Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/470

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. JUNE 9, im

The curved pieces were held together by four strips. This formed the base, to which were attached six upright flattish pieces of wood, three on each side. In the centre of the base was a tray of sheet iron 1 ft. 0| in. square, with a three-quarters-of-an-inch rim turned up all round, and on it was riveted an iron tripod, very rude in construction. In this was placed an iron cylindriform burner or brazier 5| in. high by 4 in. in diameter, and perforated with five vertical rows of four holes, each hole being about the size of a threepenny-piece. This was for burning the charcoal in, and above it on the framework was riveted a plate of iron 1 ft. 2 in. by 1 ft. in., to reflect the ascending heat. The whole apparatus was placed inside the bed, and the bedclothes drawn carefully over it, so that the heat was dispersed, the clothes being prevented by the wooden cage -like framework from being burnt or scorched. See further the Reli- quary for January, from which it appears that examples there described by Mr. Richard Quick, the curator, may be seen in the Horni- man Museum. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

Fosbroke's description of these is " a low bed without curtains. It was called trundle : also a truckle-bed, which in the daytime, for want of room, was concealed under a higher bed. It was occupied in Ladies' rooms by the maid, and by the chaplain or tutor in an Esquier's family, and the page, fool, or Servant of a Gentleman. It was drawn out at night to the foot of the principal, or as it was sometimes called, the standing bed.

There is an excellent illustration showing their use in Thos. Wright's * Domestic Man- ners,' &c. (1862), p. 407. RICHARD LAWSON.

Urmston.

These were cumbrous contrivances for warming beds, having a wooden framework and central metal brazier. There was an ex- cellent and well - illustrated paper on 'Old Bed-wagons or Bed- warmers,' by Mr. Richard Quick, in the Reliquary for January last. G. L. APPERSON.

GHOSTS AND SUICIDES (9 th S. v. 288). The superstition of the ghosts of the slain haunt- ing the battlefield where they have fallen is one of very ancient date. The following note is quoted from Creasy 's 'Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World ' in reference to the battle of Marathon, B.C. 490. Pausanias lived in the second century of the Christian era : -

"Pausanias states with implicit belief that the battlefield was haunted at night, by supernatural beings, and that the noise of combatants and the snorting of horses were heard to resound on it. The superstition has survived the change of creeds, and the shepherds in the neighbourhood still believe that spectral warriors contend on the plain at midnight,

and they say they have heard the shouts of the combatants and the neighing of the steeds. See Grote and Thirl wall."

The circumstance is thus alluded to by Ugo Foscolo in his fine poem 'I Sepolcri':

Ah si ! da quella Religi'osa pace un Nume parla : E nutria contro a' Persi in Maratona Ove Atene sacro tombe a' suoi prodi, La virtu Greca e 1' ira. Vv. 47-51.

And Campbell has the same idea in his fine ode ' The Mariners of England ': The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave, For the deck it was their field of fame, The ocean was their grave.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

That persons who met with sudden death "walked on " in the spirit till their " proper time came " was one of the whispered beliefs when I was a child in Derbyshire. Such things were always spoken of under the breath, and with a proper sort of " awesome- riess," as some put it. There are a few people left that I know who can " see such things," but as they die off, only here and there are their places taken. Only girls who stay at home with old-fashioned mothers learn and believe in these " old woman's tales."

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

SHAKESPEARE AND CICERO (9 th S. v. 288). Parallels of this kind are apt to be illusory, and Shakespeare was equal to the achieve- ment of coining a grotesque metaphor which receives a dramatic setting from its context. But there is a possibility that, in the passage cited, he drew, directly or indirectly, upon Quintilian. Quintilian quotes the metapnpr as a specimen of coarseness to be avoided in good writing. Shakespeare puts it on the coarse lips of Cade. That may be a mere coincidence. But Quintilian goes on to quote as far-fetched the conceit of Furius Bibaculus jeered at by Horace : " Juppiter hibernas cana nive conspuit Alpes," and, rather oddly, this turns up in Shakespeare too. In 'Henry V.,' III. v. 50 a scene in which the language is intentionally stilted the French king is made to say : Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon.

If Shakespeare was thinking of Quintilian, there is a touch of sly humour in the choice of Cade and the French king as suitable characters for reviving these lapses from good style. Of course, this suggestion is extremely doubtful, and I had better guard against