Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/573

 vi. DEO. is, loco.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 477 ' Proverbes,' ii. 372, ed. 1842. Goldsmith may have had this adage in mind when he wrote : "The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them." F. ADAMS. THE TEN WHELPS (8th S. xii. 307, 396).— The original Lion's Whelp is of earlier date than the reign of either James I. or Charles I. In a list of "Ships now home in the port of Plymouth." included in the Cecil MSS. (vol. v. p. 530) and dated 1595, is a mention of The Lyons Whelpe among the Lord Ad- miral's squadron ALFRED F. ROBBINS. HEALING STONE (9th S. vi. 370).—Upon the exterior of the western front of Exeter Cathedral are sixty-eight old fourteenth- century statues, snug in niches, the whole helping to create, collectively, an exceedingly ornate fagade. They are all of Beer stone, and atmospheric influences, during some six succes- sive centuries, have naturally had effect upon this rather soft oolite. But so has something else, which, at least, has seriously damaged the lower row. Within my own recollection it was the firm belief of many Devonshire folk that an ointment made of a powdered frag- ment from one of these figures, mixed with oil, if applied to bad legs, resulted in a sure cure to the diseased part. So afflicted people, or their immediate friends, were wont to go into the Close at night, and, under cover of darkness, knock off a toe, a finger, a bit of draperv, or even a nose, if they could reach up high enough. The precious mixture was afterwards bespattered upon the sore and then duly bandaged up, with what ultimate result I am not personally aware. This superstitious desecration by ignorant people, however, was much more pardonable than the following. A Yankee and I were chance travellers together a few years ago upon the Continent, when conversation happened to turn upon Strasbourg and its Cathedral. " Yes," remarked the man, " I reckon I've been there," and opening a handbag he forthwith produced a large stone fourteenth-century crocket, still in a fair state of preservation. "I guess," he continued, " I just got the party that bossed the show up in the spire to knock this fragment off as a sort of souvenir. I'm foing right away to 'Amerker' again, and 'm right proud to show it you." Needless to say I did not feel proud of him. HARRY HEMS. Pair Park, Exeter. ' N. & Q.,' 7th S. xi. 326, contains an article on the healing stone in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, with reference to the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Second Series, xiii. 131 ; also on another at the church of St. Columbkille, near the village of Glen Columbkille, townland of Kilaned, Donegal, an account of which will be found in the Journal of the Proceedinqs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, Ireland, Fifth Series, i. 263. EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road. AN UNCLAIMED POEM BY BEN JONSON (9th S. iv. 491 ; v. 34, 77. 230, 337, 477 ; vi. 96, 430).—The crude epitaph on Goodyere which ME. CUBBY quotes is not Jonson's. It does not even refer to Jonson's friend. There were two Sir Henry Goodyeres, the elder of whom, a partisan of Mary, Queen of Scots, died 4 March, 1595, ana is the subject of the epitaph. His nephew and namesake, who is commemorated in Jonson's ' Epigrams,' did not die till 18 March, 1628, and would scarcely have been ready in 1614 for the honour of an obituary notice in Camden. Oifford, like MR. CUREY, refers the lines to the wrong Sir Henry. Jonson's friend was also intimate with Donne, who has left letters in verse and prose addressed to him, and with Drayton, who dedicated to him the book of ' Odes' published in 1606. Jonson's tribute to Sir Henry's "well-made choice of friends and books" is happily illustrated by this. One line in the epitaph MR. CURRY finds "especially good, and unmistakably Jon- sonian ":— Wise, comely, learned, eloquent, and kind. The feat of constructing a decasyllabic line out of a row of adjectives does not appear to be very remarkable, and Jonson, I am glad to say, did not indulge in the practice. The suggestion to read " thrill me" for "spill me in ' Underwoods ' (2) is amazing. MR. CURRY seems to be unfamiliar with the obsolete sense of the verb spill—to mar, waste, destroy—noted in Webster, and, I imagine, most dictionaries. Thrill, if sense at all, would be a profound anti-climax. With regard to the quotation from Mr. Swinburne s ' Study of Ben Jonson,' p. 100, I have always supposed the words "it would be difficult to enumerate the names of poets contemporary with Ben Jonson " to be a mis- print for "it would not be difficult." The sense of the context seems imperatively to require this reading. PERCY SIMPSON. was the thresher's local cry in the days of the Commonwealth in Cheshire and Lan- cashire (much as "Gee up" and "Gee wo" now is used by carters to their horses, &c.). The De Trafford family adopted the cry for their motto, taking a man threshing for their
 * < Now THUS " (9th S. vi. 387).—" Now thus "