warmest side, and the bout to the north. The words ben and bout are, I believe, not Gaelic, but Saxon = within and without. Was the beehive shape suggested by a bell-shaped tent of skins kept down to the ground outside by large stones "j.^ya-s this the form of th^gpvfian thVsurf ace of the road. In cars in which the water pours down them in torrents. time to time t