Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/224

 182 NOTES AND QUERIES. p» s. VL SKPT. 8,1900. with his cane, ready to strike him if he did not keep the drummer up to the mark. In the little book of satirical' Advice to Officers,' 1782, we read that it was customary, in the slang of the drummers, to call a culprit who cried out when under punishment at the halberts a nightingale. The old whipping and scourging were mild when compared with the excess to which flogging was carried. At some stations a court- martialsat every day, the triangles were the accompaniment of every parade, the lash was inflicted at least three days out of every week, and sometimes two triangles were in use at the same time in the same square. Even so recently as during the first quarter of the nineteenth century there were court-martial sentences of 1,500 lashes. Flogging at the halberts was inflicted by means of a cat-o'-nine-tails, which consisted of nine cords, each being about a foot and a half long, and often with nine knots on it. The handle was generally a piece of wood like a short drumstick. The cat was not originally a military instrument of punish- ment, but was borrowed from the navy. Perhaps the most notorious case of flogging in the army was that of Sergeant Armstrong, which took place, by order of Col. Wall, in 1782. Eight hundred lashes were inflicted by negroes, incited to severity by Wall him- self, who seems to have been drunk—"Cut him to the heart! Cut his liver out!" Wall was convicted of murder and suffered death. But the case has been already alluded to in ' N. & Q.' (3rd S. viii. 438 ; 9th S. ii. 129). and a concise account of Wall's character ana career, well worth reading, is to be found in the ' Dictionary of National Biography.' It seems strange that military officers, among whom for so long a period excessive drinking was a common practice, should all the while have sentenced private soldiers to be flogged for the same habit. "Oh, Colonel, take me down! Ye ken I'm just a puir drunken bodie like yersel'," was a successful appeal on one occasion. It is remarkable, too, that many advocates of the lash admitted that it failed to prevent serious crime. Cuth- bertson, for example, while recommending fifty lashes at the drum-head for any un- steadiness on parade, says that nothing is more frequent than men deserting again when scarcely recovered from a severe whipping inflicted for desertion (' System,' 1768, p. 174). Similar testimony is given by many writers. Donaldson mentions that two men in his regiment, who between them had already re- ceived upwards of two thousand lashes, one man for desertion, the other for drunkenness, continued to commit these offences as before ('Eventful Life.'p. 146). Sir Walter Scott has described in ' The Highland Widow' the horror and disgust with which this English punishment was wit- nessed in the northern part of the kingdom soon after 1745: but Dr. Henry Marshall tells us that when English troops took possession of the island of Ceylon in 1796 the Dutch ladies in Colombo used to ask the officers to let them know when any of the men were to be flogged, that they might be spectators. W. S. A POEM ATTRIBUTED TO MILTON. (See 9th S. v. 339.) THE poem conjecturally attributed to Mil- ton attracted my attention about the time of Mr. H. Morley's discovery of it, July, 1868, and I made a copy of it, which, as MR. HALL seems to have seen an abridgment only, I may perhaps be permitted to give here in full, provided it has not appeared before in 'N. &Q.':- AN BPITAPH. I. He whom Heaven did call away Out of this hermitage of clay Haii left some reliques in this urn As a pledge of his return. ii. Meanwhile the Muses do deplore The loss of this their paramour, With whom he sported, ere the day Budded forth its tender ray. And iiow Apollo leaves his lays And puts on cypress for his bays. The sacred Sisters tune their quills Only to the blubbering rills. And, while his doom they think upon, Make their own tears their Helicon, Leaving the two-topt Mount divine To turn votaries to his shrine. in. Think not, reader, me less blest, Sleeping in this narrow cist. Than if my ashes did lie hid Under some stately pyramid. If a rich tomb makes happy, then That Bee was happier far than men, Who, busy in the thymy wood, Was fettered by the golden flood Which from the amber-weeping tree Distilleth down so plenteously ; For so this little wanton elf Most gloriously enshrined itself, A tomb whose beauty might compare With Cleopatra's sepulchre. IV. In this little bed my dust Incurtained round I here intrust, While m y more pure and nobler part Lies entombed in every heart.