Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/395

 s. V.MAY 12, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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be able to make its circuit in preaching once in the year.

Mr. Hill incidentally in his notes illuminates many points which would prove puzzling to the ordinary reader. For instance, Cornubiensis, as a bishop's title in William of Malmesbury, does not refer to Cornwall, as one might naturally suppose, but is a corrupt rendering of Corvinensis in Leofric's Missal, which is itself a Latinization of Hraefenes- byrig (Ravensbury), now Ramsbury, in Wilts, which once gave name to a see (p. 216). The Channel Islands, which are now an appendage of the diocese of Winchester, belonged originally to the diocese of Coutances, but when that dependency was lost to England they were detached and given for a short time to Salisbury, and ultimately to Win- chester. Mr. Hill expresses a doubt as to the exact meaning of Giraldus Cambrensis when he says that Wallia, as a name of Wales, is " adul- terinum vocabulum." Probably he meant no more than that it was an alien and unrecognized word (viz., A. -IS. wealh, foreign), in contradistinction to the native name Cambria.

THE leading paper in Folk-lore is a study of the legends of Krishna by Mr. Crooke, who shows how many different popular superstitions and customs are to be found united in the cult of the fateful son of Vasudeva. In speaking of the mock fights and allied practices which have been used in India and elsewhere to secure the welfare of the crops and cattle, Mr. Crooke suggests that we have possibly " a similar ritual survival in some of our English games, like ' The Raid,' ' Scotch and English,' and 'Prisoners' Base.' Bull-baiting, again, which in some cases seems to be a survival of a water-sacri- fice, often takes the form of a contest between rival

villages or townships The same idea may underlie

some of our most popular village rites in this country the Hood Game at Haxey ; the ball con- tests at Bury St. Edmunds and Newcastle ; the

ram-hunting at Eton the ball-playing on Shrove

Tuesday at Whitby, where, if the game be not well played, the youngsters will be sure to fall ill at harvest time!" Another curious custom mentioned in connexion with the worship of Krishna, whose name means the black, the dark, or the dark blue one, is the far-spread adoration of gods of dusky hue. In India black gods abound. Krishna him self is usually depicted as of a dark blue colour and we find that in Egypt Isis was black, as was also Osiris in his form of god of the dead, while Hapi, the Nile god, was sometimes red and some times blue. In Mexico blue gods were discovered by the early European invaders, and in Japan " tht great black one " is the god of riches. Black deities were also known to the Greeks ; " English tradi tion supplies us with a black Godiya"; and, as evers one has heard, the Prince of Evil is of a swarth> complexion. The legends explaining the existence of the host of black Madonnas still reverenced in Europe are of many kinds, and a very curiou chapter in the history of hagiology will one daj have to be written on the worship of these images After Mr. Crooke's article and the Annual Repor of the Council of the Folk-lore Society comes tin presidential address, dealing with totemism an< some recent discoveries which, at first sight, appea to suggest the need of reconsidering the totemisti theory and modifying it to some degree. In con eluding his observations, Mr. Hartland remark that the coming century has doubtless many sur

rises in store for the folk-lorists of to-day and heir children, for the progress of discovery may opn enable the students of anthropology to recon- titute the history of humanity to an extent of which all the generations of learned men in the ast never dreamed.

IN the Fortnightly the Baron Pierre de Coubertin dwells on 'The Possibility of a War between England and France,' and while deprecating it, as must every sensible and right-minded man, points o the existence of grave dangers. Mr. H. B. Irving upholds the status of the actor, and asserts, which s patently true, that the anxiety of the public to tnow the inner life of those connected with the tage is responsible for many lying tales and reek- ess inventions. Mr. H. Hamilton Fyfe advocates he establishment of a permanent Shakespearian heatre, holding that it is a reflection upon our love, -eal or simulated, for the great dramatist that no institution of the kind is to be found. In schemes already in existence he sees a possibility )f such future development as might' give us what le seeks. Like Matthew Arnold, ne would make a serious effort in the direction of establishing a Shakespearian theatre a grant from our Science ,nd Art Department. To anticipate this is to be remarkably we almost think unduly sanguine. Miss Alice Law writes at some length on ' William Cowper,' with whom many of the periodicals are concerned. In the influence of Newton upon Cow- per the writer finds much evil, and, while unwilling bo charge Newton, even unwittingly, with having excited Cowper to a fresh outburst of religious mania, will not acquit him of "a clumsy stupidity of sub- sequent treatment, and of a grave want of perception and lack of sympathetic insight into the obvious needs of Cowper's fatally emotional temperament." Mr. Aflalo writes on ' The Promise of International Exhibitions,' in which he has no very strong faith. The Baronne A. van Amstel tells, in the Nine- teenth Century, ' The True Story of the Prisoner of Chillon,' or, in other words, gives the particulars of the turbulent life of Bonivard [Francois de Bonni- vard], the Prior of St. -Victor. It constitutes a very readable paper, besides showing how much sympathy has been wasted upon Byron's hero. Bonnivard is, indeed, declared to have been "an exceedingly cunning old boy avaricious, libertine, and even ungrateful." In ' The Elders of Arcady' Dr. Jessopp tells us a good deal concerning the rural life of the earlier portion of the century he loves to depict. While our yokels are far more respectable than they were, they have lost some- thing of spontaneity and high spirits. Dancing in Norfolk villages is almost a dead art ; and when it was sought, on the Queen's Jubilee, to have a dance in a meadow where feasting had been carried on, "only two oldish women and the son of one of them could be prevailed on to show off." Mr. Claude Phillips claims to have rediscovered at Hertford House, and to place for the first time in the Wallace Collection, the ' Perseus and Andro- meda' of Titian. Readers will judge for themselves as to the evidence that the picture in question is that painted by Titian for Philip II. and praised by Vasari. Lord Iddesleigh gossips pleasantly con- cerning the novels of Jane Austen. Three of Miss Austen's characters Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Collins are said to " defy criticism," and in their degree to "resemble even Falstaff and Don Quixote." Mr. Alexander Sutherland, writing on