Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/228

 186 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. vi. SEPT. s, woo. noise that was ever known. Fortunately such con- vulsions of the earth do not often happen, for the sea rushed in on the land, and thousands of lives were lost." In Chambers's 'Concise Gazetteer,' 1895, it is stated that " a gigantic ocean-wave inun- dated the adjoining coasts of Java and Sumatra, causing a loss of 36,500 lives, and then careered round the entire globe." One wishes that Wordsworth could have been living to see these wonderful sunsets. See 'The Excursion,' bk. ii. 11. 829-77. They might have satisfied even Punch's young gentleman, who (I quote from memory) " had never seen a sunset that quite satisfied him, at least not in naychar, you know." After all, the young man could have quoted Wordsworth in support of his views, as the great poet says in another of his poems that " the painter's hand " can add the gleam. The light that never was, on sea or land. Of course, in the young gentleman's mouth the' words he used were merely affectation, or " nincompoopiana," as Punch's artist de- scribed them. JONATHAN BOUCHIER. Ropley, Hampshire. LOCARD AND THE HEART OF ROBERT BRUCE. —In Timbs's 'Doctors and Patients' (vol. i. C. 202) is an article entitled ' Cures wrought y the Lee Penny,' which is said to have been originally communicated to the Athenonmi. A portion of it reads thus :— " [This stone] has been by Tradition in the Lee Family since the year 13*20: odds, that is a little after the Death of King Robert Bruce, who having ordered His Heart to be Carried to the Holy Land, there to be Burried, one of the Noble Family of Douglas was sent with it, and tis said got the Crowned heart in his Arms from that Circumstance, but the person who carried the Royal Heart was Sir Simon Locard of Lee who just about that time borrowed a large sum of money from Sr William de Lindsey, Prior of Ayr, for which he granted a Bond of Annuity of Ten "Pounds of Silver during the Life of the said Sr Wm de Lindsey, out of his Lauds of Lee, and Cartland, the original bond dated 1323 and witnessed by the Principal Nobility of the Country, is still remaining among the family papers, as this was a great Sum in those Days, tis thought it was borrowed for that Expidition, and from his being the Person who carried the Royal Heart he changed his Name from Locard, to Lockheart (as tis sometimes spelt) or Lockhart, and got a heart, within a Lock, for part of his Arms with the motto, 'Corda, Serrate, Pando.' This Simon Lockhart. having taken Prisoner a Saracen Prince or Cheif," Ac., acquired the stone as part of his ransom. One would at first sight imagine that the date given above was merely a clerical error— "1320"for 1330; but the production of the bond dated 1323 as evidence in support of the former year shows that it was not so; and since Robert Bruce did not die till 1329 (the expedition took place 1329-30), the whole argument founded upon the bond falls to the ground. Again, we are told that though Douglas was sent with the heart, and is said to have got the crowned heart in his arms from that cir- cumstance, the person who carried it was Sir Simon Locard of Lee. But we know that on the field of Tebas Sir James Douglas, to whom the king had entrusted the duty of depositing his heart in the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem, finding himself hard pressed, " took from his neck the silver casquet and threw it before him among the thickest of the enemy." His death occurred in 1330, " little more than one year after that of his royal master." So far, then, Sir Sirnon Locard had not carried it. Later the casquet was found upon the battlefield and conveyed (? by Locard) to Scotland, where it was interred under the high altar in Melrose Abbey. That Locard was in Spain with Douglas, en route for the Holy Land, is borne out by the legend of the acquisition of the Lee Penny, which he (Locard) is said to have accepted as part ransom for his Saracen prisoner, since the battle of Tebas was fought against the Spanish Moors. That the man who carried (? back to Scot- land) the locked-up heart of his royal master should assume (or be granted) the name Lock- heart or Lockhart appears probable enough, but one cannot so readily accept the state- ment that this same man was already known as Locard. If it were so, what was the origin of this latter name ? GEORGE C. PEACIIEY. Brightwalton, Wantage. "ADELPHI DRAMA": "ADELPHI GUEST."—The following statement was made by the London correspondent of the Birmingham Daily Post in its issue of 27 August :—- " The Adelphi Theatre has been secured from the Messrs. A. and S. Gatti, who have held it for one- and-twenty years, by Mr. George Edwardes, already possessed of the control of the Gaiety and Daly s among other popular amusement ventures. Mr. Edwardes, it is understood, intends to practically rebuild this old-fashioned and not too comfortable house; and it may be that he will change the tradition which has given the descriptive phrase ' Adelphi drama' to our theatrical vocabulary. Time was when yet another phrase was common, that being ' Adelphi guest,' as typifying the white- cotton-gloved ' super who vainly tried to pose as a haughty aristocrat while drinking imaginary cham- pagne out of solid gilded goblets; but that Kind o thing was reformed out of existence by a more enlightened stage-management so long ago that by now the saying is almost forgotten." Perhaps some theatre-lovers among the