Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/373

 9-" s. vn. MAY ii, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

365

there was no stage or scenery. It generally began very suddenly, and ended with the death of the hero."

In the best of these dramas, which still preserve the combat, the dead man is revived by the doctor, a detail which folk-lorists regard as of hoary antiquity. The warriors may call themselves St. George, King George, Foreign Traveller, Recruiting Sergeant, Turk, Indian King, or any other title which will take with the audience, but the death-scene is in reality a survival from the days when the decline and decay of winter, and the resuscitation of energy in the spring, were represented in the struggle and the awaken- ing to life of the defeated man.

The practice of going about with a plough was once common in Germany. In the sixteenth century the implement had an artfully arranged fire burning on it, and in some villages it was dragged about till it was burnt to pieces, as we learn from Mannhardt's 'Baumkultus.' Another German custom was for young women to be harnessed to the plough by lads, who drove it finally into a stream, and then led the dripping team to feast and dance. This was an Ash Wednesday sport. When Mannhardt wrote his book the fashion of yoking girls to the plough still prevailed at Neustadt in Lower Franconia, where a plough-feast was held every seventh year in the month of February. Whether it is still observed I am unable to say. In Stanzerthal in Tyrol the plough went round at Easter, but in some places Whitsuntide was the proper season. The plough is, or was, also taken about during the carnival in Carinthia, and the custom has been observed near Paris. In Denmark, at the end of the last century, New Year's- tide was the proper season for going round with the plough (Mannhardt, 'Baumkultus,' pp. 553, 557, 558, 559). It should perhaps be added that driving a plough drawn by girls into water is probably another form of the practice of ducking the statues of saints to bring rain for the benefit of growing crops. A figure named " Carnival "or its ashes or a representation of Judas, is flung into stream or sea by some Christian nations, and this ceremony is held to be an adaptation of old heathenism to modern beliefs. The puppet once represented the outworn and winterly season, and it was cast into the element which promotes revivification, growth, and fertility. MABEL PEACOCK.

Kirton-in-Lindsey.

THE RIVER CAM. (See ante, p. 336.) GRANTHAM TOM asks on what grounds

.sserted that the river now called the Cam 'ormerly bore the name Granta. I had magined the reasons to be so notorious that _t was needless again to specify them. Per- laps it may suffice to give three brief ones, [n the first place, the stream above Cambridge still continues to bear its ancient name of Granta, and a village on its banks two miles from Cambridge is called Gran- chester, thus marking the site of a Roman castrum on the Granta. Then in the * A.-S. hronicle ' the town is not called Cambridge, 3ut Grantabrycg, Grantebrycg, and Grantan- 3rycg. Also in the earliest charters Cam- bridgeshire is called Grantebrigise Comitatus and Grantebrigeshire, which became cor- rupted into Cantebruggescr, which first appears in a charter of 1142, thus giving the date of the commencement of the change that suggested the antiquarian figment Cam, which has now replaced the ancient name Granta. This was doubtless supported by bhe Celto-Latin Camboritum, appearing in bhe fifth Itinerary, but this has no etymo- logical connexion with the present name of bhe town, if indeed the names refer to the same place. ISAAC TAYLOR.

BELL INSCRIPTION AT PUNCKNOWLE, DORSET, OF DATE 1629. (See 3 rtl S. vii. 137.)

4 ' Hethat wilpvrchashonorsgaynem vstancient- lathersstilmayntayne."

I sent the above to Mr. Henry Bradley for the ' N.E.D.,' in case any confirmation of the word " lathers " was forthcoming. He replies with the following excellent suggestion. I should suppose, however, that the inscription has been rightly read, but that it is wrong on the bell, as such inscriptions so frequently are :

"I dare not put in the word lather on the authority of the inscription, but send you the suggestion that the word may have been misread. 'Ancient Fathers' style' would make sense, and the mode of expression is quite usual in the seven- teenth century."

J. T. F.

Durham.

HEREDITARY OFFICIALS. The devolution of manly offices on the gentler sex by feudal succession has its inconveniences, which may be elucidated by an examination into the descent of the elevated official named Lord High Chamberlain, a nobleman not often called upon to exercise his very dignified duties, the Lord Chamberlain of the House- hold being more before the public. The more important of these two offices, so similarly named, is at present, so to speak, merged ' between rival claimants. The office