Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/538

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. vm. DEC. 28, 1901.

handles the row one by one, drawing each "panch " forward, thumping it on the back to find if it is sound or cracked. If the re- sponse to the thump is a good hollow rattle, she says, " This will do " ; if the sound is un- certain, she says, " This won't do ; it 's crackt," and drags the " waster " from the row. When she has gone through the " pans " and weeded out, she bargains for the sound ones. The game goes on again with fresh vendor and buyer. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE BICYCLE (9 th S. viii. 304, 490). If the rest of the historical data comprised in the series of articles mentioned by MR. N. W. J. HAYDON, of Boston in the United States, at the latter reference, as on founded than that which involves " a descrip- tion of a hobby-horse shown in a stained- glass window in St. Giles's Church at Stoke roges," that " series of articles " is in a bad way indeed. The so-called hobby-horse is simply a wheel placed between the feet of an angel, who, holding a long trumpet, is seated on part of the encadrement which enriches the window in question, and has nothing whatever to do with a bicycle or a hobby- horse. Such an article would indeed be a strange element in a funereal achievement, a painted hatchment, or rather its frame- work. One must know very little of the artistic treatment of heraldic themes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries not to recognize in the trumpet-armed angel a de- graded version, a mere inane bit of ornament, of the noble and grave representation of those greater angels, including tetramorphs, who, in early Christian, especially Byzantine, mosaics and distemper pictures, often appear standing upon wheels. As well might the learned author of 'The Evolution of the Cycle 'have recognized in the tetramorphic emblems, which date perhaps from c. 860 A.D., records of the use of the bicycle by the very ancient Christians of Italy and Greece. Nay, while that author was about it, why not go to similar examples still to be found m Assyrian and Babylonian paintings ? In St. Michael's Church, Coventry, arid at Ciren- cester, there are stained-glass windows in which cherubim are depicted as standing upon wheels of white fire. Such emblems are not unknown in Gothic sculptures, carved while the artists believed what they painted. F. G. STEPHENS.
 * The Evolution of the Cycle,' are not better

/hi" SHEPHERD, TELL ME WHERE"

lu IS 1 ' 423) -~ 1 f . eel tempted to correct the headline of this inquiry, giving it the true formation, Tell me," instead of the miV

leading "Gentle shepherd" of p. 423. It has nothing whatever to do with Allan Ramsay, and I give the song from a printed copy that I have held since .the year 1824. It was also well known to musical societies, and was a favourite with the Rev. Septimus Crisparkle of Cloister-ham (Rochester), as every one who reads his Dickens ought to remember. We pity the poor creatures who neglect such study. Their ignorance is its own punishment, and they are left to the perusal of "shilling shockers," "penny dread- fuls," and "halfpenny evening rags" ; not to mention novels that are " boomed " with a dubious hall-mark, not of any sterling value. In the opening number of 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood,' issued in January, 1870, five months before the lamented and premature death of our greatest English novelist, we read the following passage :

" ' We shall miss you, Jasper, at the " Alternate Musical Wednesdays" to-night ; but no doubt you are best at home. Good night. God bless you ! " Tell me, Shep-herds, te-e-ell me ; tell me-e-e, have you seen (have you seen, have you seen, have you seen) my-y-y Flo-o-ora pass this way ? " ' Melodiously good Minor Canon the Reverend Septimus Cris- parkle thus delivers himself in musical rhythm, as he withdraws his amiable face from the doorway," &c. ' The Mystery of Edwin Drood,' cap. ii., the unfinished last work of Charles Dickens.

Here, probably, is the song required by MR. DENNIS :

THE WREATH. Tell me, shepherds, have you seen

My Flora pass this way ? In shape and feature Beauty's queen,

In pastoral array. A wreath around her head she wore,

Carnation, lily, rose ; And in her hand a crook she bore, And sweets her breath compose.

The beauteous wreath that decks her head

Forms her description true ; Hands lily white, lips crimson red,

And cheeks of rosy hue. Tell me, shepherds, have you seen

My Flora pass this way ? In shape and feature Beauty's queen, In pastoral array.

'The Lyre,' vol. iii. p. 37 (1824). In its somewhat florid style of melody it was eminently fitted for the "minor canon afore- said, whose vivacity is at times no less op- pressive than the clumsier pomposity of the philanthropist, Mr. Honeythunder, and he requires the correction made by the Very Rev. the Dean in memorable words :

" It does not become us, perhaps, to be partizans. Not partizans. We clergy keep our hearts warm and our heads cool, and we hold, a judicious middle

course We clergy need do nothing emphatically."

' Edwin Drood,' cap. xvi.

It may have been a remembrance of ' The