Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/156

 148

NOTES AND QUERIES, [9* s. viii. AUG. 17, 1901.

tainly in use ages before man discovered this peculiarity of birds. A. B. S.

SHAKESPEARE QUERIES (9 th S. vii. 388, 454 ; viii. 86). I cannot discover whether at Spen- ser's funeral Shakespeare and others wrote epitaphs and threw them into his grave. It is lilcely enough they did, or more probably they pinned them to the pall, since it would be in conformity with the custom of the times to do one or the other on the occasion of the death of an illustrious person. It may be worth noting that in 1789, when the poet Wordsworth was an undergraduate at St. John's College, Cambridge, he got into trouble with the authorities on account of his re- fusing to write elegiac verses to the memory of the Master, John Chevallier, who died that year. There is an amusing story recorded in the Cambridge University College Histories, St. John's, as to a Trinity man snatching from the pall at the funeral several of the papers attached to it, and as to his motive for doing so. The custom seems to have died out soon after that time. I have been told that at the funeral of Henry White, the much- loved chaplain of the Savoy Chapel, about ten years ago, some of the choirboys or school children threw various compositions expressive of their grief into his grave at Brompton Cemetery.

STAPLETON MARTIN. The Firs, Norton, Worcester.

CIVIL WAR : STORMING OF LINCOLN (9 th S. viii. 43, 93). Does a fairly complete list of prisoners taken from the King's army at Naseby on 14 June, 1645, exist ; and, if so, where is it to be found ? LAC.

JAMES II. (9 th S. viii. 45, 92). I was in hopes of having disposed of the legend of the preservation of James II.'s body, but legends die hard. I may be allowed, therefore, to refer your readers to the Nineteenth Century vol. xxv. p. 120. J. G. ALGER.

Pans.

MICHAEL BRUCE AND BURNS (9 th S vii 466 ; viii. 70). It is rash to attach import- ance to the discovery that the 'Ode to the Cuckoo is assigned to Logan in English anthologies. Such an attribution has been perfectly common for the last hundred years one compiler simply following another, and quietly ignoring authoritative statements X? e i >_ ^ined specialists like Dr. M Kelvie, Dr. Grosart, and Principal Shairp Some editors-as, e.cj Prof. Palgrave and ^ffi' ,? UI ?P hl 7 Ward-have obviated the difficulty by simply ignoring the existence

of the poem. But Mr. Arber and Mr. Quiller- Couch have predecessors, so that there may after all be nothing exceptional in what they have done. Mr. Sidney Colvin, again, simply speaks from hearsay, which is not sufficiently definite for exact evidence. What is wanted is direct, irresistible proof, for the subject is already encompassed with sand -heaps of in- effectual polemics. Perhaps Mr. Colvin will kindly indicate where precise information is to be had. This will be more to the purpose than a quest after impossible MSS.

THOMAS BAYNE.

'THE Moss ROSE' (9 th S.^viii. 82). This poetical rendering of the original prose in Krummacher's 'Parabeln,' by J. F., was pub- lished in Blackwood's Magazine for June, 1817. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.

' The Moss Rose ' is in an old book called ' Christian Melodies/ 1833. It is there stated that the poem is from the German.

MATILDA POLLARD.

The original poem on the moss rose was by Uhland. I did know the name of the trans- lator, but unfortunately have forgotten it, not having made a note of it.

F. R. DAVIES.

Hawthorn, Black Rock.

SMOKING A COBBLER (9 th S. vii. 509). The cobbler used to sit in his open stall exposed to the public gaze. One may, even nowadays, sometimes see a survival of this custom in xtra- urban parts. Hence roysterers and "very merry fellows" may easily have become possessed of a whim to chaff a cobbler as he sat at his work, just as they might take it into their heads to bait a watchman by night, for this seems to be

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meaning: "Thou'rt very smart, my dear; but see, smoke the doctor " ; and Congreve, in the sense of to ridicule to the face, " Smoke the fellow there." It was, no doubt, a pastime indulged in by such " merry fellows," as the Spectator says, "as were seldom merry but had occasion to be valiant at the same time." However, there appears to have been a good deal less valour in ' smoking a cobbler " than there was in the isk of sustaining " several wounds in the lead by watch-poles, and being twice run through the body to carry on a good jest." How "smoking" obtained this meaning is another matter ; but perhaps the transition was from "to smoke "=to punish, e.g., "At every stroke their jackets did smoke"