6 He who in the flesh was always giving alms, in stone is beginning to lose them.' 235-42; the Græco-Roman Surgical Instruments represented in Egyptian Sculpture,' by H. S. Wellcome, is in Proceedings xvii. of International Congress of Medicine, 1913, Section xxiii., 207-10. This has pictures and descriptions of a tablet showing a cabinet of obstetric instruments, including forceps such as were used a few years ago. The same volume has at pp. 137-42 a German article on who has an article (also in German) on the Saws,' by E. Holländer, Surgical Saw in Archiv f. klinische Chirurgie, Berlin, 1915, cvi. 319-39. A pertinent story was in the (London) Nation of 12 Dec., 1911, p. 426: A doctor was bored in an archæological excursion till he chanced to see a case of Roman surgical instruments : By Jove, they 've got the latest pattern!" Boston, Mass. 66 ROCKINGHAM. 66 I 66 The good that men do in their lives J. Sturge, in life a man of peace, Peace The lopsided Sturge looked down upon cannot find out when he recovered his 66 and Charity" for many months. arm, but there is a reference to him as still and long afterwards a suggestion is made to armless in The Town Crier of July, 1873; place the limb that fell in a Arms," then being formed in the gunmakers* 66 Museum of Birmingham's earlier Joseph. town, as a representative historic relic of WILMOT CORFIELD. YGREC's guess soufflés would seem somewhat alternative for the one or the other. L. G. R. GOATS WITH CATTLE (11 S. xi. 452, 500; that dictionaries do not give the word as an xii. 39). This custom first came under my observation in Leicestershire in 1891. On inquiry of an experienced farmer, owner of a large dairy herd, I was informed that the presence of a goat had a soothing effect on grazing cows-in-calf, and prevented premaW. JAGGARD, Lieut. JOSEPH STURGE (11 S. xii. 338, 370, 406).— MR. HOWARD S. PEARSON'S 66 some years ago as the approximate date of the accident to the Sturge statue at Edgbaston is liable to be misunderstood. I remember it well, and was surprised myself to find out, on looking through my set Birmingham's classic serio-comic, The Town (1861-89) of Crier, when a monthly, how long it is since it happened. In The Town Crier for November, 1872, are the following announcement and impromptu : "We regret to announce that one of our cherished local monuments is already falling to limbo. The other day the statue of Joseph Sturge suddenly amputated itself at the shoulder. poor Sturge! The arm that was never raised Alas against any one in life has nearly dropped upon POETRY (11 S. xii. 420, 486).—The last note Coll. Jesu Oxon: Dec. 5th, 1915. closed. I am afraid I cannot answer the question. DEAR MR. DODGSON,-Many thanks for the enI don't know of the occurrence of the "seven eyes in any other passage besides those you mention. Yours truly, J. RHYS. May he rest in peace! E. S. DODGSON. Let no one suspect me of being egotistical I know not where the legend was originally chestre in his tyme: He dyd do make without ye Hone prints a doggerel version of the story Mr. Baring-Gould does not mention the egg-mending miracle in his 'Lives of the Saints,' but he used as sources the metrical life by Wolstan of Winchester, 990, and a life by Gotselin, a monk, 1110, as well as referring to William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum.' One of these authorities might contain the legend sought by your correspondent, but he would have to go to the British Museum to get at them all. ST. SWITHIN, "Sanctus Episcopus pontem Wintoniensem, qui est ad Orientem, construxit. Cumque ei ædificando solicitam navaret operam, quodam die, illo ad opus residente, quædam paupercula mulier eo venit, ova venalia in vase deferens : quam apprehensam operarii lascivientes et ludibundí, magno incommodo affecerunt, ovis universis non ereptis, sed confractis. Illa igitur pro illata injuria et damno dato, cum lacrymis et ejulatu coram Episcopum conquerenti, vir sanctus pietate permotus, vas, in quo erant reposita ova, corripit, dextra signum Crucis exprimit, ovaque incorrupta et integra restituit." A similar incident is related in the life of Blessed Margaret of Ypres, a Dominican tertiary, who died in 1237. Her cult is somewhat obscure. She is often represented in art holding a basket of eggs, of which two or three are falling to the ground. Pons Wintoniensis is a well-known stone bridge across the Itchin, at the eastern gate of Winchester. It should be noticed that St. Swithun must be written. The common "Swithin is an error. Thus in the Breviary (Propria Angliæ,' July 15) we have Swithúnus. M. J. SUMMERS. MR. A. R. BAYLEY and MR. C. L. CUMMINGS thanked for replies.] GOWER FAMILY OF WORCESTERSHIRE (11 S. iv. 53).-MR. H. A. BULLEY'S correction of the account in Nash's History of Worcestershire' of the descent of the Boughton St. John estate to the Ingrams in the female line contains several statements that genealogists must question. For instance, he Worcester, second son of William Gower by states that George Gower of Colemers, co. his wife Eleanor Folliott, and grandson of Henry and Barbara Gower, and greatgrandson of William Gower (died 1546), succeeded to the Boughton St. John property on the death of his elder brother John Gower in 1625, and was father of Abel Gower of Boughton St. John. In the Gower pedigree in Mr. Hardwicke-Jones's Hardwicke of Burcott,' published about the same time, we are told that John Gower was succeeded by his nephew Abel, son of George. Mr. William Page, F.S.A., in his Worcestershire section of the "Victoria History of the Counties of England," agrees with these two that Abel was the son and heir of George, but declares that the latter was a brother of William Gower, who died 1546, and that the estate was sold by William's son Henry in 1617 to his cousin Abel. As this Henry died 1548, this was impossible. tion of England and Wales,' vol. xi. p. 164, Mr. F. A. Crisp in his 'Notes on the VisitaWilliam Gower in 1546 to his son Henry, informs us that the estate passed from who died 1548, and that Henry's grandson Henry sold it in 1617 to his father's cousin Abel (born 1565), son of Robert (died 1599). and grandson of William, who died 1546, This account has all the appearance of being the correct one, is supported by ample and reliable documentary evidence, and is corroborated by the 1569 Visitation of Worcestershire,' p. 61 (Harl. 1566, fol. 52), where we read that William Gower left by his wife Anne, daughter of Richard Tracye, a son Henry of Boughton, who married Barbara, daughter of Edward Littleton, by whom he had a son William of Boughton, who married Ellinor, daughter of John Folliott of Pirton, by whom he was father of Henry and other children. We read further that William and Anne had two other sons, one of whom was Robert of Rydmarli, who married Cicely, daughter of Richard Sheldon, by whom he had, with other issue, a son Abell. There is nowhere in this account any mention of a George. MR. BULLEY next tells us that Abel Gower had by his wife Anne Withers a son Abel, born 1620; but Mr. Crisp proves conclusively that Anne was Abel's first wife and died 8.p., and that Abel's second wife Mary was mother of Abel No. 2. Then, again, MR. BULLEY informs us that Robert Gower of Buttonbridge Hall married in 1671 Katherine, daughter of Sir William Lacon Childe of Kinlet, whereas in the parish register it is recorded that Robert Gower married, Aug. 8, 1670, Katherine, daughter of Sir William Childe of Kinlet. As a matter of fact, there was no such person as Sir William Lacon Childe. Sir William Childe was succeeded in turn by his two sons, Sir Lacon William Childe and Thomas Childe, which latter had a son William Lacon Childe of Kinlet Hall. cleared water. Turbid water can be cleared much better by the addition of alum, seven grains to the gallon (or of aluminium sulphate five grains), previously dissolved. The small quantity of carbonates or of silicates usual in even the softest surface-water decomposes either of these alum-salts; the gelatinous alumina produced subsides in a few hours, carrying down with it all suspended clay, and the water can then be poured off perfectly clear. Only suspended impurities are removed; those in solution are not appreciably affected, otherwise tnan by the substitution of an equivalent quantity of sulphate of lime or of soda for the salts which decomposed the added sulphate of alumina. Neither is of any hygienic importance. Les Cycas, Cannes. EDWARD NICHOLSON. In one important particular, however, MR. BULLEY is supported by indisputable extant documentary evidence, and that is that the Boughton estate and lordship were sold in 1729 by William Gower, then of Chiddingstone in Kent, grandson of Robert and Catherine; though Mr. Arthur W. BARON WESTBURY: MOCK EPITAPH (11 S. Isaac, on p. 11 of his Bolton in St. John xii. 422, 464).-Perhaps the phrase which in Bedwardine,' after incorrectly stating most persistently adhered to Lord Westbury that Robert Gower married Catherine, was one originating in the way in which daughter of Thomas Childe, in 1682, tells us that their elder grandson Abel Eustace had a son Francis, born 1736, and a daughter, born 1744-the truth being that Francis and his sister were children of Abel and Elizabeth Gower, members of another branch of the family, and that Abel Eustace enjoyed his inheritance for a short time only after his father's death, and died s.p. 1711, aged 14 years, his younger brother William succeeding him, as is clearly shown by Mr. Crisp words printed above appended to it by way and the parish records. WILLIAM ADAMS. THE WATER OF THE NILE (11 S. xii. 443, 510). The beans mentioned as used to clear Nile water in floodtimes acted in the same way as does the "clearing-nut" of India, the seed of Strychnos potatorum (noted in the 'N.E.D.' and in the Anglo-Indian Glossary). Perhaps this nut, resembling a button-shaped bean, may have been used in Egypt. The sediment deposited from turbid water, when the vessel in which it is contained has been previously rubbed inside with a clearing-nut, is the fine clay which otherwise settles very slowly, sometimes imperfectly after many days' standing, from the water of rivers in flood or of ponds in which there is no vegetation to produce this effect naturally. This fine clay is very difficult to remove by filtration; indeed, it often chokes domestic filters. Precipitation by the clearing-nut is due to the coagulation of an albuminous constituent of the seed, and this leaves a slight bitterness in the he spoke of himself in addressing the local information he once volunteered to an assembly of serious young men, to whom he pointed out that the reputation he had achieved as a lawyer was nothing compared with that to which he is entitled as an eminent Christian man. The accompanying cartoon had the last four of motto. W. B. H. DR. JOHNSON ON FISHING (11 S. xii. 462).— I am glad to see MONA's letter at the above reference, in which he points out that there is nothing in Dr. Johnson's writings, or Boswell's records of his sayings, to show that he ever described angling as a fool at one end of the line and a worm at the other." This saying has been attributed to Johnson times out of number. I told the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill (who knew all there is to know about Johnson) that Johnson was very civil to our sport, and had suggested to Moses Browne, the pastoral poet, that a new edition of the Angler' was wanted, and spoke of writing a Life of Walton. Would that he had done so! Dr. Hill told me that he could not find that the libel on angling could be brought home to Johnson; it seems that he, too, had taken it for granted. R. B. MARSTON, Ed. Fishing Gazette. 19 Adam Street, Adelphi, W C. Lowland Scotch, as Spoken in the Lower Strathearn District of Perthshire. By Sir James Wilson, K.C.S.I. With Foreword by W. A. Craigie, LL.D. (Oxford University Press, 58. net.) THAT branch of Northern English which is known as Lowland Scotch is gradually losing its function as a medium of intercourse, and is tending to wane into desuetude. At one time it had universal sway in the middle and south of the country; and less than a century ago it was spoken, and even written, by people of culture and position. Some still living can recall how it was used, vigorously and with sure grip of idiom, within the learned purlieus of the Court of Session in Edinburgh. Now, for various reasons, notably the more direct and larger intercourse with England and fuller educational advantages than existed of yore, all this has undergone and is undergoing a radically transforming change. English vocabulary and phraseology are now fashionable as they used not to be; and, as Lowland Scotch is not generally taught in schools, it is gradually losing its hold as a colloquial factor, and begins to have literary value as an exceptional feature, and sometimes merely as an experiment. Thus the poems of Burns and the vernacular dialogues in the Waverley Novels are less generally understood in Scotland than they once were, and readily yield their full significance only to experts and such as have not quite lost hold of the national tradition. realized that the disintegrating process was at Forty years ago the late Sir James Murray work; and, when he published his Dialects of the Southern Counties of Scotland,' he expressed the hope, as Sir James Wilson now recalls, that "a English speech would be compiled.' complete dictionary of the northern variety of Jamieson's book, which is a century old, was a remarkable achievement for its time; but, while it maintains standard value as a storehouse of reference, it naturally contains less than the modern student the production of such a work as was adumbrated requires. Materials are now being prepared for by Sir James Murray, and meanwhile Sir James Wilson, in his systematic and minutely elaborated volume, does yeoman service by delineating the this in his youth, he now gives it a literary setting, folk-speech of his native district. Familiar with aided by local experts whom he distinguishes as his authorities in a photographic frontispiece. He explains that he takes responsibility only for the speech prevalent in the parish of Dunning, and he adds, "When I describe words or expressions as Scotch,' I mean Scotch as at present spoken in the Lower Strathearn district of Perthshire." Concerning himself only with forms and sounds, he proffers a well-arranged and interesting record, fully warranting Dr. Craigie's compliment "has been carried out on finding that the study with so much thoroughness, and presents so complete a survey of its special theme." Choosing a comparatively simple system of pronunciation, he adopts the grammatical method, and, after fully illustrating the uses of vowels and consonants, proceeds seriatim through the various parts of speech. Then he gives an attractive series of word-lists, following these with proverbs, idiomatic expressions, and so forth, and closing with illustrative riddles and different types of verse. In the issue he produces a compact and fairly exhaustive presentment of his engaging subject. 66 66 caanay 66 66 Rigidly applying his scheme of pronunciation, Sir James Wilson is occasionally constrained to give forms that outwardly differ from their 99 Ane literary equivalents. meaning one, for instance, as we find it in the best authors, has to appear as ain," which besides causes it to conflict with the possessive adjective "ain " for own On the author's plan the contracted form " ae has to be written ay," which makes it clasn with the affirmative interjection. A famous idiom in consequence becomes aw ay oo," which looks strange. Then the incautious reader may become bewildered over "bray" for brac, " for canny, coal" for cole, a haycock, gouun for gowan, ruil" for rule, "unkul for uncle, and other peculiarities, all of which are to be regretted, even if they are inevitable. One dislikes also haim" in the sense of home, and recalls Sir Walter Scott as he murmured in his distress, Hame, hame, hame!" Sir James Wilson says that in Lower Strathearn hoakh (hough) means thigh, which seems odd. Both in text and glossary staig" is defined as stallion, whereas elsewhere in Scotland (even just over the Ochils) the staig is an unbroken colt or filly. Obviously, as the author says, one thing to be learnt from this valuable book is that "the indigenous speech of the people varies considerably from district to district.' The Greek Tradition: Essays in the Reconstruction of Ancient Thought. By J. A. K. Thomson. (Allen & Unwin, 58. net.) NOTHING could be more unlike the intricate, carefully sustained cadences of Walter Pater's prose than Mr. J. A. K. Thomson's een jaunty sentences. modes of thought belong intrinsically to that group of which Marius the Epicurean might almost be called the progenitor. The scholars addicted to it look away from the grammar of language and from the grammar of abstract ideas to that aspect of Greek literature which reflects man's relation with the visible world, his daily life, his customs and beliefs. They read Herodotus, Pindar, Sophocles, with the intention of the original audience whom these addressed-for whom form was not divorced from meaning, rather existed only to interpret the meaning. Gilbert Murray writes a few paragraphs of introduction to these essays, and, drawing attention to this change of emphasis, commits himself to the use of the word We confess we saw this with a shuddering surprise. What has the poet that Prof. Gilbert Murray has proved himself to be-sensitive, discriminating, alert to perceive how words throw back their shadow upon reality-to do with this ugly, pseudoscientific jargon? Yet these studies in ancient semantics." Prof. The nine essays which constitute the book are of very unequal value. On the whole, the more detailed they are the better. Where the writer launches out into generalities he is apt to make rash statements, which mean little, or could be only too effectively challenged. Such, for instance, is the dictum in the essay on Lucretius, to the effect that that poet "has the instinctive preference of the artist-and the religious-for moods rather than ideas." But where he stays by the actual data of Greek life and thought preserved for us in Greek literature not attempting to drag them into relation with other literatures-he is at once sound and truly imaginative. The essays on Greek Country Life,' On Alcestis and her Hero,' and On an Old Map' should be of real use both as interpretations and as accounts of facts and materials. The study of Heracles and of the Kuos in the second of these is particularly good and convincing; in fact, heavily as both have been commentated, we do not remember to have come across any exposition of them more satisfactorily worked out than this. What Mr. Thomson has to say on Thucydides is also well worth attending to, though, in relation to the subject, it strikes one as less adequate. A very interesting member of the collection is a sketch in dialogue called Mother and Daughter-Demeter's finding of Persephone. Here the author's close attention to all the descriptions of and hints concerning the peasantry and their ways stands him in admirable stead. The scene and the talk are packed with delightful detail, most skilfully interwoven, yet derived from chapter and verse, and not lacking altogether in vitality. The conclusion-albeit it rests upon the Greek perception тà Talhμara μalhμara in its profounder meaning is coloured by later ideas, later human experiences than those which belong to the legend itself or even to Greek literature as a whole; but it is none the wore for that. We are a little doubtful as to Mr. Thomson's view of the city versus the country in the Greek state. It seems hardly true that the old Greek civilization was more characteristically urban than our own." At any rate, we should be more willing to say that Athens was the centre -the meeting-point or focus-of Attica than that But the latter Attica was a diffusion of Athens. way of putting it would suit better the mode of civilization, characteristically urban, familiar to us in our great cities, which are neither metropolitan centres of a state, nor formed by the centripetal movement from limited districts. We hope Mr. Thomson has many more books of essays, and perhaps yet greater work than essays, in store for us. He will, we fancy, always provoke criticism and disagreement; yet we also think that the prevailing notion of its being difficult to realize Greek habits of thought other wise than as decorative tags upon our own system of ideas proceeded chiefly from the lack at one time of just such scholars as he-or men, that is, who are not afraid to give imagination 'equal play with memory in their reading of this, the richest portion of our heritage from antiquity. A Handbook to Kent Records. Compiled and edited by I. J. Churchill. (Kent Archæological Society.) of quaint humour. A grant of land by King Ethelstan to his servant Ealdulf in the year 939 is confirmed by these terrifying "If any one-which Heaven forbidwalking in the garb of pride, shall try to infringe this our definition, let him suffer from the chill winds of ice and from the winged army of malignant spirits, unless with tearful groans of penitence and sincere reformation he first make best surrogate of the lawyer. amends.' The divine was in those days the Notices to Correspondents. ON all communications must be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. We cannot undertake to answer queries privately, of old books and other objects or as to the means nor can we advise correspondents as to the value of disposing of them. EDITORIAL Communications should be addressed tisements and Business Letters to "The Pubto "The Editor of 'Notes and Queries ""-Adver lishers "-at the Office, Bream's Buildings, Chancery Lane, E.C. MR. HORACE BLEACKLEY and G. W. E. R.— Forwarded. |