GREEN FAMILY.-In order to extend the pedigree of Greene, of Leversedge, Yorkshire, recorded by Sir William Dugdale in the 1665-6 Visitation of Yorkshire, I shall be very glad of information on the following points for Mr. J. W. Clay's pedigrees in the Genealogist, &c. Richard Green, Esq., of Leventhorpe Hall, near Wakefield, was a great-nephew of the famous Dr. Radcliffe, the founder of the library at Oxford bearing his name. Dr. Radcliffe's mother is said to have been a Green

is more than probable that such was the case.
Richard was a favourite name with the Liversedge
Greens. Richard Green's elder brother, born circa
1705, was named Harpham, while his sister, born
circa 1708, who died at Mavesyn Redware 1797,
aged eighty-nine, was Elizabeth.
JOSEPH J. GREEN.

Frieston Lodge, Stonebridge Park, N.W.

BURIAL CUSTOM.-What is the fundamental idea underlying the belief that a ghost cannot rise to trouble the living when its corpse has been transfixed by a stake? Is the shade or spirit of the dead supposed to be pinned down with the grosser clay with which it forms a perfect whole? Saxo Grammaticus records that those who approached the barrow of Mit-othin died suddenly, and "after his end he spread such pestilence that he seemed almost to leave a filthier record in his death than in his life." For which reason the body had to be taken out of its mound, beheaded, and impaled through the breast before peace could be secured. On the same authority, also, we learn that the vampire-like spirit of Aswid was laid by cutting off the head of his corpse and running a stake through the body (see The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus,' translated by Oliver Elton, 1894, pp. 32, 201); but in neither instance does the worthy Dane give any explanation of the success obtained by this method of spirit-laying, probably because, to his thinking, the fact was a matter of common knowledge, needing no comment of any kind.

·

With regard to the decapitation, which in these remarked that several nations have the deepest two cases accompanied transfixing, it is to be horror of ending their days under the headsman's hands. M. Bourdeau observes, in 'Le Problème de la Mort,' 1893, p. 171, that divers peoples have believed the future life to be a simple continuation of the present life. As a man dies so will he be

of Leversedge; but certain it is he named in his
will (circa 1714) his niece Green, presumably the
mother of Richard Green and the daughter of his
sister Hannah Radcliffe, who married a Mr. Red-
shaw, of Ripon. Richard Green was heir-at-law
of the heiresses of Redshaw of Ripon and Radcliffe
of Wakefield. He married Frances, daughter of
Henry Cavendish, Esq., of Doveridge, co. Derby,
and sister to Sir Henry Cavendish, Bart., of the
same. The male line became extinct on the death
of his son, Richard Green, Esq., of Wakefield and
Leventhorpe House, J.P., in 1808. Richard
Green, the father, was born circa 1709, and died
in 1790, aged eighty-one. The present repre-
sentative of the family is John De Heley Mavesyn
Chadwick, Esq., of Brighton, born 1866, a great-
grandson of Frances Green, daughter to Richard
Green (ob. 1790), who married Charles Chadwick,
Esq., of New Hall, co. Warwick, Mavesyn Red-
ware, co. Stafford, &c. (vide Shaw's 'Stafford-
shire'). In the church of Swillington, near Leeds,
are several tablets to the Greens of Leventhorp,
who bore the arms of Green of Leversedge, viz.,
Argent, on a chevron gules, between three fleurs-
de-lis sable, as many escallops of the field. Crest,"
a stag passant argent. What I particularly want
to discover is the parentage of Richard Green,
born circa 1709. We have the surname of his
mother, viz. Redshaw, but how he was connected
with the Liversedge, or Leversedge, family is
uncertain, although, for several evident reasons, it

in the other world.

"This is why the Chinese, the Arabs, and the negroes have such an extreme dread of decollation, and prefer to it any other form of death, being convinced that those who are decapitated remain without a head, which would, indeed, be a cruel inconvenience." From this point of view, a headless spirit would certainly have some difficulty in devising annoyances for the affliction of humanity; but how about the decapitated white ladies, and other spectres in a similar plight, who are still to be met with? And did those who were burnt to dust, head, body, and limbs, on the funeral pyres of the North, never come again" to disturb the tranquillity of the P. W. G. M. upper world?

[Consult, on this and similar subjects, Frazer's 'Golden Bough.']

DATE OF BRICKS.-I lately opened a hut circle on the moor here. It was by the side of a small

CAUNT FAMILY.-I am desirous of obtaining information concerning one Mr. Caunt, whose daughter Sarah married Ralph Smythe, a lieutenant in the 7th Dragoons, in the early years of this century. He was a hosiery merchant (I think), in business in Nottingham, where some of his family are perhaps still living. A. SMYTHE Palmer.

South Woodford.

"WHISTER-POOP."-Scott, in 'The Heart of Midlothian,' chap. xxxii., near the beginning, puts this word into the mouth of a Lincolnshire peasant, in the sense, apparently, of a cuff or thump. I do not remember the word anywhere else. did Scott probably meet with it? Is it a Lincolnshire expression; and where

burn; and about a hundred yards below and to
the east, on the same burn, are two heaps of slag,
now nearly grown over with grass, the results of
some early iron-smelting operations. These heaps
of slag are not uncommon in this neighbourhood,
and have given the name of "smythy" burn to
some of the burns by which they are nearly always
situated. In a boundary dispute of 1290, set out
in the Exchequer Rolls, at the Record Office, that
name is given to a burn in this part; and in the
Newminster Cartulary,' published by the Surtees
Society, reference is made to a place about two
miles from here as "ubi forge fuit." I thought
that this hut might very probably have been occu-
pied by those who smelted the iron. The entrance
to the hut had been roughly paved with coarse
bricks, 8 in. by 4 in. by 2 in. in size, and I also
found one in situ in the inside of the hut, by which
I concluded that probably the hut may have been
paved throughout with them. My object in writing
to you is to ascertain whether bricks of the size"
mentioned were made at an early date. When
these were bared, I at once thought that the hut
must have been built at a much later date than the
slag heaps might lead one to suppose.

Longwitton, Northumberland.

C. H. SP. P.

DEDICATION CROSSES.-Where is to be seen a

description, with, if possible, illustrations, of the above? They have been lately discovered, under many coats of whitewash, in three churches of Hampshire-Bramley, Wellow, and Preston Candover. In the first there are two. They are thus described by a former vicar of the parish :

"The red floreated cross within a circle, under the gallery, on the north-west wall, is one of the dedication crosses painted on the spot where the bishop struck his crosier at the time of the consecration. The hole is still visible in the middle in which the taper was stuck to be lit on feast days. There is another in the chancel."

Is this the accepted origin of these crosses? In Preston Candover Church there are two, very similar to those at Bramley, on the two sides of the chancel east window. The date of these, together with those of Bramley, appears to belong to the thirteenth century. Are there references to this custom in early chronicles? VICAR.

TRANSLATION WANTED.-Is there an English version of Freid. von Hurter's 'Geschichte Papst Innocenz III. und seiner Zeitgenossen'? We have an impression that one exists, but we cannot find it in any catalogue. N. M. & A.

COWPER AND NEWTON.-Where is to be found Cowper's letter to Newton, referring to the comparison by the latter of the performance of one of Handel's oratorios to the reception of an offer of pardon to a party of prisoners under sentence of death by setting the message to music and singing it? E. S.

JONATHAN BOUCHIER. "PARTIR À": "PARTIR POUR."-In an article bearing the signature of "H.-Ph. d'Orléans," Revue de Paris, Oct. 1, p. 469, l. 16, I read: "Quelques jours après, la reine partait à la campagne. Littré, in his Dictionary of the French Language,' remarks: "Il ne faut pas dire: partir à la campagne, partir en Italie, mais partir pour la campagne, pour l'Italie." The French Academy, in its 'Dictionary' (1878), gives the following example, amongst others: "Il partira dans trois jours pour la campagne." Is the French language really undergoing a change? Matters seem serious when a descendant of St. Louis, and a grandnephew of the Duke d'Aumale, disobeys in writing the laws of the French Academy.

W. M.

relative to the priory of Chewton Mendip, Somer-
setshire? The house, called Chewton Priory,
Bath, is on the estate of the Waldegrave family,
of which the present Lord Carlingford is tenant
for life.
P. R. C.

Replies.

MILTON'S PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN. (8th S. vi. 146, 253.)

On the poet's manner of lisping Latin I have MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS ORDERS.-Can you tell nothing to say (though I know what it ought me of any book which gives, in a concise form, an to have been), not having had the questionable English translation of the rules of the different pleasure of hearing it; but as the discussion mediæval religious orders? P. R. C. has turned off to an old topic, which I had the honour of initiating (7th S. xi. 484) some three WILLIAM, FIRST MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE. Where did Disraeli refer to him as years ago, I hail its temporary revival as an offered "the ablest chance of rebutting some of MR. WICKHAM LEGG'S and most accomplished minister of the eighteenth criticisms on MR. C. A. WARD's remarks (7th S. century; the first great minister who compre-xii. 149). The paragraph I take exception to runs hended the importance of the middle class "?

G. F. R. B.

"CUT HIS LUCKY."-What is the origin of this phrase? "Cut his stick" has been discussed in N. & Q' SUBURBAN.

MONTPARION'S DRUM.-Dr. Edward Browne, in a letter to his father dated from Prague, Nov. 9, 1669 (vol. i. p. 196, ed. Wilkin), after alluding to some superstitious stories told him about some of the Bohemian mines, adds: "But I doubt, if I should go thither, I should finde them as vain as Montparion's drumme." Who was Montparion; and what is the story of his drum? F. N.

CITY GUILDS IN EDINBURGH.-Were there ever in Edinburgh guilds or companies corresponding to the City of London companies? And if so, where can a list of these companies be seen? The question is suggested by the frequency of the description of seventeenth century witnesses as "Burgess and Goldsmith," "Burgess and Skinner," 'Burgess and Wigmaker," and the like.

66

A. T. M.

GERMAN POETRY.-Who is the poet quoted by
Kant in the following passage? "So sagt ein
gewisser Dichter in der Beschreibung eines schönes
Morgens 'Die Sonne quoll hervor wie Ruh' aus
Tugend quillt "" (Krit. der Urtheilskraft,'
part i., div. i., § 49). The Kritik der Urtheils-
kraft' was first published in 1790, and it ought
not to be difficult to find the passage in the
German poetry which appeared before that date;
but I have not been able hitherto to identify it.
J. H. BERNard.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED.—
She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars,
That marvellous round of milky light
Below Orion, and those double stars,
Whereof the one more bright

thus:

"I fear that MR. WARD'S acquaintance with the continental pronunciation of Latin is as small as his acquaintance with the customs of the College of Physicians. For the last three or four years I have been obliged to spend great part of the winter abroad, and I have failed to find anything like a uniform pronunciation of Latin in France, Italy, Spain, or Germany. I do not think a canon from Milan would have the least understanding of the Latin of a canon from Toledo...... There is no such thing as a pronunciation of Latin common to the four nations. Each nation gives exactly the same value to the Latin vowels and consonants as it does to those of its own tongue."

Now, "if I needs must glory about myself," be it permitted to me to state that, though I have did spend some years in a continental college, in not been in all the countries mentioned above, I which were gathered together representatives of most European nationalities. With the exception of physics, Latin was the language of the classroom and of communication generally in study Germans, Poles, Dutch, Belgians, and British hours: which latter means that Spaniards, Italians, interchanged ideas pretty regularly in that tongue, and I never once experienced in myself or noted in others the slightest difficulty in catching and understanding every word. Why? Simply because all (u's, g's, and c's excepted) pronounced the language alike; in other words, because there was a pronunciation of Latin common to the several nations. Far otherwise would it have been-at least so far as we Britishers were concerned—had the sons of Albion persisted in using their uncommon modus loquendi. Babel would have been the disastrous result. Spaniards and Italians did understand each other me teste times out of number, but not one of the six nationalities would have grasped our meaning had we been ridiculous enough to cling to our absurd insular mouthing of Latium's virile speech. Amo and spero uttered in Anglican fashion (aymo, speero) would mean to them emo and spiro-two somewhat different words, conveying nothing to them but absolute nonsense in the unmeant sense in which they would be used. No, no; let John Bull's innate honesty come to his aid in this matter, and he will cease to be (in this point if