Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/382

 316 NOTES AND QUERIES. P* s. VL OCT. 20, im or " Dun Cow" was in favour, perhaps be- cause of a belief in the superiority of red cows' milk, although the frequency of this sign is probablv owing also to its having been an heraldic badge of Henry VII., in allusion to his descent by the Beauforts, through the Beauchamps of Holt, from Guy, Earl of Warwick, to say nothing of its more remote existence as a highly fabled creature. J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. Wimbledon Park Road. ST. JAMES'S SHELL (9th S. vi. 228).—I am sorry I cannot answer DR. MURRAY'S ques- tion regarding Compostella and Palestine. I have one to put on my own account which is relevant to the matter in hand. Was the shell significative of Mont St. Michel a.pecten or a cardiwm ? The coqiiillei with which the field of its shield is *<»••' look rather like the former, as they are figured by M. fidouard Corroyer in his Guide Descriptif du Mont Saint-Michel,' and there is nothing distinctly contrary thereto in the presentment at p. 45 of two pilgrims' token shells of the fifteenth century. Bowever, Mr. Percy Dearmer, the latest English writer on this wonderful sanc- tuary, speaks of cockle-shells :— " The heraldic cockle-shells of the abbey, which you will be pressed by many smiling impor- tunates to carry away with you in some form or other, suggest another paradoxical reflection. St. James the Great owes his attributes to Mont St. Michel. For these attributes have been those of the pilgrim since the thirteenth century, and it was at Mont St. Michel that the pilgrim learnt to adopt his insignia. The scallops he gathered on the Deach as souvenirs, and thus came to decorate with this symbol the wide cloak and flapped hat that he wore; the long staff was to test the firm- ness of the treacherous sands, and tho little horn served as a signal for help if the fog or tide sur- prised him. The abbey adopted the cockle-shell with fleur-de-lys for its arms, and the fine if rather inaccurate motto Tremor Immenai Oceani."—' High ways and Byways in Normandy,' pp. 126, 127. It was at Mont St. Michel that Louis XI. founded the Order of Saint Michel, the Knights of which wore chains or collars of golden shells. In Adeline's ' Lexique des Termes d'Art,' in considering coquille as a blazon, it is said :— " Lea coquilles sont en general representees arrondies par le bas, retroussees par le haut, quelque- fois avec deux petites pointes en forme d'oreilles, et rayees sur le dessus. Les petites coquilles portent aussi le nom de coquilles de Saint-Michel, et les plus grandes, toujours pourvues d'oreilles, portent le nom de coquilles de Saint-Jacques." ST. SWITHIN. Certainly the wearing of the scallop shel. does not necessarily mean that the pilgrim has visited or is bound for the shrine of St. James of Compostella. The tradi- .ion runs that at the famous battle of Jlavijo (A.D. 939) the saint in question ap- peared on a white horse, whose trappings were studded with scallop shells, waving aloft a white standard ; and he so helped King Ramirez of Spain, that 60,000 of the invading leathen Moors were left dead upon the field of battle. From that time religious pilgrims appear to have usually carried scallop shells, [t may be remembered that Sir Walter Raleigh, in his poem called 'The Pilgrimage,' enumerates the articles required by mediaeval palmers:— Give me my scallop shell of quiet; My staff of faith, to lean upon : My scrip of joy (immortal diet): " • ••• of e ' My bottle of salvation ; My crown of glory, hope's true gage, And thus I'll make my pilgrimage. These shells of the pecttn or comb group Cuvier describes as "the butterflies of the ocean." If the animal living therein happens to be stranded by the retreating tide it opens its valves widely, and then, suddenly closing them with force, throws itself by leaps and bounds towards the sea again. I saw a couple engaged in these acro- batic performances the other morning when taking my daily bathe at Dawlish. HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter. Annotating ' Piers the Plowman,' viii. 166, Prof. Skeat directs the student to two autho- rities on the subject of pilgrims' signs, viz., Chambers's' Book of Days,' i. 338, and Cutts's ' Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages,' p. 167. The article in the ' Book of Days' is devoted to Canterbury pilgrim signs only, and therefore does not touch on St. James s shell. Cutts, however, enumerates and describes the various signs. The scallop shell, he says, was the sign of the pilgrimage to Compostella, while the cross or crouche," formed of "two strips of coloured cloth sewn upon the shoulder of the robe," showed that the wearer had been a pilgrim to the Holy Land. Langland describes his palmer as having on his hat (A text, vi. 12) signes of Synay and schelles of Galys," and he adds that he had " meny crouche on bus cloke," Arc. THOMAS BAYNE. SHAKESPEARE AND CICEEO (9th S. v. 288, 462; vi. 66, 154 214). — MR. YARDLEY, under the above heading, refers to Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' as the principal source of Shakespeare's mythology. That it is so, and that it came to him chiefly through the medium of Gelding's translation, there can be little doubt. In denying Shakespeare's