Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/206

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166


NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. AUG. 27, iw*.


be hoped that he will favour ' N. & Q.' with a record of his adventures and the method of his transformation. Such an instance of history or myth repeating itself will give /urieusement a penser. H. T.

" BEARDED LIKE THE PARD." Whilst search- ing a Coram Eege Roll of Edward II. at the Record Office I met with the following singular memorandum written at the foot of ^ the membrane in sixteenth - century writing :

"Memorand. That this furst of August, 1586, Anno Regni Regine Eliz. vicesimo-octavo, Dyd se one hare of one Mr. Kyllyngworth, lyvinge in Teme- strete, taken from his herd, and then there grow- inge, of the lenght then measured thre score and sixtene enches by measure of a carpenters Rule, the rest of his herd muche longer then hymselfe. He swore the same daye uppon his (oath) that the Emperore of Rushye w th two more Emperors faadd his herd in there hands in Rushye all at one time (he ys of agde 88) and hathe beene a great traveller F me Christopherus Fenton." Roll 252 Coram Rege, Easter 16 Ed. II., m. 66.

HENRY APPLETON, M.D.

WHITSUNDAY IN THE ' ANGLO-SAXON CHRO- NICLE.' PROF. SKEAT'S article on Whitsunday, ante, p. 121, is of great interest. But it may be desirable to caution readers that -although the coronation of Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, on which occasion >this word takes the place of Pentecost in the

  • Chronicle ' (I believe for the only time there,

-and it seems to be the first known instance -of its use anywhere), is recorded in a paragraph headed A.D. 1067, its date was really 1068, as is evident from the day assigned to Easter, which corresponded to 23 March. Whit- sunday, or Pentecost, fell that year on 11 May. William was in Normandy from -March to December, 1067, and Matilda did not come to England until the spring of

The above expression for the day of the Pentecostal feast seems to have been carried from England into Scandinavia, and it would be very interesting if it could be ascertained about what time the Norwegians reverted to the older form, though the equivalent for the English expression was retained in Iceland ; also when it was first introduced into Wales in the Welsh equivalent Sulgwyn (White Sunday). W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

GOLDSMITH AND A SCOTTISH PARAPHRASER. In the collection of 'Translations and Paraphrases ' prepared for the service of praise in the Church of Scotland, No. 58 is the vigorous and resonant hymn beginning, -"Where high the heavenly temple stands."


Readers of Lord Selborne's ' Book of Praise ' will find this editorially attributed there to John Logan, and such of them as are familiar with the history of that author will not be surprised to learn that he is credited by experts with having deliberately conveyed it from Michael Bruce. Be this as it may, the paraphrase is one that has entered closely into Scottish religious life, being a favourite not only as a medium of praise, but as a stimulating resource for evangelical expression. Two of its lines frequently quoted both in consolatory address and extempore prayer are these :

In every pang that rends the heart

The Man of Sorrows had a part.

It seems worth while to note a striking parallel between the former line of this couplet and one that occurs in the alternative version of a song in Goldsmith's oratorio, ' The Captivity ' :

The wretch, condemned with life to part,

Still, still on hope relies ; And every pang that rends the heart

Bids expectation rise.

It is sufficiently curious that such a notable line should thus appear to have two distinct sources. Bruce died in 1767 without publish- ing anything, and when Logan in 1770 edited ' Poems of Michael Bruce ' he excluded from the collection what were known as the poet's ' Gospel Sonnets.' These, including 'Christ Ascended ' (as it is entitled in ' The Book of Praise '), he is believed to have issued with emendations as his own from 1781 onwards. Now Goldsmith died in 1774, and the inference of Logan's critics in the matter that thus concerns both will inevitably be that the man who conveyed Bruce wholesale and freely pillaged Doddridge would not hesitate to pilfer from an obscure lyric by the author of ' The Vicar of Wakefield.'

THOMAS BAYNE.

SERVICE TREE. Under the heading l Whitty Tree,' ante, p. 113, we are told that service tree is derived from the Latin cerevisia, beer. This comic guess is actually seriously advanced in Prior's * Popular Names of British Plants,' a very useful book from a botanical point of view, but full of errors in etymo- logy ; it could be hardly very correct at so early a date (1879). Yet no one ever ^ spelt service with an initial c. The odd point is that Prior refers us at the same time to Virgil's sorbis (' Georg.,' iii. 380) ; and with good reason. I have explained the word in my 'Concise Etymological Dictionary ^(ed. 1901), and, at some length, with quotations, in my 'Notes on Eng. Etymology,' p. 266. Historically, service is a later spelling of the