Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/72

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NOTES AND QUERIES. p* s. vn. JAN. 25, MOI.

neighbouring trees form the grateful offer ings of women whose prayers have been heard.

On the road leading to the springs, which are much visited by Kussian and other invalids, is the tomb of Umala-khodzha sheikh, according to tradition a descendant of Xhazret-Ayoub and the ancestor of some fifty inhabitants of the place, who enjoy the revenue of the mosque after a certain portion has been allotted for maintenance of the building and tombs. These worthy folk trace their genealogy by documents. Umala himself is not honoured as Khazret, holy.

It is evident, remarks Mr. Brodovski, that Central-Asian Mussulmans have connected Biblical narratives with different localities in Turkestan. The founder of Islam intro- duced into the Koran the names of Hebrew prophets and heroes, and with the spread of Islam these have become associated with certain spots. Thus the Mussulmans point out at Samarcand the tomb of the Prophet Daniel, at Osha the throne of King Solomon, at the village of Sariam (Chimkent district) the tomb of St. Mary and even of Enoch, and near Jelalabad the tomb of the much-suffer- ing, patient patriarch Job. The faith of sick Moslems in the efficacy of the springs is intensified, and the guardian of the mosque and tombs reaps a considerable profit. The silkworms have not been forgotten, and furnish a thriving industry for the district. FRANCIS P. MAECHANT.

Brixton Hill.

ST. CLEMENT DANES. IN the Morning Post for 26 December, 1900, there appeared an article on the 'Strand Churches,' in which the writer, Mr. Austin Brereton, asked why the dedication to St. Clement should arise from the fact (a fact which, I may observe en passant, is very ques- tionable) that "Harold and other Danish kings " are buried in that church. In the issue of the same journal for 28 December an able writer, signing himself H., contributed a letter in which he pointed out that there were two possible explanations of this dedication. This letter is so interesting that I would beg permission to quote it in full. Firstly, the writer says,

"like the famous church at Hastings, St. Clement Danes was dedicated during the Pontificate of Pope Clement II. (Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg, a Saxon. A.D. 1046-7), and, in compliment to him, was named after his patron Pope, St. Clement I. (A.D. 93-101), known as Clemens Romanus, to whom the famous Basilica of San Clemente, near the Colosseum at Rome, is dedicated. (2) Because, as is represented in the frescoes of the ninth century on the walls

of San Clemente, Clement I. was martyred at Kertch in the Crimea, a country which, in the very loose geographical terminology of Western martyrologies, may have been included in the term ' Dac'ia,' a country which at one time certainly ex- tended as far as the Dniester. The confusion in the chroniclers between ' Daci ' and ' Dani ' (Danes) is well known, as is also the fact that a Teutonic language, descended from the Gothic, was spoken in remote parts of the Crimea as late as the six- teenth century. In support of this theory I may add that in the ' Nibelungen Lied' (Aventiure 22, Stanzas 1338-48) Hawart and Trine of Tenemarke (in the twelfth century certainly Denmark) are coupled with Russians, Greeks, Poles, Wallachs, Knights from Kief, and Pechenaers (Don Cossacks) as attending the court of Attila, the only Middle German at which was Trufrit of Diiringen (Thuringia). Here a confusion between Dacia and Dania may well be suspected, more especially as down to the end of the classic period the Danes were certainly known as Cimbri to all the nations of the Mediterranean and Roman world, while the Crimea was known as the Tauric and Jutland as the Cimbric Chersonese, another possible source of error, Kertch, moreover, being anciently known as Kherson. I am not aware whether this explana- tion of the connexion of St. Clement with the ' Danish ' church in the Strand has ever before been suggested, and I should much like to know if in any of the early charters connected with it 'Daci,' as so often in the chroniclers, is written for 'Dani.' A dedication to Saint Clement Dacorum (of the Crimea) would not seem misplaced to any one who was acquainted with the Roman San Clemente, which, before its destruction in 1084 by the Norman Robert Guiscard, must have been one of the most Famous churches in Rome, and remarkable especially For its frescoes with the history of its patron. Simi- lar dedications derived from Roman churches may oe found in St. Paul's, in St. Gregory by St. Faith's !n its immediate neighbourhood, and at St. Cosmas and St. Damian in the Blean, near Canterbury, to take the first early ones which come to hand, and it s well known how close the connexion between Eng- and and Rome during the whole Saxon period was."

As the question raised by this writer,


 * hough highly interesting in itself, is ob-

iously unsuited for discussion in the columns

of a daily paper, I will endeavour to answer

t through the medium of 'N. & Q.'

I am not sure of the existence of any early charters connected with the church, the
 * oundation of which may probably be ascribed
 * o a much earlier date than that assigned to

t by H., but in legal documents the almost nvariable designation of the building is ' ecclesia Sancti dementis Dacorum." I will MS. No. 708, containing minutes from In- quisitions post mortem relating to Middle- ->ex, of which a copy was printed in the Topographer and Genealogist, i. 521, the ollowing extracts occur :
 * ake an example or two. In the Harleian

" 16 Edw. III. Thomas de Craweford barbour enuit de Rege in capite quoddam tenementum cum >ertinentiis in parochia Sancti dementis Dacorum