Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/201

 9* s. vi. SEPT. i,i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 163 tape "—by the way, let me mention that there are monster posters now in the streets of London with the following legend : " Instead of ordinary gin, drink Satinette, purest of spirits"), "cream of the valley "or "of the wilderness" ("valley" being, I suppose, an allusion to the low status of gin), "eye-water,"* " squint," " Old Tom " (a superior kind of gin), ana " the creature " (which among the lower classes always, or at least until the taste for whisky came in, meant gin); and a friend of mine mentions "twankay," properly de- noting a kind of green tea, as a name by which gin is frequently called. Perhaps your readers can furnish other names. F. ADAMS. FOOTPRINTS OF GODS, &c. (See 9th S. iv. 306, 463.) IN North America, at the edge of the Great Firestone Quarryj footsteps of the Great Spirit are marked in the rock, in the form of the track of a great bird (Tylor, 'Researches into the Early History of Mankind,' 1870, p. 118). At the ancient Mexican festival of all the gods, the footsteps of Tetzcatlipoca were expected to appear in the flour strewn to receive this sign of their coming (' Encyc. Brit.,1 xvi. 211). Piedrahita mentions the existence in Columbia of a rock stamped with the foot-outline of Chimizapagua, who is credited as the founder of wise laws and the art of spinning and weaving among the Chibchas ( Historia de las Conquista de Granada,' Amberes, 1688, part i. p. 3). Sou they speaks of St. Thomas's footsteps left on the shores of Bahia, Brazil (Tylor, op. cit., p. 117), others of the same saint being als_o reported from Peru to have been wor- shipped before the arrival of the Spaniards (F. N. del Techo, in Churchill's 'Voyages and Travels,' 1752, vol. vi. p. 43). Among the prehistoric monuments in Mane-er-Hroeg, France, there is a pair of human footmarks sculptured ; and similar figures of feet, either naked or with sandals, abound in the rock-sculptures of the Bronze Age in Sweden (fimile Cartailhac, 'France Prehistorique,' 1889, p. 237 seqq.). One ascribed to Hercules was carved in rock on the Danube (C. H. Smith, 'The Natural eye," as in the ' Life of Bampfylde-Moore Carew," previously mentioned, p. 162: " A bumper of cherry brandy, which when be had drank, they forced another upon him, persuading him to wet the other eye." Cf. also " a drappie in our ee " (Burns, ' The Happy Trio," chorus). Gin has been called the "weeping spirit" because women under its in- fluence become maudlin and unbosom their sorrows. History of the Human Species,' 1852, p. 35, note'); those of Christ in the churches of St. Denis and of St. Laurent, Rome, also in the chapel of Pas de Dieu, France; of the miraculous bitch which guided the army of Clovis in the battle of YouiUe" on the bank of the Vienne (Collin de Plancy, ' Diction- naire Critique des Reliques et des Images Miraculeuses,' 1821-2, ii. 76, iii. 4); of the knees of St. Ursicinus at Rome left on a stone whereon he was beheaded (P. Skippon in Churchill, op. cit., p. 688); of St. Theocrita in the island of Paros, Greece (J. T. Bent, 'Cyclades,' 1885, p. 378); of the Polish St. Hyacinth (thirteenth century), still visible on the stream of the Garisten (P. de Ribade- neira, 'Flos Sanctorum,' Barcelona, 1643, tub August 16).* In the neighbourhood of the Mark there are footsteps of a peasant in the rock on which he stood and swore to another peasant to the effect that it would become as soft as butter should the ground he claimed as his own not be really so; also those of a horse, foretelling thereby the success of his master in a combat (A. Kuhn, ' Markische Sagen und Miirchen,' 1843, 25, 40). In Egypt there were, before the time of Herodotus, some foot-impressions dedicated to Osiris (Smith, I.e.). In his ' Lake N garni' C. J. Andersson speaks of a rock in which the tracks of all native animals are seen (Tylor, op. ct'fc, p. 118). Modimo, a god of the Bechuanas, dwells in a cave, whence all manner of beasts issued, and which has in the rocks by it their footsteps well preserved (Ratzel, 'History of Mankind,' Butler's trans., vol. ii. p. 354). As regards the alleged marks of the Ascen- sion on Mount Olivet, it is said that the right- side one was carried away by the Turks into a mosque, what now remains there being the impression of the left foot of Christ (Collin de Plancy, op. cit., ii. 76). With respect to the famous " Buddha's Footmarks" in Ceylon—which is to the Brahmans that of Siva, to the Moslems that of Adam, to the Gnostics that of leu, and to some Christians that of St. Thomas, whilst others see in it that of the Eunuch of Candace (Tylor, op. cit., p. 117)—I shall add that the Chinese of the fifteenth century held a belief in its being a relic of Panku, their first father, and they recognized the Buddha's in the minor hollow near the shore. It was full of which narrates that the handwriting of Nichiren, the founder of a Buddhist sect, is visible to this day on waves of the Strait of Sado (Inoue,' Yokwai Gaku Kogi,' 1896, ii. 355).
 * Cf. the popular expression " to wet the other
 * There is a Japanese story parallel to this,