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Concerning the word lamia, which remains unaltered from the use of both Greeks and Latins, Tartarotti has collected some curious particulars. Among these he quotes from Diodorus Siculus (lib. xx.)

"that Lamia was a beautiful queen of a country of Africa, who, having lost all her own children, decreed that the children of other women should be destroyed as soon as born; that her bereavement had driven her to find solace in wine-drinking; and that when the affairs of the kingdom went to the bad through her neglect, she said it was not her fault, for she had no eyes to see how things went on; but the fact was, she kept her eyes all the time in her pocket.'

He gives another version of the story from Aristophanes the grammarian, making her the daughter of Belus and Lybia. Jupiter fell in love with her and carried her to Lybia in Italy, and Juno, in jealousy, had all her children destroyed as soon as born. Lamia then, in desperation, wandered over the earth, slaying the children of other women. Juno further deprived her of the power of sleeping, and Jupiter, in compassion for her weariness, gave her the faculty of removing her eyes and replacing them at pleasure; he also endowed her with the power of assuming whatever form she pleased. Duri, commenting on the story, observes that nurses in Greece at his day quieted children by threatening to call Lamia to them. Tartarotti further quotes from Pausanias that her father was not Belus, but Neptune, and that of her union with Jupiter was born the first Sibyl, though how this daughter escaped Juno's persecution is not stated. Among the later Greeks, he says, the same superstition is current under the name of Gello, adducing some curious instances too long to quote; but he does not give the derivation of the new appellation.

Among the Hebrews Tartarotti finds "in the Rabbi Ben Sira ”k a counterpart legend, in which Adam takes the place of Jupiter. Lilith, as the lamia is here called, was the first wife of Adam before the formation of Eve. As they could never live together in peace she decided to abandon him, and, pronouncing the sacred name of Jehovah, suddenly disappeared. Adam, vexed at finding (tanto crudele che straccia o lania gli proprii figli). Even he, however, does not connect it in any way with the synonym strega, which he derives exclusively from the night-bird strix. His derivation, though undoubtedly erroneous, is not exclusively bis, as Gianfrancesco Pico de la Mirandola had mentioned it long before his time among derivations that had been advanced ("Libro della Strega, ovvero delle Illusioni del Demonio, del Sig. Giovan Francesco Pico de la Mirandola. ......In Venetia nella contrada di Sta. Maria Formosa al segno de la Speranza, 1556." Gianfrancesco was nephew of Giovanni Pico, surnamed la fenice del suo secolo, and died 1494).

J Just as we find one doing under the character of an orchessa in the story called "La Sposa del Mercante di Campagna," and others in my Folk-lor of Rome. I.e, in the Talmud.

himself left alone, laid his complaint before the Lord. The Lord had compassion on him, and sent three angels, Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Sammangalaph, to seek for Lilith. These, after a long search, discovered her by the banks of the Red Sea. The three angels required that she should instantly return to her husband, threatening that if she would not they would drown her in the depths of the sea, or else put to death a hundred of her children, that is evil demons, for all the children of Lilith were demons. Lilith refused absolutely to return to Adam, and chose the latter of the two penalties of her disobedience, for she assured the angels she had been made for nothing else but to infest nurseries and destroy new-born children; she made the promise, however, that whensoever she met with Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Sammangalaph, she would spare the children of that house. In consequence of this tradition, Hebrew fathers were wont to make a circle round the door of the room in which their children were born, and write in it the names of Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Sammangalaph.

In the Bible the word lilith only occurs at Isaiah xxxiv. 14, and the Vulgate renders it by lamia. The mediæval rabbi David Kimchi explains it to be an animal crying by night or a bird flying by night. Buxtorf renders it "Strix, avis nocturna querula et horrenda," and the English Bible has "screech-owl," with the marginal reading of "night monster."

Tartarotti has collected the testimony of Plautus, Strabo, Horace, and other writers of antiquity to the fact that the thirst of the strix for children's blood was a tradition current in Rome in their time, and it is doubtless owing to a popular belief, recorded by Serenus Samonicus (cap. 59), ascribing to garlic the property of acting as a counter charm to the fascination of the strix, that its use has become painfully prevalent among the lower orders (quoted also by Cantù, Storia Universale, ed. Turin, 1845, vol. xv. p. 451, note 3).

If strix, striga, and lamia were the bugbears of naughty children of the Augustan age, Tartarotti brings also the evidence of Ausonius and Festus that they had not lost their hold on popular credulity under the later empire. So far from this, the transition of personality from a bird to an old woman would appear to have been completed in the interval; though Propertius is, perhaps, one of the first to make allusion to the idea. He goes on to quote a statute of Charlemagne, lamenting the vices and follies which had been handed on to his age from these pagan practices, and registering sentence of death against those who,

I find Del Rio (Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex, quibus continetur Accurata Curiosarum Artium et Vanarum Superstitionum Confutatio, Lug luni, 1602), lib. ii. p. i. q. ii., gives a similar version of this legend.

believing in magic arts, ate human flesh or gave it to be eaten by others.

He further traces the handing down of these superstitions to the Middle Ages, and shows how the belief in one malevolent destroyer of children expanded till it fabled of whole crowds of witches pervading every country, no longer confining their depredations to cradles,m but working evil to the whole human race; flying by night through the air," astride of all manner of beasts, on distaffs and flaming brooms (also, according to Gianfrancesco Pico, on a stick called a gramita, commonly serving for hanging out flax and hemp), for midnight congresses always attended by banquets and dancing, and accompanied by all kinds of depravity, the origin of which he endeavours to trace to the diversions attendant on many pagan mysteries. Diana is continually spoken of by name as the presiding genius of these weird festivals, and her mysteries were celebrated with dancing. Callimachus, in a hymn to her, says Jupiter gave sixty dancers, daughters of Ocean, to attend her, and the Italian word carolare, to dance in a circle, the witches' dance, may come from the dance invented in her honour by Castor and Pollux at Carya. That this was a circular dance Tartarotti decides on the strength of a passage from the Achilleis of Statius in the first century of our era, and in the Deipnosophiste of Athenæus a century later.

Selden (De Diis Syris), too, establishes the identity of Lilith and Diana.

The use of the word volatica as applied to a witch, first established by Festus in the fourth century, constitutes another link in the chain of traditionary ideas on this subject.

(To be continued.)

R. H. BUSK.

GERSUMA.-Prof. James E. Thorold Rogers's History of Agriculture and Prices in England is a work so valuable to all those who are interested in the history of English rural life, that it becomes a duty to make it as correct as possible. I think there is an error-a misprint only, it may well be-in vol. ii. p. 609. We there read: "1276. Stillington, Gersinna, pro terra John Utting, 8s." Is not this gersuma, which Spelman defines" sumptus, præmium"? The word occurs in Domesday, and is explained by Kelham in his Domesday Book Illustrated as "reward, riches, treasure, or

m Del Rio (lib. iii. p. i. q. ii.) quotes briefly from Pedro Chieza (Descript. Indiæ, p. ii. c. 196) that in "Panama Peruvia" were many witches who sucked the blood of infants, but he does not say whether the idea was found there or introduced by his own countrymen.

See a tradition of one in the story in Folk-lore of Rome called "La Principessa colla Testa di Capra." Also note 7 to "Pietro Bailliardo," in the same work. It is curious to remark that the singing which accompanied dancing in a circle has given us carol, just as ballare, ordinary dancing, has given us ballad.

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money paid beforehand; sometimes fine or income. Mr. Macray, in his Notes from the Muniments of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford, p. 139, gives instances of this word in the forms gersona and gersua. Mr. Seebohm, in his English Village Community, p. 56, quoting the chartulary of Worcester as to the customs of the villains of Newenham, says that they had to pay gersuma for their daughters. In later times the word became gressom. In this form it lingers in our speech to the present hour. The Westmorland Gazette, July 9, 1881, is quoted in "N. & Q," 6th S. iv. 251, as advertising an estate at Mallerstang subject to the payment of gressam. One of the customs of the manor of Skipton was that the tenant paid every tenth year a year's rent by way of gressome (Dawson's History of Skipton, p. 58). Pilkington, Bishop of Durham, in his " Exposition upon Nehemiah" (Works, Parker Society edit., p. 462), in dwelling on the evil deeds of the landlords of his day, speaks of them as raising their rents "and taking unreasonable fines and gressans.' EDWARD PEACOCK.

Bottesford Manor, Brigg.

OCCAM=OAKUM.-As an illustration of the old spelling of oakum, it may not be amiss to cite the following passage from "John Eldred's Narrative" (Hakluyt's Voyages, ii. 1599), Arber, English Garner, iii. 164: "These ships are usually from forty to sixty tons, having their planks sown together with cord made of the bark of date trees, and instead of occam, they use the shiverings of the bark of the said trees; and of the same also they make their tackling." Of this word Prof. Skeat, in his Dict., says: "Spelt ockam in Skinner, ed. 1671," but gives no earlier example.

Cardiff.

F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

POST OFFICE PERSEVERANCE.-As much fault is occasionally found with our Post Office authorities, it is only fair to make a note of the fact that a book catalogue from the South of France reached its consignee in spite of the following extraordinary address: "Monsieur [name], 12, Rue Villorium Stind, Angleterre." J. W.

PARLIAMENT IN GUILDHALL.-Could not our friends of the Corporation put up a tablet to commemorate the Parliament of 1326, referred to by PROF. THOROLD ROGERS (6th S. viii. 405)? There is this incitement that their predecessors did not neglect the opportunity of having words in the oath for the franchises of the city, "Et les franchises de la cite de Loundres maintendrez." Indeed, in these days, when traditions are not known as they were half a century ago, and when there is such a large floating population, a few memorials of the historical events that have taken place in that building would greatly raise the interest of

the spectator. There was a time when books on the history of London were to be found in the house of every citizen, but now no one knows anything of this treasury of great events. HYDE CLARKE.

HUTTON CRANSWICK FONT, YORKSHIRE.-The following ought, I think, to be gibbeted in "N. & Q." One might fairly have hoped that

such wanton vandalism and desecration were things of the past. I quote from Kelly's Post Office Directory (1879) for Yorkshire East Riding, p. 610, under "Hutton cum Cranswick," as follows: "The massive embattled tower [of the church], containing three bells, is the only original part remaining; the rest of the building was restored in 1875-76 by the principal landowners and parishioners......The quaintly carved old font, supposed to be of Saxon origin, is now in the garden of the vicarage adjoining, having been replaced by a handsome new one," &c. Can this really be true? If so, what next? T. M. FALLOW.

Chapel Allerton, Leeds.

A CURIOUS BLUNDER.-In Hazlitt's English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, first edit., 1869, at p. 395, occurs the proverb, "There's a hill again a stack all Craven through. Equivalent to Every bean hath its black (Higson's MSS. Col., 172)." The proverb is given identically in the second edition, 1882. If any one has noticed this proverb, he must have been puzzled to know what connexion there could be between a hill and a stack. I have known the proverb as a Yorkshire one all my life, but for "stack " read slack a hollow or depression. Carr's Craven Dialect gives, "Ollas a hill anenst a slack," and quotes passages in illustration of the use of slack.

F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

Queries.

We must request correspondents desiring information 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.

QUAINT PHRASES EMPLOYED BY JOHN MARSTON. -Pith of parkets.-What is the meaning of this phrase, which occurs in Marston's Fawne, II. i. (Works, Halliwell's edition, vol. ii. p. 31, 1. 3)? It is mentioned among a number of aphrodisiac articles of food. Mr. Halliwell has a note on erringoes, a word with which every reader of the Elizabethan drama must be acquainted; but not one word about this phrase. I cannot find in any of the glossaries, or among my notes, any such word as parket, but it is probably a contracted form of parrakeet. Is the pith, or marrow, of parrakeets or parkets mentioned in any other passage as a provocative? Cotgrave, under "Perroquet," gives the following explanation, "A Parrat;

also, the herbe Aloe, or Sea-aigreen; also, a blackbackt, yellow-bellied, and green-find sea-fish, proportioned somewhat like the river Pearch "; but he does not mention that it was considered to possess any aphrodisiac qualities. The whole passage runs thus: "The onely ingrosser of eringoes, prepar'd cantharides, cullesses made of dissolved pearle and brus'd amber, the pith of parkets, and canded lamstones are his perpetuall meats."

Rowle the wheele-barrow at Rotterdam, same play, act, and scene (vol. ii. p. 39, 1. 25).— Were those small carts-half cart, half wheelbarrow-drawn by dogs, and pushed from behind by boys or men, which one sees in Belgium, Holland, and other countries, common in the Low Countries in Marston's days? I have not come across this expression, which would appear to be proverbial, in any other old play.

To wear the yellow.-This phrase appears to have another meaning besides that of being jealous. In Act IV. scene i. of the same play (vol. ii. p. 65, 1. 21), it seems to indicate that yellow was a distinctive colour of court uniform. In Look about You, sc. xxviii. (Dodsley's Old English Plays, Hazlitt's edition, vol. vii. p. 475), occurs the following passage :

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"Ha, sirrah; you'll be master, you'll wear the yellow, You'll be an over-seer? marry, shall ye ! where, certainly, it does not mean to be jealous, but evidently refers to the colour worn by people in authority. Ben Jonson, in The Silent Woman (Gifford's edition, vol. iii. p. 368), mentions yellow doublets as the dress of fashionable people. We know that in China yellow is the colour worn only by mandarins of high rank. There may be some connexion between this phrase and the yellow stockings of Malvolio.

Fumatho.-In the same play, Act IV. sc. i. (vol. ii. p. 66, 1. 9), occurs this passage, "Or a Spaniard after he has eaten a fumatho." I cannot find any word in any Spanish dictionary at all like this. There is an Italian word fumati, signifying "any kind of smoked fish," given in Florio.

Flaggon bracelets.-In the same play, IV. 3 (p. 67), "Alas! I was a simple country ladie, wore gold buttons, trunck sleeves, and flaggon bracelets." What does this mean? I find the same expression in Brome's City Wit, Act. V. (Works, Pearson's edit., vol. i. p. 370): Tryman. Why dost heare modestly mumping Mother-inLaw, with thy French-hood, gold-chain, and flaggon-bracelets, advance thy Snout."

Nocturnal play.-In the Induction to What You Will (vol. i. p. 222) I find :—

Atti. What's the plaies name?
Phy. What you will.

Dor. Is't commedy, tragedy, pastorall, morall, nocturnal, or historie? What is a nocturnal play

Lapy-beard. In the same play, III. i. (vol. i. p. 255), occurs lapy-beard:·

Fra.

What I know a number,
By the sole warrant of a lapy-beard,

A raine beate plume, and a good chop-filling oth, &c.
What does lapy-beard mean?

ROYAL COSMOGRAPHERS OR GEOGRAPHERS.Where may a list of these individuals be found, and what were their duties? I have lately met with the names of three: John Ogilby, 1600-76, author of the road maps, 1675; Emanuel Bowen, who issued a set of county maps, calling himself

Tuber-fac'd. In the same play, II. i. (p. 240):- thereon "geographer to his Majesty," George II.; and Thomas Jefferys, geographer to George III. in J. E. BAILEY.

&c.

"For a stiffe-joynted, Tattr'd, nas'y, taber-fac'd-Pub," Does this epithet occur elsewhere? Later on in the same play (p. 272) we have the line,

"His face looks like the head of a taber,"

which sufficiently explains the meaning of the
word.
F. A. MARSHALL.

BEST MAN.—What is the exact meaning of this phrase as applied to the groomsman who attends the bridegroom at a wedding? I cannot find it in any dictionary. Is it a corruption of some compound word, or does it mean simply best friend?

F. A. MARSHALL.

KING JAMES'S "BOOK OF SPORTS."-On May 2, 1643, the cross in Cheapside was demolished; on May 10, eight days after, King James's Booke of Spartes vpon the Lord's Day was burnt by the hangman in the place where the cross stood, and at the Exchange. Is it possible a copy of this book may be in existence; and where could one see it? RUBY D'OR.

SHRINE OF ST. JOHN OF WAPPING.-Can any of your readers refer me to some authentic account of this shrine, which is said to have stood on the site of the old parish church, demolished in 1760? Sailors disembarking at the famous old stairs immediately opposite are supposed to have been in the habit of frequenting this shrine. Is there any, and how much, truth in this? The patron saint of the parish is St. John the Evangelist.

ARTHUR R. Carter, M.A., Rector of Wapping. "BURIED CITIES."-Most persons are acquainted with the game so called. A little skill is exercised to conceal the name of some town in a few lines of verse or prose. Is not fat King Henry, the devourer of churches and monasteries, buried in the following nursery jingle, which I remember to have heard more than fifty years ago ?—

"Eight, nine, ten,

A big-bellied hen,

He ate the church, he ate the steeple, He ate the priest, and all the people." Surely no he was ever hen, except Henry VIII. The satire seems to glance at his mating so many women and killing them. If the composer intended to foster a contempt for his character and proceedings, and to teach it early in the nursery, it is possible the lines are traceable nearer to Henry's Can any one add to, or throw light upon

era. them?

1772.

Stretford.

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SHAG-EAR'D. In all editions since Steevens, Collier's and the Cambridge excepted, this, in Macbeth, IV. ii. 82, has been spelled shag-hair'd, although it is shagge-ear'd in F. 1, F. 2 and Quarto 1673, shag-ear'd F. 3, and shageard F. 4. Can any one give an instance-a provincialism or from books-of the word? The question is asked the rather that I have a belief, almost amounting to a conviction, that in my youth I heard it, and that more than once. Rightly or wrongly, also, I seem to myself to have understood it as ears, it may be large and coarse, but that also stood out abnormally from the head. Of course the uses I speak of may possibly have been taken from this very Macbeth passage; but it appears to me that the phrase is expressive, and that when Dyce remarks" that King Midas ......is the only human being on record to whom the epithet could be applied," he is guilty of an unjustifiable assertion and exaggeration. Be it noted also that he in saying this admits the use of the word, and assigns it a meaning similar to that I had in my youth put upon it. All those, moreover, who so glibly tell us that hair was frequently spelled hear or heare, seem to have forgotten that in this passage we have ear'd. Be it that shaghair'd is more expressive and was more common, that is not the question. The first question to be answered is, Did or does the shag-ear'd of the first five copies exist? BR. NICHOLSON.

MATTHEWS FAMILY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE. The Matthews family has been the subject of considerable discussion in these columns. Does any one know anything of a_family of the name of Matthews, living at Tewkesbury, co. Gloucester? Edward Matthews, of the Lodge, Tewkesbury, died in 1612, leaving a W. B. son James, who is supposed to have emigrated to

New England as early as 1634, and to have died at Yarmouth in N. E. in 1686, leaving issue. The Yarmouth family spelt the name indifferently Matthews, Mathews, and Mathew. Edward Matthews's will is sealed with the following arms: Sa., a lion rampant ar.; crest, an eagle displayed per fesse, sa. and ar. These arms, if properly borne by the Tewkesbury family, would seem to point to a connexion with the Glamorganshire family of Mathew, of which branches were scattered at this time or later through Hereford, Warwickshire, and all that part of England. Can any one throw any light on the origin and fate of the Matthews family of Tewkesbury?

M.

BEAR-SKIN JOBBER.-" Buying and selling between the Devil and us is, I must confess, an odd stock jobbing; and indeed the Devil may be said to sell the bear skin, whatever he buys." This passage, from Defoe's History of the Devil, is to me very enigmatical-as is also the earlier one in the same volume, "Every dissembler, every false friend, every secret cheat, every bear-skin jobber, has a cloven foot." What is the origin of the bear-skin allusion? JAMES HOOPER.

7, Streatham Place, S.W.

"DOWN IN THE MOUTH."-This phrase is used by Bishop Hall. He says: "The Roman orator was down in the mouth; finding himself thus cheated by the money-changer: but, for aught see, had his amends in his hands" (Cases of Conscience, decade i. case 6). I shall be glad to know of any earlier instances of what is now regarded as a slang expression for being disconF. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

solate.

man " referred to, and where is the churchyard which is described? After much research I have failed to identify either :

"We have in mind at present a melancholy, picturesque, quaint old churchyard. It stands by the very brink of a river. As one leans over the low wall on the river-side, he sees the little waves ripple up almost within touch of him. The old tombstones tell of forgotten generations. On the doors of the church itself are posted notices of gifts to be given away in connexion

with some eccentric old foundation or endowment such

as it would have gladdened the heart of Nathaniel Hawyard on the water's edge seems to us far beyond the thorne to study. For mere picturesqueness that churchburial ground at Scutari, which every English traveller feels bound to visit. Within that church lie buried the remains of one of the most brilliant and gifted Englishmen who ever distracted or saved a state. The place is lonely, unknown. Now and then some painter with a make sketches, or some eccentric literary man goes there peculiarly inquiring genius for the picturesque comes to to study the spot and steep himself in its associations. But to the general public of the great city, whose spires and towers and domes and columns and shipping you may see from the river-side of that graveyard, the place the name of the place; nay, we shall not even give the is absolutely unknown. We do not intend to disclose name of the city within whose sight it rests on the river's edge unknown."

Louth, Lincolnshire.

F. J. GRAY.

EARLIEST GLASGOW DIRECTORY: GLASGOW AND readers kindly tell me what is the date of the DUNBARTONSHIRE HISTORIES.-Can any of your earliest Glasgow directory, and where it may be seen; also the names of the best histories of Glasgow and its neighbourhood, and also of the G. F. N. county of Dunbartonshire?

THE MSS. OF THE REV. ANDREW BROWN, DD., RELATING TO NOVA SCOTIA,-Has this colGENERAL GROSVENOR: GENERAL WOLFE.-At lection ever been published; and, if so, by whom Eaton, near Chester, the seat of the Duke of West-edited? These MSS. are in the British Museum, minster, there is an exceedingly fine portrait by Series Add. 19069-76, comprising 8 vols., 1710Hoppner of General, afterwards Field Marshal, 1794. P. BERNARD BENOÎT. Grosvenor. He is represented amid the surround- Kensington, W. ings of a battle-field, wearing crossbelts and carrying a musket, and I wish to ask, Was it usual for a general officer to carry that weapon?

There is at Eaton another picture which gives some countenance to this idea, West's "Death of General Wolfe," where the dying hero is lying across the centre of the painting, the doctors stanching a wound in his breast, while below him lie a musket and belt, with the initials of Wolfe on the lock. Wolfe died young, and General Grosvenor looks young in the picture, which may, perhaps, account for the matter. General Grosvenor was born in 1764, a few years after the death of Wolfe. G. D. T. Huddersfield.

SITE OF TOMB WANTED.-The following appeared in an article in the Daily News a few weeks ago.

Who is "the gifted and brilliant English

PEMBERTON'S PARLOUR. Can any of your
readers tell me why the embrasure in Chester
Walls is called Pemberton's Parlour?
E. H. P.

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