Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/357

 ss- S. VL om. 13, 1900.1 NOTES AND QUERIES. 295 Publique Worship herein set forth.” It con- cludes with an order for the due keeping of parish registers. But no penalty is enacted or disobedience. This omission, as MR. PAYNE has shown, was amply supplied by the ordinance of 23 August' but wish to make it clear that it is t is later ordinance, and not that of 3 January, from which MR. PAYNE’S quotation is taken. S. G. HAMILTON. TRENTAL=“ MONTH’S JMIND” (9"‘ S. vi. 104, 195).-Mn. W. SANCROFT RANDALL is mis- taken when he speaks of the term “ month’s mind ” being unknown in pre-Reformation days. I have met with several instances of fifteenth and early sixteenth century date, but have on] a note of a sin le example. Issabell Longland the mother 0% John Long- land, Bishop of Lincoln, whose will booro date 13 September, 1527, says that she wills to the church of Henley, that is, Henley-on- Thames, “i° Ta rsoff wndes sic a se burnin e before thg holy? sacrapnlient uplm Ilthephye aulterg ther to contynue as lonjge as they will endure, and at the monethes min e to be renewed, and also att the twelvemonet es mynde.” The complete will is given in the Proceedings of the Society of Antlquaries, Second Series, vol. vii. p. 427. It would seem that the “month’s mind” in some form or other was continued after the change of religion, for Southey quotes (‘Commonplace Book,’ First Series, . 550) the following curious Fassage from .lleremy Taylor’s ‘Sermon at the uneral of Archbishop Bramhall’ :- “The iety of the Christian Church hath made some littlb rovision towards an artificial immor- tality for grave and worthy persons; and the friendships which our dead contracted while they were alive require us to continue _a fair memory as_ long as we can, but they egnre in monthly minds, or at most in a faint an declining anni- versary.” EDWARD PEACOCK. Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsey. The term “ month’s mind” is certainly pre- Reformation. I take the following from Fisher’s ‘Funeral Sermon of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby.’ My copy is the reprint of 1708, which includes a facsimile of the black-letter edition as printed by Wynkyn de Worde :- “ Hereafter followeth I A Mornynge Remem- brance, I Had at the Moneth Minde of the Noble I Prynces Margarete Countesse of Rich- I monde and Darbye, Moder unto I Kynge Henry the Seventh, and I Grandame to Our Sove- I raign Lorde that now I Is. U n whose I Soul Almight%e $God have I Mercy. I (lbompyled by the Reverent a er in God, I Johan Fisher glyshop of Rochester I Enprynted at London. in etestrete I at the Sygne of the Sonne, by Wynkyn I de Words.” The service at the time of burial was com- monly called (as is well known) dyn/ge= dir e=Scotice dirgw. The “month’s mind ” and’ anniversary were also called “minning da '.” For dirge and dirgfie, see the ‘H.E.D.’ The following jocose quotation from Black- wood’s Magazirw for October, 1862, p. 428, enables us to give the right name to the “ ceremony of sin-eating transplanted to an ?per stratum of society,” which Mr. Sidney artland finds in a funeral at Shrewsbury, as described by J orevin de Rocheford :- “ lt is just possible that the learned doctor-for the majority of the speakers lay claim to the doctorate-was for the moment overtaken, as hap- pened to a worthy old country gentleman of our acquaintance, who at a clirgie or funeral feast, held on occasion of the obsequies of a venerable peer, gave vent to his feelings by proposing that the com- pan should dedicate a solemn bumper to the health of the noble individual whose mortal remains they had just accompanied to the tomb.” J. P. OWEN. The ex lanations of the word “trental” given hitherto do not throw any light on the following entry found in ‘The Diary of Phelip Wyot, Town Clerke of Barnstaple from 1586 to 1608 ’ :- “ October, 1586. On St. Luke’s day this yere there was a trental of sermons at P lton, so that divers as well men as women rode and went thither, they called it an exercise or holy faste, and_ there some offerd as they did when they went on pilgrimage. “ And the like was kept at Sherwell to the admiracon of all Ptestants. Pilton is a parish in this borough, Sherwell l in three miles north. From t e ‘pulpit of the gormer still projects a piece of s eet iron, cut in the shape of a hand and an arm, which formerly held the preacher’s hour-glass. Tnos. WAINWRIGIIT. Barnstaple. LAUDERDALE ON THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA (9"‘ S. vi. 210).-The full title of this work is ‘An In uiry into the Merits of the System for the government of India, under the Superintendence of the Board of Control,’ by James, Earl of Lauderdale 8vo. (Edin- borgh, mos). A oopy is in the Guildhal Library, London. W. B. GERISH. Bishop s Stortford. “ DATA ” AS A SINGULAR NoUN (9'~’* S. vi. 208).-It may be well to note that the usage quoted is not uncommon in commercial life and literature and in newspapers; and in eneral it cannot be attributed to ignorance. lhave known attention drawn to the irregu-