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Notes

EXTINCT VOLCANOS AND MOUNTAINS OF GOLD IN SCOTLAND

It is by some supposed that the Hill of Noth, in the parish of Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, had at one time been a volcano in full operation: others, again, maintain that the scoria found on and in the neighbourhood are portions of a vitrified fort, which had at one time stood on its summit. I am not aware that the matter has been investigated since our advancement in the science of geology has enabled us to have a more intimate knowledge of these things than formerly. The last statistical account of Scotland has suffered severely in its Aberdeenshire volume, in consequence of the temporary deposition of the "seven Strathbogie clergymen." The accounts of their several parishes were written by parties only newly come to reside in them, and who appear to have taken little interest in it; and Rhynie is one of these. Those who argue for its having been a volcano, say that it is very possible that there may at one time have been an electric or magnetic chain connecting it with subterranean fire in some other quarter of the world; and that by some convulsion of nature, the spinal cord of its existence had been broken, and life became extinct. This hypothesis has been acted on, in accounting for the earthquakes which occur at Comrie in Perthshire. The great storm which devastated the princely estates of Earl Goodwin in Kent (circa anno 1098), and now so well known to mariners as the Goodwin Sands, is also said to have laid waste the parish of Forvie, in Aberdeenshire. On the occasion of the great earthquake at Lisbon in 1755, a flock of sheep were drowned in their cot in the neighbourhood of Lossiemouth, near Elgin, by the overflowing of the tide, although far removed from ordinary high-water-mark. Assuming this mountain to have been a volcano, are there any others in Great Britain? While on the subject of mountains in that quarter, there is another which also demands attention for quite a different reason, the Hill of Dun-o-Deer, in the parish of Insch: a conical hill of no great elevation, on the top of which stand the remains of a vitrified fort or castle, said to have been built by King Gregory about the year 880, and was used by that monarch as a hunting-seat and where, combining business with pleasure, he is said to have meted out even-handed justice to his subjects in the Garioch. It has long been the popular belief that this hill contains gold; and that the teeth of sheep fed on it assume a yellower tinge, and also that their fat is of the same colour. Notwithstanding this, no attempt at scientific investigation has ever been made. The operations on the line of the Great North of Scotland Railway, now in progress in the immediate neighbourhood, may possibly bring something to light. This line passes for many miles through a country particularly rich in recollections of the "olden time"—cairns, camps, old chapels, druidical circles, sculptured stones, &c. and where ancient coins, battle-axes of all the three periods, urns and elf-arrow heads, Roman armour, &c., have been disinterred by the ordinary labours of the field. Within a short distance of its route lies the Hill of Barra, where the famous battle was fought, anno 1308, between the "Bruce" and the "Comyn;" the Bass at Inverary, the Hill of Benachie, with the remains of a fortification on its summit, said to have been erected by the Picts; the field of Harlaw, famed in song, where the battle was fought in 1411, in which Donald of the Isles was defeated. There are many traditional ballads and stories relating to Benachie and Noth. There is a ballad called "John O'Benachie" and another, "John O'Rhynie, or Jock O'Noth" and they do not appear in any collection of ancient ballads I have seen. It is said that long "before King Robert rang," two giants inhabited these mountains, and are supposed to be the respective heroes of the two ballads. These two sons of Anak appear to have lived on pretty friendly terms, and to have enjoyed a social crack together, each at his own residence, although distant some ten or twelve miles. These worthies had another amusement, that of throwing stones at each other; not small pebbles you may believe, but large boulders. On one occasion, however, there appears to have been a coolness between them; for one morning, as he of Noth was returning from a foraging excursion in the district of Buchan, his friend of Benachie, not relishing what he considered an intrusion on his legitimate beat, took up a large stone and threw at him as he was passing. Noth, on hearing it rebounding, coolly turned round, and putting himself in a posture of defence, received the ponderous mass on the sole of his foot: and I believe that the stone, with a deeply indented foot-mark on it, is, like the bricks in Jack Cade's chimney, "alive at this day to testify." Legendary lore and fabulous ballads aside, it would indeed be strange if something interesting to the antiquary does not turn up in such a mine as this. It is curious, however, that in all the operations antecedent to covering Great Britain with, as it were, a network of iron, so very few discoveries should have been made of any importance, either to the antiquary or geologist.

Abredonensis.

THOMAS BLOUNT, AUTHOR OF "FRAGMENTA ANTIQUITATIS," ETC

Being on a visit to some friends on the confines of the county of Salop, bordering on Herefordshire, I took the opportunity long cherished of visiting the spot where lie the remains of the author of Boscobel; Fragmenta Antiquitatis, or Ancient Tenures of Land, and Jocular Customs of Manors, &c., and copied the following inscription from his monument, in the chancel of the ancient church of Orleton in the latter county. I believe it has never been published; and although neither Note nor Query is connected with it, it may serve to fill up a corner in your valuable miscellany, and thus preserve from the oblivion of a retired country church, a memorial of one well known to the antiquarian world of literature. It is on a brass plate inserted in a stone monument against the wall of the chancel:

"D.O.M

Hic seminatur Corpus Animale

Spiritale resurrecturum

Thomæ Blount

De Orleton in agro Herefordiensi Armigeri,

Ex interiori Templo Londini J Cti

Viri priscis Moribus avitæ Fidei,

Vitæ integerrimæ, Pietatis solidæ,

Fidelitatem, Dilectionem, Amorem, Charitatem,

In Principem, Suos, Amicos, Omnes,

Illibate coluit

Uxorem duxit

Annam

Filiam Eadmundi Church Armigeri

E Maldoniâ East Saxonum

Unicâ Corporis prole

(Elizabetha)

Mentis multiplici

(Libris utilissimis)

Familiam propagavit, perennavit Famam

Requiem, Lector, si fas ducis, huic apprecare

Et melior abi

Obiit Decembris 26, 1679. Ætatis 61

——

Pientissima Coniunx

mœrens

Posuit."

The village of Orleton is celebrated for a very large annual fair, which occurs on April 23; and a saying is connected therewith: "That the cuckoo always comes on Orleton fair-day;" which has doubtless arisen from the circumstance, that this "messenger of spring" generally arrives in this country by that day.

J. B. Whitborne.

"GIVE HIM A ROLL."—A PLEA FOR THE HORSE

We learn, from the comedy of the The Clouds, that the Athenians were accustomed to refresh their horses after a race by allowing then to roll on the ground; for Pheidippides, the wild young man of the play, who spent much of his own time and of his father's money on the "turf," and who is shown in the opening scene fast asleep in bed, dreaming of his favourite amusement, says very quietly,

"Ἀπαγε τὸν ἵππον ἐξαλίσας οἴκαδε" [32]—

an order which he had probably often given to his groom at the Hippodrome, the Newmarket or Ascot of Athens.

I have often seen racing, I have often seen hunters brought home after a hard day's work, and I have read of forced marches, &c. made by cavalry and artillery; but never yet have I heard of an English Houyhnhnm, either at home or abroad, who was invited to refresh himself after his labours, civil or military, classically, with a roll.

Dobbin, that four-footed Ofellus,

"Rusticus, abnormis sapiens, crassâque Minervâ,"

whenever he has the luck to spend his summer Sunday's otium cum dignitate in a paddock, invariably indulges in a baker's dozen, without waiting for an invitation to do so, and without saying "with your leave" or "by your leave."

They ordered this matter better in Africa some fifty years ago, and I hope they still continue so to order it.

By one of the stipulations of the hollow Peace of Amiens, the colony of the Cape of Good Hope was restored by Great Britain to the Batavian Republic, which immediately appointed Mr. J. A. de Mist its Commissary-General, and despatched him to receive the ceded territory from the hands of the English, to instal the new Governor, General J. W. Janssens, into his high office, and to reorganise the constitution of the colony.

Having fulfilled these duties, Mr. De Mist determined to make a tour of inspection, and he accordingly travelled on horseback nearly 4500 English miles through the interior. Among his suite was a Dr. Lichtenstein, the physician and savant of the party, who afterwards published an account of the expedition.

The extract that I am about to make from his work may at first sight appear unnecessarily long; but I wish the "courteous reader" to bear in mind that I do not cite it for the sake of parading a long rambling comment on five short words of Aristophanes, but for that of bringing forward additional evidence, to prove that a dry roll may occasionally be of as much service in recruiting the strength and spirits of that noble animal, the horse, when jaded by violent exertion or long-protracted toil, as our English nostrums, a warm mash or a bottle of water. Dr. Lichtenstein says,—

"Our road led us soon again over the Vogel river and here we were obliged to supply ourselves with water for the whole day, since not a drop was to be met with again till the Melk river, a distance of ten hours [ = 50 English miles]. When we had filled our vessels, and our cattle had drunk plentifully, we proceeded on our way.
"It is difficult for an European to form an idea of the hardships that are to be encountered in a journey over such a dry plain at the hottest season of the year. All vegetation seems utterly destroyed; not a blade of grass, not a green leaf, is anywhere to be seen; and the soil, a stiff loam, reflects back the heat of the sun with redoubled force; a man may congratulate himself that, being on horseback, he is raised some feet above it. Nor is any rest from these fatigues to be thought of, since to stop where there is neither shade, water, or grass, would be only to increase the evil, rather than to diminish it.
"Yet the African horses are so well accustomed to hardships, although they have in fact much less innate strength than the European, that it is incredible what a length of way they will go, in the most intense heat, without either food or drink. It is, however, customary for the riders to dismount at intervals, when the saddles are taken off, and the animals are suffered to roll upon the ground and stretch out their limbs for a short time. This they do with evident delight, and after they have well rolled, stretched, and shaken themselves, they rise up and go on as much refreshed as if they had had food and drink given them. On arriving at a farm, the invitation of the host, who comes immediately to the door, is, 'Get off, Sir, and let him roll.' A slave then appears, takes the horse, and leads him backwards and forwards for a few minutes, to recover his breath, and he is then unsaddled and left to roll.
"These rollings were then the only refreshment we could offer our horses, and both they and their riders were, when towards evening they arrived at the Melk river, exceedingly exhausted."—Travels in Southern Africa in the Years 1803-1806. By Henry Lichtenstein, Doctor in Medicine and Philosophy, &c. &c. Translated from the original German by Anne Plumptre: London, Henry Colburn, 1812; vol. i. chap. xxv.
C. Forbes.

Temple.

DREAM TESTIMONY

On Saturday the 30th of July, 1853, the dead body of a young woman was discovered in a field at Littleport, in the Isle of Ely. The body has not yet been identified, and there can be little doubt that the young woman was murdered. At the adjourned inquest, held on the 29th of August, before Mr. William Marshall, one of the coroners for the isle, the following extraordinary evidence was given:

"James Jessop, an elderly, respectable-looking labourer, with a face of the most perfect stolidity, and who possessed a most curiously-shaped skull, broad and flat at the top, and projecting greatly on each side over the ears, deposed: 'I live about a furlong and a half from where the body was found. I have seen the body of the deceased. I had never seen her before her death. On the night of Friday, the 29th of July, I dreamt three successive times that I heard the cry of murder issuing from near the bottom of a close called Little Ditchment Close (the place where the body was found). The first time I dreamt I heard the cry it woke me. I fell asleep again, and dreamt the same again. I then woke again, and told my wife. I could not rest; but I dreamt it again after that. I got up between four and five o'clock, but I did not go down to the close, the wheat and barley in which have since been cut. I dreamt once, about twenty years ago, that I saw a woman hanging in a barn, and on passing the next morning the barn which appeared to me in my dream I entered, and did find a woman there hanging, and cut her down just in time to save her life. I never told my wife I heard any cries of murder, but I have mentioned it to several persons since. I saw the body on the Saturday it was found. I did not mention my dream to any one till a day or two after that. I saw the field distinctly in my dream and the trees thereon, but I saw no person in it. On the night of the murder the wind lay from that spot to my house.'
"Rhoda Jessop, wife of the last witness, stated that her husband related his dreams to her on the evening of the day the body was found."

In Mr. John Hill Burton's Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland, is a chapter entitled "Spectral and Dream Testimony," to which the above evidence will be a curious addition.

C. H. Cooper.

Cambridge.

SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE

"Priam's six-gated city," &c.—In the prologue to Troilus and Cressida occurs—

" . . . Priam's six-gated city,
Dardan and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan,
And Antenorides, with massy staples,
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts."

What struck me here was the omission of the only gate of Troy really known to fame, the Scæan, which looked on the tomb of the founder Laomedon; before which stood Hector, "full and fixed," awaiting the fatal onslaught of Achilles; where Achilles, in turn, received his death-wound from the shaft of Paris; and through which, finally, the wooden horse was triumphantly conveyed into the doomed city.

The six names are shown to be taken by Shakspeare in part from Caxton, and in part from Lydgate: and in Knight's edition we are told that they are "pure inventions of the middle age of romance-writers."

Let us examine this assertion. The names are to be found pretty nearly as above, but with one important difference, in Dares' History of the Trojan War. My authority is Ruæus, the Delphine editor of Virgil (see his note at Æn. II. 612.). Now Dares (perhaps the oldest of the profane writers whom we know) was a Phrygian, who took part in the Trojan war, and wrote its history in Greek: and the Greek original was still extant in the time of Ælian, from A.D. 80 to 140. Of this, now lost, a Latin translation still survives, by some attributed to Cornelius Nepos, and by some regarded as spurious; but, either way, its date must be long antecedent to "the middle age of romance-writers." It was doubtless from this Latin history that Caxton or Lydgate, or both, derived directly or indirectly the names they adopted; and yet it is to be noted that they give respectively the names of Chetas and Cetheas to one of their gates, and omit the well-known Scæan, which Dares expressly mentions; for I presume that no principle of philology will sanction the identification of Scæan with either of the terms used by these two writers.

I have trespassed somewhat on your space, but let me hope the subject may be farther elucidated. The points I wish to put forward are, Shakspeare's omission of the Scæan gate, and the proposition by Knight (for a proposition it is, though in a participular form), that these six names are "pure inventions of the middle age of romance-writers."

W. T. M.

Hong Kong.

On the Word "delighted" in "Measure for Measure," &c. (Vol. viii., p. 241.).—Inasmuch as the controversy respecting this word seems to be over, and no one of the critics and commentators on Shakspeare's text appears to have the slightest clue to the real meaning and derivation, I will enlighten them. But, first, I must say, I am surprised that Dr. Kennedy should (though he has certainly hit on the right meaning) be unable to give a better account of the word than that in Vol. ii., pp. 139. 250. And as to the passage quoted (Vol. ii., p. 200) by Mr. Singer from Sidney's Arcadia, I beg to inform him that the word delight, which occurs therein, is a misprint for daylight!

We find, in the Latin, the substantive deliciæ, delight, pleasure, enjoyment; and the adjective (derived from the same root, and guiding us to the original meaning of the substantive) delicatus, which amongst other meanings, has that of tender, soft, gentle, delicate, dainty.

As the early English scholars were not very particular about the form of the words they introduced from the Latin, or indeed of those which were purely English, for they changed them at their pleasure,—and that this is the case, I presume no one at all versed in the literature of the time of Henry VIII. will dispute,—it requires no great exertion of fancy to believe, that, finding the substantive deliciæ Englished delight, they rendered the adjective delicatus delighted. The fact that they did use the words delight and delicate as synonymous, is proved by a passage in "a boke named the Gouernour deuised by Syr Thomas Elyot, Knyght, Londini, 1557;" in which, at folio 203., p. 1., we find Titus, the son of Vespasian, who was ordinarily termed "the delight of mankind," called "the delicate of the world."

We are therefore to conclude that the words delicate and delighted were used indifferently by writers of the age of Shakspeare, as well as by those previous to him, to express the same thing; and that by the phrase "delighted spirit" in Measure for Measure, "delighted beauty" in Othello, "delighted gifts" in Cymbeline, we are to understand, exquisitely tender, delicate, or precious.

I cannot agree with Dr. Kennedy that deliciæ, delicatus come from deligere rather than delicere; since, if my memory does not deceive me, the former is as often, if not oftener, used by good writers to express to drive away, to upset, to remove from, or detach—as to select or choose—which is the only meaning the word has akin to deliciæ; whereas delicere is actually used by one of the earlier Latin poets for to delight.

The word dainty, I may inform Dr. Kennedy, is from the obsolete French dein or dain, delicate; which probably came from the still older Teut. deinin, minuta (vid. Schilter).