Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/159

 9» s. vi. A™, is. low.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 129 of the beautiful but wholly typical passage in Micah vii. 19, 'And cast into the depths of the sea all their iniquities.'" The word Tashlich I presume ia Hebrew. JAMES HOOPER. Norwich. EIGHT-DAY CLOCK.—I own an eight-day clock brought from Lincolnshire some years ago. Can anybody tell me its probable date 1 Its face is engraved " N. Shaw, Sleaford." M. B. W. Cambridge, U.S. [No mention of the name ia made by Britten, 'Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers.'] JOHN SHEEN, CLOCKMAKEE.—Where and when did he live in London ? A. C. H. HTJET.—Who was this writer, quoted by Dr. Burney in his ' History of Music' ? H. T. B. [Qy., Pierre Daniel Huet, Bishop of Avranches?] " ALAMAINS."—Horace Walpole, writing in 1775, speaks of the "'Alamains' of the court," meaning, apparently, dealers in false news. Wiat is the meaning of the word 1 H. T. B. SHERBEOOKEFAMILY.—Will some qnekindly sead me the Sherbrooke pedigree which Burke onits? MRS. JOHN COPE. Sulhamstead Park, Berks. QUOTATION WANTED.— Unanswered yet ? the prayer your lips have pleaded In agony of heart these many years f The authorship of these lines was inquired far in 7th S. viii. 169. No reply, apparently, vas given. I have been told tneyare Robert Browning's, which does not seem likely. I was then told they are Mrs. Browning's, which is more probable. Can any recent correspondent identify them ? The last two lines of the version I have in one of my MS. books are as follows :— She [Faith] know- Omnipotence has heard her prayer, And cries, " It shall be done—Sometime !—Some- where !" JONATHAN BOUCHIEH. 'THE LAST WHISTLE.'—This song, set by W. Shield, was published in 'The Musical Bouquet,' No. 3452. The words are in 'The London Braham,' published in 1818. I wish to know the name of the author and the date when first published. E. RlMBAULT DlBDIN. TRUFFLE-HUNTING PIGS.—I should be glad to be referred to a magazine article on this subject. ST. SWITHIN. SHOWERS OF SNAKES, FISH, SPIDERS, &c. (9th S. v. 516.) A VOLUME might easily be compiled on the above. There was a fall of butter-like dew in Ireland in 1695, and in vol. xix. of the Philosophical Society's Transactions Mr. Robert Vans, of Kilkenny, writes, dated 19 November, 1695 :— " We have of late in the county of Limerick and Tipperorv showers of a matter like butter or grease. If this be rubbed on one's hands it will melt, but laid by the fire, it dries and grows hard, having a very stinking smell. This last night some fell at this place, which I saw this morning. It is gathered into pots and other vessels, by some of the inhabitants of this place." The Bishop of Cloyne contributed the fol- lowing in April, 1696 :— " Having very diligently inquired concerning a very odd phenomenon, which was observed in many parts of Leinster and Munster, the best account I can collect of it is as follows: For a good part of last winter and spring, there fell in several places a kind of thick dew, which the country people called butter, from the consistency and colour of it, being soft, clammy, and of a dark yellow ; it fell always in the night, and chiefly in moorish low grounds, on the top of the grass, and often on the thatch of cabins. It was seldom observed in the same places twice: it commonly lay on the earth for near a fortnight without changing colour, and then dried and turned black. Cattle fed in the fields where it lay indifferently, as in other fields. It fell in lumps often as large as the end of one's finger, very thin and scatteringly : it had a strong ill scent, somewhat like the smell of churchyards or graves ; and, indeed, we had during most of that season very stinking fogs, some sedi- ment of which might probably occasion this stinking dew, though I will by no means pretend to offer that as a reason for it; I cannot find that it was kept long, or that it bred any worms or insecU; yet the superstitious country people who had scald or sore heads, rubbed them with this substance and said it healed them." Capt. William Badily gives the following account of a shower of ashes in the Archi- pelago :— " December 6, 1631, riding at anchor in the Gulf of Volo, about ten o'clock that night, it began to rain sand or ashes, and continued till two the next morning. It was about two inches thick on the deck, so that we threw it overboard with shovels as we did snow the day before. The quantity of a in• 11.-I we brought home, and presented to several Friends, including the Masters of the Trinity House. There was no wind stirring when these ashes fell; and they not only fell in the places where we were, out likewise in other parts, as ships were coming from St. John d'Acre to our port, though at that lime a hundred leagues from us. We compared Che ashes and found them both alike." Dr. Robert Whytt relates that a shower of dust fell on a ship bound from Leith for