Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/223

 s. ix. MAR 15, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

215

c. 44, is as follows done into English. Its language may explain some of the conflicting statements of the authorities. The vessels in which the most holy mysteries are con- secrated are chalices and patens, as to which Boniface, bishop (of Mainz) and martyr (A.D. 755), when asked whether it were lawful to consecrate the sacraments" in wooden vessels, made answer: "Formerly golden priests used wooden chalices; now, on the contrary, wooden priests use golden chalices." Zephyrinus (A.D. 202-219), the sixteenth Roman bishop, appointed the use of glass patens in celebrating Mass. Afterwards Urban, the seventeenth Pope (A.D. 223-230), caused all the sacred vessels to be made in silver. In this, as in all other matters connected with worship, with lapse of time the mag- nificence of the churches has grown. Now- adays, in order that the splendour of Mother Church may not be lessened, but may be increased and multiplied, we, who are the servants of the householder, decree that henceforth no priest in any way presume to consecrate the holy mystery of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in wooden vessels, lest the service whereby God is to be appeased should stir Him to anger.

The forty-first of King Edgar's canons in 960, following the above, runs : " And that every chalice in which the Housel is hallowed be molten, and that no man hallow it in a wooden chalice." OSWALD J. REICHEL.

In the maritime museum at Madrid there is exhibited a chalice made of the wood of the tree in the shade of which was celebrated the first Mass in Havannah on 19 March, 1519. B. D. MOSELEY.

Information on the prohibition of the use of chalices of wood and references to Cardinal Bona's work and other authorities will be found in the Transactions of the Glasgow Archaeological Society, N.S., vol. iii. p. 215, sqq.

DELTA.

If MB. BLACK will turn to *N. & Q.,' 2 nd S. i. 211, 340, 440 ; 4 th S. iii. 597 ; iv. 46, he will find many long and interesting replies to an inquiry bearing the title ' Wooden Chalices.'

EVERAED HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

ISLE OF ROSENEATH (9 th S. ix. 128). Rose- neath was called an isle long before Sir Walter Scott's day. On 25 August, 1548, Mary, Queen of Scots, confirmed to Gilbert McKynne a charter, dated the 16th, of the lands of Knockdoire "in insula de Rosneith yic. Dunbertane." In a retour of the follow- ing year certain lands " jacentibus in insula

de Rosneth" are referred to. In another, dated 1663, reference is made to the"paro- chia et insula de Rosneth." It was not un- common to apply the term " isle " to a wing of land, like Roseneath, stretching out into the water, though not entirely surrounded by it. In these more exact days" we should call it a pm-insula. But our forebears split no hairs in a trifle of that kind. Then, in Scots, an aisle of a church ala, a wing is called an isle, and is latinized insula. The fancy is the same. J. L ANDERSON.

Edinburgh.

I would suggest that Sir Walter was right, and that Roseneath was commonly spoken of as an island because it was originally quite surrounded by water. A similar case is that of the peninsula of Pendinas, at St. Ives, Cornwall. It is, and always has been, called " The Island," though it has never been any- thing but a peninsula within historic times. Geology, however, shows that its designation is a memory of very ancient days.

It may be of interest to refer here to the St. Ives family of Ninnis, or Ninnes. They are so called after a male ancestor who resided on The Island Cornish an Enys. The surname is, therefore, as strictly local as any could well be.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

"BAR SINISTER" (9 th S. ix. 64, 152). Your correspondent COL. PRIDEAUX is, I think, in error in asserting that Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, died childless. Her daughter Catherine, Duchess of Buckingham, is a well-known historical character, the " old Princess Buckingham," as Horace Wai pole called her. COL. PRIDEAUX adds that no descendant of James II. sits, or has sat for 200 years, in the House of Lords. He appears to have overlooked the fact that Sir Henry Waldegrave, created Baron Waldegrave of Chewton 20 January, 1685/6, married Hen- rietta FitzJames, natural daughter of James by Mrs. Arabella Churchill ; and the descen- dants of this marriage include thepresent Earl Waldegrave, Lord Radstock, Earl of Sel- borne, Earl Powis, Lord Windsor, and possibly other peers. H.

COL. PRIDEAUX refers to the term "bar sinister " at p. 21 of Lord Rosebery's * Napo- leon,' and thinks that " his lordship may have supposed that the literary poise of this pas- sage would suffer if, with pedantic accuracy, he had used the correct term, ' baton sinister/ " Lord Rosebery certainly errs in good com- pany, for Walter Scott uses the same expres-