346
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. vm. NOV. i, 1913.
WELLINGTON AT ETON. A discussion
Tecently took place in The Daily Mail as
to whether the Iron Duke was ever at Eton,
in which two valued correspondents of
- N. & Q.,' MB. ROBERT PIEBPOINT and
JVlB. RICHARD EDGCUMBE, participated. It was, I think, conclusively shown by these gentlemen that the future victor of Waterloo was at the school for a certain period. The other day, in looking over the Memoir of John Hookham Frere, the diplomatist, translator of Aristophanes, and joint author with Canning and George Ellis of the poetry of The Anti- Jacobin, by his nephew Sir Bartle Frere, which forms the first volume of the three-volume edition of ' The Works of J. H. F.,' I came across the following passage (p. 16) :
" Talking of one of his brother Edward's earliest reminiscences of Eton, when eighty boys were flogged for a sort of barring-out, and among them Mr. Arthur Wellesley, afterwards the Iron Duke,
- he said, ' No one who has not seen it can estimate
the good Eton does in teaching the little boys of igreat men that they have superiors.' "
It would appear from Frere's experience that Waterloo was won, not so much on the playing-fields as on the swishing -block of Eton. No boy need be ashamed to submit to a punishment that the Great Duke underwent. W. F. PBIDEAUX.
" OBRA." The following early instance of this difficult word escaped the readers for the ' N.E.D.,' probably for the simple reason that it is only a marginal note to the 'Proceedings of the Kirk Session of Stirling' for 1 Dec., 1597 :
" Orray Wemen. The quhilk day it is concludit and ordeinit, that na eldar nor diacun suffir ane singill woman that never lies bein mareit to dwell hir allane in ane hous undelaited to the sessioune of the kirk, under the pane of vj*. viijrf. for the iirst fault, and x*. for the secundjault." ' Miscel- lany of the Maitland Club,' vol. i. [No. 25], 1840, p. 129.
Q. V.
A BOOK THAT BELONGED TO ROBERT
BURTON. (See 10 S. viii. 326 ; 11 S. i. 325 ; iv. 44; v. 125.) In the 'Catalogue of British Topography,' recently issued by Ellis (=J. J. Holdsworth and G. Smith), No. 440 is a copy of the first edition (1622) of William Burton's ' The Description of Leicestershire.' It is said to have belonged to Robert Burton, and to have been " given by him to his fellow - collegian Richard Gardyner of Christ Church, whose autograph inscription is on the title-page."
For the life of Richard Gardiner, Canon of h. Ch. (1591-1670), ssa the 'D.N.B.' As
Deputy -Orator he delivered an oration on
29 May, 1620, on the occasion of James I.
sending a copy of his works to the Bodleian
Library. He compares the king to Ambrose
and Augustine, and declares his works to be
Nocturna versanda manu, versanda diurna.
Gardiner's ' Specimen Oratorium,' ed. 4, 1668, p. 5.
EDWARD BENSLY.
SUPERSTITION CONCERNING HARES : OC- CURRENCE IN DORSET. There was ,an old prejudice in Dorset widely spread, too, throughout the county at the present day against the use of the flesh of a hare for human food. It arises apparently from the well-known superstition that witches change themselves into the form of hares.
It may be worth while to recall the passage in the ' Topographia Hibernica ' (Distinctio II., cap. xix.) of Giraldus Cam- brensis (A.D. 1147 to about 1217), who, writing of the wonders and miracles of Ireland, states that it was an old and yet common complaint that certain witches in Wales, as well as in Scotland and in Ireland, changed themselves into the form of hares, and so, with less likelihood of discovery, sucked the milk of cows. The passage will be found on p. 106 of vol. v. of the works of Giraldus Cambrensis (Rolls Series, Longmans, 1867).
JAS. M. J. FLETCHER.
Wimborne Minster Vicarage.
[See 1 S. ii. 216, 315 ; 4 S. viii. 23, 505 ; 5 S. i. 427 ; ii. 14 ; 7 S. viii. 449 ; ix. 54, 133-1
THE GREAT STORM OF 1703.
"24 April, 1704. Our church is out of Repair occasioned by the late Dreadfull Storme, but now aboute repaireing." Oxon Archd. Papers, Bodleian Library : Presentation by Churchwardens of Long Wittenham, Berks.
R. J. FYNMORE.
Sandgate.
NUMBERS IN HISTORY. Prof. Hans Del- briick of the University of Berlin delivered two lectures with this title at University College, London, on Monday, October 6th, and the following day. In the first he treated of the manner in which " the Greeks defeated the Persians, the Romans conquered the world, the Teutons overthrew the Roman Empire, and William the Norman took possession of England." He remarked on the likeness between the battles in which ths Swiss conquered Charles the Bold and the battles in which the Greeks overcame the Persians. We see aftsr an interval of 2,000 years exactly the same weapons and the same political institutions fighting each
