Ick ille; bine inquit. nam & angelicain habunt puerom! & Tally angelorum In carlly decet frye wheredes, quod habit. nomen ipfa prouinya de qua iyi проштра бе yunz adlari ? popponɣum quia τι 3 Sunt enim in libraria de Tychefield! quatuor columque australi? est tertia. It in latere boriali: est quarta. sc. 402 5st of "trand 88 In Saxon manuscripts abbreviations were | Latin, punctuation is absent, but the circum-numerous, and the circumflex was in common use; the colon, or probably its equivalent, thus was also used; but neither comma nor semicolon, unless what I have supposed to represent a colon was really a semicolon. Of course a "period" was used. In Scottish written documents (Latin) of 1200 we find the period and colon-the period usually, and the circumflex always, indicating that a word is abridged. In 1236, in a Latin charter, the circumflex serves its usual purpose; while the period is the only punctuating mark. In a charter of 1370, also in flex is used. In an indenture of 1374 the observance of "points" is practically nil, but for an occasional full stop. The circumflex plays its allotted part, and it may beobserved that the dotting of the "i" is frequently a stroke, right to left, thus /. In 1415 the circumflex is used, punctuating symbols being practically absent in a charter of the date named. A Homer I have, in Greek, printed in 1535, has punctuating marks: comma, semicolon, and full stop; the contracting symbol I take to be the circumflex, but the lettering. .6 used is to the reader most difficult to make out. In Le Antichita della Citta de Roma,' printed in 1580, a comma, semicolon, colon, and full period are used in punctuation, the circumflex indicating that a word is abbreviated. Printing done at Frankfort in 1584 has all the punctuating symbols known to us, and the circumflex as a contraction mark. In Godwin's Catalogue, printed in 1615, the comma, colon, and semicolon are used, a full period being utilized as an abbreviating sign as well as a punctuating one, such as in "the for them. In "J: P: Terentii Comœdiæ," printed at Leipsic in 1616, comma, colon, semicolon, and period are used, the last marking an abbreviated word, as does the circumflex. I have a volume containing questions, &c., relative to book i. of Bonaventura, printed, I think, in Italy, about the year 1591. The contraction sign is sometimes a full period, but usually the circumflex, the punctuating marks being a colon and period-no semicolon or comma that I can find. I may mention that a hyphened word is indicated in two ways; thus and a dash from right to left. It has been said that Caxton had the merit of introducing into this country the Roman punctuation, as used in Italy. If this was the case, I do not think it was in general use in 1491, the year of Caxton's death, with the exception of Haarlem and Mentz. Is it not a fact that printing existed at Oxford about ten years previous to 1491? ALFRED CHAS. JONAS. Thornton Heath. "Heu, quotidie pejus: hæc colonia retro- the close of 'Vathek' a phrase which recalls, BECKFORD AND RABELAIS.-There is towards "Alors Carathis, sans descendre de son chameau, chaste vue, éclata sans ménagement. Monstre à et écumante de rage au spectacle qui s'offrait à sa deux têtes et à quatre jambes,' s'écria-t-elle, que signifie tout ce bel entortillage? N'as-tu pas honte d'empoigner ce tendron au lieu des sceptres des sultans préadamites?"" The passage will be found at pp. 158-9 of WARD FAMILY.-I am afraid it is rather late to reply to a query of forty-five years ago; but I find on looking at N. & Q.' for 14 January, 1860 (2nd S. ix. 30), a MR. ALEX. J. ELLIS inquired for information relating to the Wards of Burton-on-Trent, one of whom married Anne Pole (a niece of Cardinal Pole). If MR. ELLIS is still living, I shall be pleased to give him what information I can on the matter. I may add that I shall be glad to [Printing is acknowledged to have begun at correspond with any reader who may possess Oxford not later than 1478.] I I was any genealogical information relating to the Wards of Burton-on-Trent, and to give in exchange any details I may have. FRANK WARD. 38, Wordsworth Road, Small Heath, Birmingham. [If the A. J. ELLIS mentioned is the well-known linguistic scholar, he died in 1890, as the Supplement to the 'D.N.B.' shows.] BOLLES: CONYERS.-I have some printed notes of the family of George Bolles and Katherine Conyers which were bound up in a Breeches Bible. They date from 1588, and would be interesting to any descendants. "GROWING DOWN LIKE A COW'S TAIL." find this phrase set down in 'E.D.D.' as peculiar to Antrim and Down. Most people, I think, would refuse to look upon the phrase as peculiar to any dialect, and would stoutly maintain that it was in general use wherever the English language is spoken. amused the other day to find that the expression is as old as Petronius. And doubtless it is centuries older. I was reading Dr. Bigg's delightful book The Church's Task under the Roman Empire,' p. 67, and there I came upon a quotation from Petronius, Cena,' 44. Dr. Bigg says: "Let us listen to the Campanian farmer......He is grumbling about a prolonged drought; the colony, he "TOWERS OF SILENCE."-Sir George Birdsays, is growing downwards like a cow's tail." wood, in a letter to The Times, 8 August, Well, I thought, here the learned doctor is attributes the invention of the phrase playfully paraphrasing. This homely Eng-towers of silence," applied to the dakhumas lish expression cannot surely be found in (vault, place of the dead, tomb), or bastion Petronius. But there it is, all the same: like edifices on which the Parsees of the Dis ED. DARKE. 14A, Great Marlborough Street, W. ruption have been accustomed to expose the literary success introduced him to the subbodies of their dead, to Robert Xavier Mur-librarianship at the Collège Mazarin. He phy, a talented young Irishman, editor of immediately took up with erudition deep and The Bombay Times and Oriental translator to varied, which had a most singular effect upon the Indian Government, who died 26 Feb- him. The deeper he went the more he lost ruary, 1857, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. of grace and simplicity, he became hard and Murphy was a contributor to The Dublin dialectic, and in his clouded imagination University Magazine from 1847 to 1850, and sought celebrity as a sage. So at last, says. probably later. Sir George Birdwood suggests his biographer, he quitted reason altogether. that it was in an article in this magazine Perhaps we might say rather, that he found that the phrase "towers of silence" was first Rousseau and Voltaire. He was twenty-eight employed, but avows his inability to under- when Rousseau died, and he managed to take the task of tracing where and when it embitter completely his life by his writings, was first used, and desires that younger especially by his Pseaumes Nouvellement hands may perform this labour of love. Découverts, published as by S. Ar. Lamech, the anagram of his name. JOHN HEBB. NUTTING: "THE DEVIL'S NUTBAG."-The nuts are ripe, and nutting parties have found pleasure in a day's nutting in the woods in many a Midland district. Each lad and lass carried a nutting bag, and a hooked stick with which to pull within hand-reach the hazel branches loaded with tempting nuts projecting from the beards in which they grow. When the nut-noses begin to brown, and the green beards shrivel and turn grey at the tips, then are they ripe, and then nutting may begin. Sticks and nutbags were often household belongings, handed down from one set of young folks to another, and the crooked stick was as much prized as the nutbag. Why in such an entertainment a nutting bag should be connected in any way with the devil does not appear; but it was common enough, on looking into the bag to find how its filling was going on, to remark that it was 66 as black as the devil's nutbag." In gathering nuts some are found fair without, and dead within. These are, or at any rate were, called "def" nuts or "det" nuts, and the "def" were said to have been touched by the devil, much as a little later on will be said of blackberries, when frost has nipped them, that the "devil has cast his hoof over them." THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop. Queries. WE must request correspondents desiring in. formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct. SYLVAIN MARECHAL.-This man wrote that strange book the 'Dictionnaire des Athées.' He began as a somewhat successful poet at twenty-one, and was remarkable for the harmony of his versification and the lightness, grace, and gaiety of his manner. His Germond, who republished the dictionary, What I want to know of him is this. J. B. L. writes thus: "Nous avons donc rétabli tous les noms, sauf deux, dont notre gratitude secret." Can anybody point out which these nous a fait un devoir de ne point trahir le two are? The secret of who they were would be of some interest also; and it is possible that in the lapse of time, now more than a century, the secret may have transpired of C. A. WARD. itself. FARRANT'S ANTHEM "LORD, FOR THY TENDER MERCY'S SAKE."-I have a note that the words of this beautiful anthem are from Lydley's 'Prayers,' but I cannot find who Lydley was, or the date of his 'Prayers.' He is not mentioned in the 'D.N.B.,' or in any other biographical work to which I have access. Can any of your contributors enlighten me? Farrant was Master of the Choristers of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and died in 1580. J. A. HEWITT. I am The Rectory, Cradock, S. Africa. CHAUNCY CORRESPONDENCE, &C. anxious to meet with any letters in the handwriting of Sir Henry Chauncy, the Hertfordshire historian. He must have had an extensive correspondence with persons in the county relating to his work between 1680 and 1700, but the only manuscript I have, up to the present, discovered is the original draft of the preface to his History of Hertfordshire,' in the possession of a descendant. I am loth to believe that all else has perished, OSCAR WILDE BIBLIOGRAPHY. I am preparing a bibliography of Oscar Wilde's writings. Can you help me to trace the first publication of (1) The Harlot's House,' (2) Lord Arthur Savile's Crime'? The date of the former is before 13 June, 1885, on which date a parody, called The Public-House,' was printed in The Sporting Times. The story of Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' appeared in some periodical before July, 1891, when it was issued in book form with other stories. It is possible one or both appeared in The Court and Society Review or in Society, but I am unable to find either of these publications in the Bodleian, nor does the former seem to be in the British Museum Catalogue. In 9th S. xii. 85 are three verses of a poem by Wilde, beginning "The Thames Nocturne of Blue and Gold.". Can you tell me whence MR. HEBB got this version? It differs very considerably from that given in The World for 2 March, 1881, and also from the version in the collected edition of the 'Poems' in the same year. STUART MASON. c/o Shelley Book Shop, Oxford. GEORGE COLMAN'S MAN OF the People.'— "Finding that I could tag rhymes," writes George Colman the younger, in his amusing < Random Records,' in a small Edition, for the Author,'-the Bookseller there (I believe the only one in the Town) wisely declining to purchase the copyright;-of course, he only sold the work by commission, leaving me responsible for the expense of printing. A new Poem publish'd in this corner of the Kingdom was an extraordinary event, and excited some curiosity there. It was thought to contain some smart lines, and was in everybody's hands; but, alas! not at all to the author's profit-the Aberdeenites were in general like Rory Macleod, great economists; the prodigal few who had bought my production lent it to their frugal neighbours; who lent it again to others, and the others to others, ad infinitum:-so that about one hundred copies were thumb'd through the town, while all the rest remain'd clean and uncut upon the shelf of the bibliopolist. He sent me his account, some time afterwards, enclosing the Printer's Bill, by which it appear'd that I was several pounds debtor for the publication;-but, then, I became sole Proprietor of all the unsold copies, which were return'd to me;-all of which I put into the fire,save one, which happen'd to turn up a few days ago, in looking over old papers. I found it to be downright schoolboy trash, and consign'd it to the fate of its predecessors. I hope that there is now no trace of this puerile stuff extant." Has any copy survived of this Aberdeen THE PIGMIES AND THE CRANES.-How can SPANISH FOLK - LORE. Last summer I travelled by night in the company of a muleteer between Avila and Segovia in Spain. "I sat down, immediately on my return from To while away the time he told me the story Laurencekirk (to Old Aberdeen], to write a poem; of St. Peter and the Charcoal-Burner,' which but I had the same want as a great genius, not then, roughly amounted to the following, of which I believe, born, and since dead,-I wanted a hero. I should like to know the source, and whether The first at hand-I found him in the last newspaper, lying on my table, which had arrived from it may be found in print in any Spanish London-was the renown'd Orator and Statesman, collection of folk-lore. Christ and S. Pedro Charles Fox, who was then term'd, in all Whig pub-were wandering one night on the mountains lications, the Man of the People.' I accordingly in winter, when the latter spied the hut of a gave the same title to my Poem; knowing little charcoal-burner. They took refuge there more of politicks, and the Man of the People, than the Man in the Moon! In one particular of my from the storm. The charcoal-burner gave work, I follow'd the example of a Poet whose style them what he had, which was not much. was somewhat different from my own; I allude to After a time a knock came at the door: it one John Milton. Milton has, in most people's was St. John. And again a knock it was opinion, taken Satan for the Hero of his Paradise St. Matthew; and so on all night till there Lost; I, therefore, made my hero as diabolical as need be,-blackening the Right Honourable Charles were the twelve apostles in the hut with James till I made him (only in his politicks re- Christ. In the morning they went away. member) as black as the Devil himself;-and, to Only St. Peter remained to thank the charmend the matter, I praised to the skies Lord North, coal-burner, offering him what he would as payment. After many excuses the charcoalburner, who guessed who they were, asked that he might always win at cards! This St. Peter granted. When at last the man came to die he found he had done neither who had lost us America! This notable effusion I publish'd (but suppress'd my name) at Aberdeen,* * "Some short prefatory matter to the poem was dated Bamffa town thirty miles, and upwards, north-west of Aberdeen." R. S. V. P. SNAITH PECULIAR COURT.-Can any reader of N. & Q.' tell me where I may find the marriage licences issued by the Peculiar Court of Snaith, in Yorkshire, prior to 1850? After that date they are in known custody. WM. CLEMENT G. KENDALE. 'BOOK OF LOUGHSCUR.'-Can any one give me a clue to a book, presumably in manuscript, called 'The Book of Loughscur; or, History of the Reynolds Family? A friend of mine, about a year or eighteen months ago, whilst visiting near Kesh, in co. Fermanagh, heard of it from some one who said she had seen it some years previously; but he was unable to discover anything further about it FITZGERALD. used on that line was manufactured in England? Through the instigation of King Leopold I., Messrs. Simonds and De Riddel, two well-known Belgian engineers, were sent over to England to report on the working of the two railways then in existence, and on the strength of this report the Belgian Parliament voted eighteen million francs for the purpose of railway construction in Belgium. A contemporary states that the first engine and carriages were sent over line was laid by English workmen, and the from England. I should like to know if there is any authority for this statement. FREDERICK T. HIBGAME. ་ GLANVILLE, EARL OF SUFFOLK. - In Mr. Glanville-Richards's Records of the AngloNorman House of Glanville' two or three early members of the Glanville family in England are styled Earls of Suffolk. But G. E. C. knows no Earls of Suffolk of this name, and I had concluded that Mr. Richards had fallen into an error for which he alone other day upon the following entries in Papwas responsible. I chanced, however, the worth's Ordinary,' which seem to support Mr. Richards's views: "Arg., a chief dancetty az., Glanvile, Earl of Suffolk"; "Arg., a MRS. MARY WILLIAMS. I have in my chief az., Glanvil, Earl of Suffolk." Turning possession a will of Mrs. Mary Williams, of then to Burke's 'Armory,' I found, s.v. GlanCecil Street, apparently in St. Martin's-in-ville, the following statement: "Ranulph de the-Fields. She appears to have been connected by marriage with Mary and Sarah Cudworth, William Avery, Ann, Lydia, the Hon. Mrs. Elizabeth, and Capt. Charles Carter, Rebecca Hall, Lady Drake and her sister Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Elizabeth Minshall, Mrs. Mary Savage, Miss Katherine and Miss Ann Money. I should be obliged if any of your readers could identify the family Carter, Rebecca Hall, or others of those to whom reference is made. J. C. WHITEBROOK. FIRST RAILWAY ON THE CONTINENT.-The first Belgian railway, which was also the first railway on the Continent, was in augurated 5 May, 1835, nearly ten years after the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which was opened in 1825. It ran from Brussels to Malines, a distance of about twenty-one kilometres. Can any reader of N. & Q' tell me whether the first engine Glanville, Baron de Bromholme, co. Suffolk, temp. William the Conqueror, ancestor of the Earls of Chester and Suffolk." I should be glad to know how the belief arose that the Glanvilles were ever Earls of Suffolk, and at what date it originated. It appears that their only connexion with this earldom lies in the fact that Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk 1385-8, married Catherine, daughter and heiress of John Wingfield by Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Ralph Glanville (G. E. C., Complete Peerage'). . C. L. GLANVILLE. RICHARDS BARONETS.-Sir James Richards (son of John Richards) was created a baronet on 22 February, 1683/4, and married twice: by his first wife he was father of Sir John Richards, second baronet, who died s.p., and by his second marriage Sir James had (1) Sir Joseph, who succeeded as third baronet; (2) Sir Philip, who succeeded his brother as |