Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/415

. IX. MAY 24, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

407

while various specimens of popular etymology which have been effectually slain in your columns by PKOF. SKEAT receive here a new lease of life, and, introduced by the ominous words " It is not generally known that," are presented to the philological curiosity of the ingenuous Australian. EDWARD BENSLY. The University, Adelaide, South Australia.

WE must request correspondents desiring infor mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

ENGLISH GLADIATORS. In the just pub- lished letters of Cesar de Saussure, issued in a translation by Mr. John Murray as * A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I. and George II.,' the writer speaks of gladiators, both male and female, exhibiting on a stage (see pp. 276 et seq.). They fought with

"a sort of two-handed sword, three or three and a half feet in length ; the guard was covered, and the blade was about three inches wide and not too sharp only about half a foot of it was, but then that part cut like a razor."

The whole description is animated, and it should be killed." Grave wounds were naturally inflicted. Where can I obtain further particulars of a class of entertain- ment of which I have not previously heard 1
 * seemed really surprising that neither man

H. T.

ENGLAND WITH MANY RELIGIONS AND ONE SAUCE. Who described England as "a

country of religions and only one sauce

melted butter"? DEBONNAIRE.

[James Payn says it was a distinguished French- man. Qy. Voltaire ?]

"GREY CITY BY THE NORTHERN SEA."- Where do the lines occur (as applied to St. Andrews) beginning " Grey city by the Northern Sea"? DEBONNAIRE.

ARCHERY.

And when he fand the bridges broke,

He bent his bow and swam ; But when he fand the grass growing,

He slacked it and ran.

And when he came to that lord's gate,

Stopt not to knock nor call, But set his bent bow to his breast,

And lightly lap the wall.

In these verses, taken, I believe, from the ' Ballad of Lady Maisey,' and in others of the same period, the condition of the bow is often

mentioned, and evident importance is attached to it. What is the exact reason that the bow is bent for swimming and leaping, and slacked for running ?

D. G. LANGE.

11, St. Julian's Road, Willesden Lane, N.W.

[Surely the tension of the bow for immediate action varies according to the tension of the mind, as impressed by various circumstances.]

ROYAL COLOUR. Will you kindly tell rue what is the true royal colour 1 Is it the same as the old imperial purple, which is (is it not ?) crimson 1 The newspapers speak of the coronation robes of the peeresses as crimson, and of those to be worn by their Majesties as somehow differing from these, calling them sometimes purple, sometimes crimson.

R. C.

" MONIALES DE CLINTON." In * Testa de Nevill,' p. 323, referring to Wellebv, now Welby, in Lincolnshire, is the following entry : " Ite' moniales de Clinton tene't ibide' totu' residuu' de soka de Grah'm in pur' elem' de vel'i feoff'." Can any one say what this monastic house was, and whether there is any other record of this gift to it? Was it Kenilworth? A. E. WELBY, Lieut.-Col. 26, Sloane Court, S.W.

MARTIGNY PRIORY. This Cluniac house was granted the manor of Welby by King Stephen, because his mother Adela there laid aside "worldly desire and the purple of secular glory," though only for a brief time. The prioress transferred the manor in ex- change for a pension to the Priory of Farley, Wilts, before 1291. The house is variously called Marcigny, Monteganiacum, Martigina- cum, Mortignatum, Mortigamatum, Martney, &c. It was situated on the Loire in the diocese of Autun. I shall be much obliged for references to any history of this priory or to documents connected with it.

A. E. WELBY, Lieut-Col. 26, Sloane Court, S.W.

BILINGUAL WILLS, LATIN AND ENGLISH. John Cosin, Prince Bishop of Durham, wrote his will, dated 11 December, 1671, partly m Latin and partly in English ; this he thus explains in the final paragraph of the Latin section :

"Hsec prsefatus, quse ad Religionem et animae mete statum ac salutem spectant, quaeque Latino sermona a me dictata atque exarata sunt : rehqua, quffi ad sepulturam corporis, et bonorum meorum temporalium dispositionem, attinent^ sermone patrio perscribi laciam, ac perorabo. - - Cosin s ^Correspondence, Ac., part ii., 1872, p. 293, Surtees Society. Was it a custom, or at all usual, for testators