Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/194

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. MAKCH 10, 1900.

different from the rash jerks, and hair - brain'c squirts thou art wont, Tristram, to transact it with in other humours dropping thy pen spurting thy ink about thy table and thy books as if thy pen and thy ink, thy books and furniture cost thee nothing ! "

EDWARD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, South Australia.

THE FIKST BRITISH LIGHTHOUSE. A search of the records of that venerable corporation Trinity House shows that it is just two hundred and ninety years since the first lighthouse was erected at Lowestoft, and this is noted in the annals of the Elder Brethren as the first regular lighthouse on the coasts of Great Britain. The next lighthouse to be established was at Winterton, near Yar- mouth, in 1616. Lowestoft has had, more- over, the unique distinction of possessing the first lifeboat. It was in 1809, iust two hundred years after the first lighthouse was built there, that the first lifeboat was dispatched on her initial errand of mercy from Lowes- toft. EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road, N.

PATTY MOON'S WALK." This name of a paved footpath in Tunbridge Wells, leading south from King Charles the Martyr Church into the fields, was recently changed for what reason I know not to "Cumberland Walk." I cannot find in the books at my command anything about the first name. The change is to be deplored anyhow.

THORNFIELD.

GIPSIES IN ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. Prof. Leo. Wiener, of Harvard College, the learned author of the 'History of Yiddish Literature,' has recently suggested that there were gipsies in England in the thirteenth century. Writing to the New York Evening Post, he says :

" No direct proof of the presence of gipsies in Western Europe before 1417 has as yet been given. I think I have discovered one. In Roger Bacon's 'OpusMajus' (Oxford, 1897, vol. ii. p. 211), which was written in 1266, there is a discussion of the theriac, after which Bacon speaks of the correspond- ing sovereign remedy of the Ethiopians: 'The reptile that the ^Ethiopians eat is the dragon, as David says in the Psalm, " Thou ga vest him to be meat to the people of the JSthiopians." For it is well known that wise ^Ethiopians have come to Italy and Spain and France and England, and those countries of the Christians where there are good flying dragons, and that by occult arts which they possess they drive the dragons out of their caves, and they have saddles and bridles in readiness, and ride on them, and urge them in the air to swift flight, so that the rigidity of their flesh is weakened, and its toughness reduced, just as boars and bears and oxen are baited by dogs and tormented by various persecutions before they are killed for

eating. After they have thus reduced them they have an art of preparing their flesh even as the art of preparing the flesh of the tyre [?], and they partake of it against accidents of old age, and prolong their lives and make their intellects subtle beyond all estimation.' Leaving out all the legend- ary matter, it is evident that Bacon is trying to account for the presence of a dark-skinned race in Western Europe which is versed in magic arts. There is no possibility of applying this description to any other people but the gipsies. When we con- sider that later they were generally believed to be Egyptians, that they were supposed to come from 'little Egypt,' that they foretold the future, no doubt can remain of the identity of Bacon's ^Ethio- pians with the gipsies."

It would be interesting, to know what is thought of this passage by Romani students. Will it bear the interpretation of the advent of a wandering tribe ; or does it only refer to isolated instances of learned visitors from distant lands vaguely described as Ethio- pians 1 What does Bacon mean by the words ne attributes to David, " Dedisti earn escam populis yEthiopum " 1

WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Moss Side, Manchester.

WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, "n order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

'LETTERS ON THE ENGLISH NATION.' Writing to Cole on 8 January, 1772 (Cun- ningham's ed., vol. v. p. 372), Horace Wai pole

says :

'There is a silly fellow, I do not know who, that las published a volume of Letters on the English Nation, with characters of our modern authors. He has talked such nonsense on Mr. Gray that I
 * iave no patience with the compliments he has paid

me."

Shebbeare published in 1756 ' Letters on the English Nation,' purporting to be a transla- tion from the Italian of Batista [sic] Angeloni. These letters, however, were political in haracter. Is anything known of a later series of letters, with a similar title, dealing with literary persons 1 H. T. B.

'ROTATORY CALABASH." In 'Past and 3 resent' Carlyle speaks several times of a 'rotatory calabash" by way of scorn for Drayer that is merely formal. He explains devolution ' :
 * he phrase in his essay on the 'French

" Just so, indeed, do the Kalmuck people pray : luantities of written prayers are put in some rota- ,ory pipkin or calabash (hung on a tree, or going like /he small barrel churn of agricultural districts) ; this