Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/109

 vm. AUG. 3, i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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tionary of National Biography ') place it in Northumbria, and Skene and others in York- shire (Hume as far north as Northumberland), Sir James contends that it must have been south of the Humber ; and he tells us an Ame- rican writer (Mr. C. T. Wyckoff, in his ' Feudal Relations of England and Scotland,' 1897) pronounces in favour of the same locality. I should like to call attention to the fact that in the * Pictorial History of England ' (com- iijoiily called Knight's, 1846) Lincolnshire is also suggested in the following note: "Sup- posed by some to be Burn in the south of Lincolnshire, and others Brugh in the north of the same county ; ' (vol. i. p. 168). By " Burn " no doubt Bourne is intended, which is in the south-west of the county, not far from Stamford ; and by " Brugh " the writer probably means to indicate the place com- monly called "Burgh-in-the- Marsh," which is in the eastern part of the county, only a few miles west of Skegness on the coast, now become a watering-place. Sir James Ramsay's identification of the exact spot near Bourne seems very probable. W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

[For the site of Brunanburh see 1 st S. iv. 249, 327 ; 2 nd S. ii. 229, 277, 295; 3 rd S. vi. 342; 4 th S. viii. 179; 8 th S. ix. 162, 226.]

GENERAL SIR JOHN COPE. The following entry, corresponding with the presumed date of his birth, has kindly been sent me by Mr. F. A. Crisp from the register of St. Peter's, Ipswich : " 1687. John ye son of John Cope & Marey his wife, baptized Nov. 20."

E. E. COPE.

Sulhamstead.

' HYMNS ANCIENT AND MODERN. 'I do not know whether the licence allowed to poets extends to grammar, but it is certainly desirable that writers of hymns for popular use should as much as possible avoid all faulty, and indeed all unusual, constructions. We must not expect every hymn to be good poetry, but good English we have a right to demand. There are, I venture to think, some hymns in the collection indicated above in which we do not get even this, and the result in one or two cases is an ambiguity that has puzzled many simple folk. One of the worst of these is the last verse of the very beautiful hymn, " Oh, what the joy and the glory must be " (235), which runs thus : Low before Him with our praises we fall, Of Whom, and in Whom, and through Whom are

all:

Of Whom, the Father ; and in Whom, the Son ; Through Whom, the Spirit, with Them ever One.

Of course the meaning is plain enough to

the instructed mind, but it is not correctly expressed, and the question "Of whom is the Father 1 " (which I have reason to know has been asked) is not altogether unnatural.

Another case, not so bad, may be cited from hymn No. 179, "To the Name of our Salvation." It is in the fifth verse :

Jesus is the Name exalted

Over every other name ; In this Name, whene'er assaulted,

We can put our foes to shame ; Strength to them who else had halted,

Eyes to blind, and feet to lame,

The separation of the last two lines from their verb makes it difficult to follow the sense, and " Eyes to blind, and feet to lame," is not English.

The translator of the hymn which appears as No. 97 cannot be congratulated upon his achievement.

Marked e'en then this Tree the ruin Of the first tree to dispel

does not say what is meant, which is, I suppose, that the Cross was designed to repair the ruin wrought by the tree of knowledge. I do not quite see, either, how tk ruin " can be " dispelled."

There is an ugly error in that very beautiful hymn " Nearer, my God, to Thee" (277), and a similar one in " O day of rest and gladness " (36).

Though, like the wanderer, The sun gone down,

Darkness comes over me,

leaves us in doubt who the wanderer is that, like the darkness, comes over us ; and From thee, like Pisgah's mountain, We view our promised land,

seems to ascribe prophetic vision to the mountain as well as to ourselves.

I trust these remarks will not be thought hypercritical. C. C. B.

CHICHA, A SOUTH AMERICAN DRINK. I have often heard that this drink was best when stirred up occasionally with the thigh- bone of a man, but I find an even worse receipt in Acosta ('Nat. Hist, of Indies,' translated by E. G., Hakluyt Soc., p. 231) :

" Indians holde opinion that to make good leven [for chicha] it must bee chewed by old withered women, which makes a man sicke to hear, and yet they do drink it."

IBAGUE.

JOHN THORPE, ARCHITECT. The late Mr. Wyatt Papworth, a most painstaking anti- quary, had grave doubts as to Thorpe having been the architect of the buildings generally attributed to him, and is said to have demonstrated that, beyond the fact that