Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/163

 9". 8. V. FEB. 24, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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plated bands. The latter, as far as I know a,re without lids, and are bound with iron.

There are six sizes, one to ten litres, which can be bought from H. Blanchet jitfa, 11 Place Grenette. They are called " brocs de Grenoble." I think that I have seen such brocs bearing that name in a shop in Paris.

The pronunciation of the word broc is, ] think, not always bro, as given at the second reference. According to Landais's ' Grand Dictionnaire ' it is pronounced bro before a consonant, and broke before a vowel or at the end of a phrase, e. g., " Ce broc (bro) me parait petit ; ce broc (broke) est d'une belle dimen- sion ; passez-moi ce broc (broke)" Landais describes a broc as " vase fait ordinairement de bois, a anse, et a bee evase, garni de cercles de metal, et servant a transporter du vin."

Broc used to be a French liquid measure : it contained two pintes, or nearly half a gallon. According to J. H. Alexander's * Dictionary of Weights and Measures' (Baltimore, 1850), the broc of Lausanne contained 2'9705 gallons (imperial). EGBERT PIERPOINT.

GREEN FAIRIES : WOOLPIT GREEN CHILDREN (9 th S. v. 47). The tale quoted by MR. HOOPER must be far older than his authori- ties. "Green" spirits are "sinless" in Celtic literature and tradition, and the terms are combined in the word glais. Instances of an intermediate state are found. Lugh Lethglas (Luke Half green) is the imperfect, half - instructed Druid of the Fomorians at the battle of Samhain. It may be more than a coincidence that the green girl marries a "man of Lynn." Here the original word would be lein, evil, i. e., the pure fairy marries a sinful child of earth. Fossa luporum (wolves' graves) preserves another item of Celtic teaching, found alike in the earliest legends of Rome and amongst modern French Freemasons. " Martin " is a variant of Merdyn or Merlin, assisted by the saint's reputation as a thaumaturgist. Part of the dry bed of the Mere of the Wizard at Glastonbury is now St. Martin's Moor. The name is applied to that portion of Bride's Meadows which lies between the hamlet of Beckery [?], or Little Ireland, and the village of Street, and includes that part of the Salmon of Knowleye [1] which lies to the west of the river Brue. The Salmon itself is the long, low, artificial mound, formerly an island in the Mere, the tail of which may be seen in a field near Glastonbury station. G.

Ralph of Coggeshall states that he had this story from Sir Richard de Calne, into whose house, he tells us, the children were received, It is strange, however, that Jocelin

de Brakelond, the historian of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, himself a contemporary of Newbury and Coggeshall, makes no mention of the green children, although he has occa- sion to mention the village of Woolpit, and gives an interesting account of Sampson's journey to Rome for the purpose of securing the advowson of the church of Wlpit. Neither does Lydgate the garrulous, also a monk of Bury, mention this strange story. The land of St. Martin, where perpetual twilight reigned, probably had its origin in some legend of the land of departed spirits. The bean diet of the children seems to point to this, as beans played a very important part in the propitiatory rites of the Romans to the Lemures and at the Parentalia (see a curious passage in Ovid's 'Fasti,' bk. v. 436), and were considered to have a mysterious connexion with the dead. Pythagoras held that they contained souls in the first stage of metempsychosis.

E. S. ALDERSON.

In this communication, for "Newbury," " Nubirgensis," read Newburgh, Neubriyensis (see 7 th S. ii. 26). W. C. B.

ST. EANSWYTH (9 th S. iv. 461 ; v. 8, 74). One would have almost felt certain that MR. HARRY HEMS would have favoured ' N. & Q.,' to which he is such a constant and valued con- tributor, with full details " of what was con- sidered to havebeen one of the most remarkable antiquarian finds ever made in Kent." But failing this, I am grateful for the list of references vouchsafed. MR. ARTHUR HUSSEY has gone a step further and kindly placed in my hands the information to which he refers. For this I, as a country reader of 'N. & Q.,' am doubly grateful. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

EDGAR A. POE'S 'HOP-FROG' (9 th S. v. 4). It may interest MR. R. H. THORNTON to know that the catastrophe of the H6tel de Saint- Pol is chronicled by Froissart. Five of the satyrs, or "hommes sauvages," were chained together, while the sixth i.e., Charles VI. himself danced before them. The two who were burnt to death on the spot were Messire Charles de Poitiers, son of the Comte de Valentinois, and the Norman Hugonin de Guisay, the hapless contriver of the entertain- ment/ Messire Yvain de Galles, Bastard of Foix, and the Comte de Joigny died within two days in great agony at their own houses-
 * he son of the Seigneur de Nantouillet saved

limself by leaping into a water-butt ; while the king was rescued by his uncle's young wife, the Duchess of Berri, who wrapped him