Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853

On the other hand, John, in his integrity, occurs familiarly in John Bull, John-a-Nokes, John Doe, John apple, John Doree, Blue John, John Trot, John's Wort, John-a-dreams, &c.; and Poor John is found in Dodsley, vol. viii. pp. 197. 356.

C. H. P.

Brighton.

PASSAGE IN ST. JAMES

(Vol. vii., p. 549)

On referring to the passage cited by S. S. S. in Bishop Taylor's Holy Dying, vol. iv. p. 345. (Heber's edit.), I find I had marked two passages in St. James's Epistle as being those to which, in all probability, the bishop alluded; one in the first chapter, and one in the third. In the commencement of his Epistle St. James exhorts his hearers to exercise patience in all the worldly accidents that might befal them; to resign themselves into God's hands, and accept in faith whatever might happen. He then proceeds:

"If any of you lack wisdom" (prudentia ad dijudicandum quid in singulis circumstantiis agendum sit—Grotius), "let him ask of God" (postulet ab eo, qui dat, nempe Deo: ut intelligas non aliunde petendum sapientiam.—Erasmus).

Again, in chap. iii. 13., he asks:

"Who is a wise man, and endued with knowledge among you" (ἐπιστήμων, i. e. sciens, sive scientià præditus, quod recentiores vocant scientificus.—Erasmus).

He bids him prove his wisdom by submission to the truth; for that cunning craftiness which manifests itself only in generating heresies and contentions, is—

"Not from above," ἀλλ' ἐπίγειος, Ψυχικὴ (animalis,—ista sapientia a natura est, non a Deo) δαιμονιώδης.—Vid. Eph. ii. 2., and 2 Cor. iv. 4.

These passages would naturally afford ample scope for the exuberant fancy of ancient commentators; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bishop Taylor may have had the remarks of one of these writers running in his mind, when he quoted St. James as reprobating, with such minuteness of detail, the folly of consulting oracles, spirits, sorcerers, and the like.

I have not, at present, access to any of the commentators to whom I allude; so I am unable to confirm this suggestion.

H. C. K.

—– Rectory, Hereford.

There is no uncanonical epistle attributed to this apostle, although the one received by the English from the Greek and Latin churches was pronounced uncanonical by Luther. The passage to which Jeremy Taylor refers, is iv. 13, 14., which he interpreted as referring to an unlawful inquiry into the future:

"Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow: for what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

Hug (Wait's Trans., vol. ii. p. 579.) considers the apostle as reproving the Jews for attempting to evade the national punishment threatened them, by removing out of their own country of Judæa. Probably, however, neither Taylor nor Hug are correct in departing from the more obvious signification, which refers to the mercantile character of the twelve tribes (i. 1.), arising mainly out of the fact of their captivities and dispersions (διασπορᾷ). The practice is still common in the East for merchants on a large and small scale to spend a whole season or year in trafficking in one city, and passing thence to another with the varied products suitable respectively to each city; and such products were interchanged without that extreme division of labour or despatch which the magnitude of modern commerce requires. The whole passage, from James iv. 13. to v. 6. inclusive, must be taken as specially applicable to the sins of mercantile men whose works of righteousness St. James (iii. 17-20.) declared to be wanting, in proof of their holding the faith necessary, according, to St. Paul (Rom. iii. 27.), for their salvation.

T. J. Buckton.

Birmingham.

FAITHFULL TEATE

(Vol. vii., p. 529.)

The Ter Tria3, about which your correspondent J. S. inquires, is neither a rare nor a very valuable book; and if his copy has cost him more than some three and sixpence, it is a poor investment of capital. Mine, which is of the second edition, 1669, has the following book-note:

"The worthy Faithfull Teate indulges himself in the then prevailing bad taste of anagramising his name: see the result after the title. A better play upon his name is that of Jo. Chishull, who, in lashing the prophane wits of the day, and eulogising the author, has the following comical allusion thereto:

'Let all wise-hearted sav'ring things divineCome suck this Teat that yields both milk and wine,Loe depths where elephants may swim, yet hereThe weakest lamb of Christ wades without fear.'"

The Ter Tria was originally published in 1658; its author, F. T., was the father of the better known Nahum Tate, the co-translator of the last authorised version of the Psalms,—a Teat which, following the metaphor of Mr. Chishull, has nourished not a few generations of the godly, but now, like a sucked orange, thrown aside for the more juicy productions of our modern Psalmists. Old Teate (or Tate, as the junior would have it) is styled in this book, "preacher at Sudbury." He seems subsequently to have removed to Ireland, where his son Nahum, the laureat, was born.

J. O.

PARVISE

(Vol. viii., p. 528.)

Parvise seems to have been a porch, used as a school or place for disputation. The parvise mentioned in the Oxford "Little-Go" (Responsions) Testamur is alluded to in Bishop Cooper's book against Private Mass (published by the Parker Society). He ridicules his opponent's arguments as worthy of "a sophister in the parvyse schools." The Serjeant-at-law, in Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, had been often at the paruise. In some notes on this character in a number of the Penny Magazine for 1840 or 1841, it is farther remarked that the choristers of Norwich Cathedral were formerly taught in the parvise, i. e. porch. The chamber over a porch in some churches may have been the school meant. Instances of this arrangement were to be found at Doncaster Church (where it was used as a library), and at Sherborne Abbey Church. The porch here was Norman, and the chamber Third Pointed; and at the restoration lately effected the pitch of the roof was raised, and the chamber removed.

B. A. Oxon.

Oxford University.

I believe that the parvisus, or paradisus of the Responsions Testamur, is the pro-scholium of the divinity school, otherwise called the "pig-market," from its site having been so occupied up to the year 1554. This is said to be the locality in which the Responsions were formerly held.

It is ordered by the statutes, tit. vi.,—

"Quod priusquam quis ad Gradum Baccalaurei in Artibus admittatur, in Parviso semel Quæstionibus Magistrorum Scholarum respondeat."

However, they go on to direct, "Locus hisce Responsionibus assignetur Schola Metaphysices;" and there they are at present held. (See the Glossary to Tyrwhitt's Chaucer; and also Parker's Glossary of Architecture, ad voc. "Parvise.")

Cheverells.

The term parvise, though used in somewhat different senses by old writers, appears to mean strictly a porch or antechamber. Your correspondent Oxoniensis will find in Parker's Glossary ample information respecting this word, with references to various writers, showing the different meanings which have been attached to it. "Responsions," or the preliminary examinations at Oxford, are said to be held in parviso; that is, in the porch, as it were, or antechamber before the schools, which are the scene of the greater examinations for the degree.

H. C. K.

If your correspondent will refer to the word Parvisium, in the Glossary at the end of Watt's edition of Matthew Paris, he will find a good deal of information. To this I will add that the word is now in use in Belgium in another sense. I saw some years since, and again last summer, in a street leading out of the Grande Place, by one side of the Halle at Bruges, on a house, this notice,—

"in perviseverkoopt men drank."D. P.

Begbrook.

THE CŒNACULUM OF LIONARDO DA VINCI

(Vol. vii., pp. 524, 525.)

Mr. Smirke's paper, questioning the received opinion as to the points of time and circumstance expressed in this celebrated fresco, contains the following sentence:

"The work in question is now so generally accessible, through the medium of accurate engravings, that any one may easily exercise his own judgment on the matter."

Having within no very distant period spent an hour or two in examining the original, with copies lying close at hand for the purposes of comparison, allow me to offer you a few impressions of which, while fresh, I "made a note" in an interleaved copy of Bishop Burnet's curious Tour in Italy, which served me as a journal while abroad. Burnet mentions the Dominican Convent at Milan as in his day "very rich." My note is as follows:

"The Dominican convent is now suppressed. It is a cavalry barracks: dragoons have displaced Dominicans. There is a fine cupola to the church, the work of Bramante: in the salle or refectory of this convent was discovered, since Burnet's time, under a coat of wash or plaster, the celebrated fresco of Lionardo da Vinci, now so well known to the world by plates and copies, better finished than the original ever was, in all probability; certainly better than it is now, after abuse, neglect, damp, and, worst of all, restoring, have done their joint work upon it. A visit to this fresco disenchants one wonderfully. It is better to be satisfied with the fine engravings, and let the original live in its ideal excellence. The copyists have taken some liberties, of which these strike me as the chief:

"First, The Saviour's head is put more on one side, in what I would call a more languishing position than its actual one.

"Second, the expression of the figure seated at his left hand is quite changed. In the copies it is a grave, serious, fine face: in the original, though now indistinct, it evidently expressed 'open-mouthed horror' at the declaration, 'One of you shall betray me.'

"Third, Judas in all copies is identified not only by the held bag of money, but by the overturned saltcellar at his elbow. This last is not in the original.

"The whole fresco, though now as well kept as may be, seems spoiling fast. There is a Crucifixion at the other end of the same hall, in much better preservation, though of the same date; and the doorway which the tasteful Dominicans cut in the wall, through the bottom of the painting, is, though blocked up, still quite visible. It is but too probable that the monks valued the absurd and hideous frescoes in the cloisters outside, representing Saint Dominic's miracles! and the Virgin fishing souls out of purgatory with a rosary, beyond Lionardo's great work."

So far my original note, written without supposing that the received idea, as to the subject of the picture, had ever been questioned. In reference to the question raised, however, I will briefly say, that, as recollection serves me, it would require a well-sustained criticism to convince me that the two disciples at the Saviour's right hand were not designed to express the point of action described in the 23rd and 24th verses of chapter xiii. of St. John's Gospel. Possibly Mr. Smirke might favour us with the argument of his MSS. on the group.

A. B. R.

Belmont.

FONT INSCRIPTIONS

(Vol. vii., p. 408.)

I have in my note-book the following entries:—

Kiddington, Oxon.:

"This sacred Font Saint Edward first receaved,From womb to grace, from grace to glory wentHis virtuous life. To this fayre isle beqveth'd.Prase … and to vs bvt lent.Let this remaine the trophies of his fame;A King baptized from hence a Saint became."This Fonte came from the King's Chapell in Islip."

Newark, round the base in black letter:

"Suis . Natis . sunt . Deo . hoc . Fonte . Renati . erunt."

On a pillar adjoining the font is a brass tablet with this inscription:

"This Font was demolished by the Rebels, May 9, 1646, and rebuilt by the charity of Nicholas Ridley in 1660."

Kirton, Lincoln:

"Orate pro aia Alauni Burton qui fontem istum fieri fec. a.d. mccccv."

Clee, Lincoln:

"The Font is formed of two cylindrical parts, one placed upon the other, over which, in the shaft of the circular column, is inlaid a small piece of marble, with a Latin inscription in Saxon characters, referring to the time of King Richard, and stating it was dedicated to the Holy Trinity and St. Mary, by Hugh Bishop of Lincoln, a.d. 1192."

The above are extracts from books, not copied by me from the fonts.

F. B. Relton.

At Threckingham, Lincolnshire, round the base of the font—

"Ave Maria gratis . p . d . t."

At Little Billing, Northamptonshire,—

"Wilberthus artifex atq; cementarius hunc fabricavit, quisquis suum venit mergere corpus procul dubio capit."

J. P., Jun.

To the list of these should be added the early English font at Keysoe, Beds., noticed in the Ecclesiologist, vol. i. p. 124., and figured in Van Voorst's Baptismal Fonts. It bears the legend in Norman French:

+ "Trestui: ke par hiei passeruiPur le alme Warel prieui:Ke Deu par sa graceVerrey merci li face. Am."

Or, in modern French:

"Restez: qui par ici passerezPour l'âme de Warel priez:Que Dieu par sa graceVraie merci lui fasse. Amen."Cheverells.

BURN AT CROYDON

(Vol. vii., pp. 238. 393.)

The bourne at Croydon is one of the most remarkable of those intermitting springs which issue from the upper part of the chalk strata after long-continued rains.

All porous earth-beds are reservoirs of water, and give out their supplies more or less copiously according to their states of engorgement; and at higher or lower levels, as they are more or less replenished by rain. Rain percolates through the chalk rapidly at all times, it being greatly fissured and cavernous, and finds vent at the bottom of the hills, in ordinary seasons, in the perennial springs which issue there, at the top of the chalk marl, or of the galt (the clay so called) which underlies the chalk. But when long-continued rains have filled the fissures and caverns, and the chinks and crannies of the ordinary vents below are unequal to the drainage, the reservoir as it were overflows, and the superfluity exudes from the valleys and gullies of the upper surface; and these occasional sources continue to flow till the equilibrium is restored, and the perennial vents suffice to carry off the annual supply. Some approach to the full engorgement here spoken of takes place annually in many parts of the chalk districts, where springs break out after the autumnal and winter rains, and run themselves dry again in the course of a few months, or maybe have intermissions of a year or two, when the average falls are short. Thence it is we have so many "Winterbournes" in the counties of Wilts, Hants, and Dorset; as Winterbourne-basset, Winterbourne-gunner, Winterbourne-stoke, &c. (Vide Lewis's Topog. Dict.) The highest sources of the Test, Itchen, and some other of our southern rivers which take their rise in the chalk, are often dry for months, and their channels void of water for miles; failing altogether when the rains do not fill the neighbouring strata to repletion.

In the case of long intermissions, such as occur to the Croydon bourne, it is not wonderful that the sudden appearance of waters in considerable force, where none are usually seen to flow, should give rise to superstitious dread of coming evils. Indeed, the coincidence of the running of the bourne, a wet summer, a worse sowing-season, and a wet cold spring, may well inspire evil forebodings, and give a colourable pretext for such apprehensions as are often entertained on the occurrence of any unusual natural phenomenon. These intermittent rivulets have no affinity, as your correspondent E. G. R. supposes, to subterraneous rivers. The nearest approach to this kind of stream is to be found in the Mole, which sometimes sinks away, and leaves its channel dry between Dorking and Leatherhead, being absorbed into fissures in the chalk, and again discharged; these fissures being insufficient to receive its waters in times of more copious supply. The subterraneous rivers of more mountainous countries are also not to be included in the same category. They have a history of their own, to enlarge on which is not the business of this Note: but it may not be irrelevant to turn the attention for a moment to the use of the word bourne or burn. The former mode of spelling and pronouncing it appears to prevail in the south, and the latter in the north of England and in Scotland; both alike from the same source as the brun or brunen of Germany. The perennial bourne so often affords a convenient natural geographical boundary, and a convenient line of territorial division, that by an easy metonymy it has established itself in our language in either sense, signifying streamlet or boundary-line,—as witness the well-known lines:

"That undiscovered country, from whose bourneNo traveller returns."—Shakspeare."I know each lane, and every alley green,And every bosky bourn from side to side."—Milton.M.

CHRISTIAN NAMES

(Vol. vii., pp. 406. 488, 489.)

The opinion of your correspondents, that instances of persons having more than one Christian name before the last century are, at least, very rare, is borne out by the learned Camden, who, however, enables me to adduce two earlier instances of polyonomy than those cited by J. J. H.:

"Two Christian names," says he (Remaines concerning Britaine, p. 44.), "are rare in England, and I onely remember now his majesty, who was named Charles James, and the prince his sonne Henry Frederic; and among private men, Thomas Maria Wingfield, and Sir Thomas Posthumous Hobby."

The custom must have been still rare at the end of the eighteenth century, for, as we are informed by Moore in a note to his Fudge Family in Paris (Letter IV.):

"The late Lord C. (Castlereagh?) of Ireland had a curious theory about names; he held that every man with three names was a Jacobin. His instances in Ireland were numerous; Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Theobald Wolfe Tone, James Napper Tandy, John Philpot Curran, &c.: and in England he produced as examples, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, John Horne Tooke, Francis Burdett Jones," &c.

Perhaps the noble lord thought with Sterne in Tristram Shandy, though the nexus is not easy to discover, that "there is a strange kind of magic bias, which good or bad names irresistibly impose upon our character and conduct," or perhaps he had misread that controverted passage in Plautus (Aulular. Act II. Sc. 4.):

"Tun' trium literarum homoMe vituperas? Fur."

The custom is now almost universal; and as, according to Camden (Remaines, &c., p. 96.),

"Shortly after the Conquest it seemed a disgrace for a gentleman to have but one single name, as the meaner sort and bastards had,"

so now, the tria nomina nobiliorum have become so common, as to render the epigram upon a certain M. L-P. Saint-Florentin, of almost universal applicability as a neat and befitting epitaph.

"On ne lui avait pas épargné," says the biographer of this gentleman (Biographie Universelle, tom. xxxix. p. 573.), "les épigrammes de son vivant; il en parut encore contre lui au moment de sa mort; en voici une:—

'Ci gît un petit homme à l'air assez commun,Ayant porté trois noms, et n'en laissant aucun.'"William Bates.

Birmingham.

Leopold William Finch, fifth son of Heneage, second Earl of Nottingham, born about the year 1662, and afterwards Warden of All Souls, is an earlier instance of an English person with two Christian names than your correspondent J. J. H. has noticed.

J. B.

WEATHER RULES

(Vol. vii., p. 522.)

Your correspondent J. A., Jun., makes a Note and asks a question regarding a popular opinion prevalent in Worcestershire, on the subject of a "Sunday's moon," as being one very much addicted to rain. In Sussex that bad repute attaches to the moon that changes on Saturday:

"A Saturday's moon,If it comes once in seven years, it comes too soon."

It may be hoped that the time is not far distant when a scientific meteorology will dissipate the errors of the traditional code now in existence. Of these errors none have greater or more extensive prevalence than the superstitions regarding the influence of the moon on the atmospheric phenomena of wet and dry weather. Howard, the author of The Climate of London, after twenty years of close observation, could not determine that the moon had any perceptible influence on the weather. And the best authorities now follow, still more decidedly, in the same train.

"The change of the moon," the expression in general use in predictions of the weather, is idly and inconsiderately used by educated people, without considering that in every phase that planet is the same to us, as a material agent, except as regards the power of reflected light; and no one supposes that moonlight produces wet or dry. Why then should that point in the moon's course, which we agree to call "the new" when it begins to emerge from the sun's rays, have any influence on our weather. Twice in each revolution, when in conjunction with the sun at new, and in opposition at the full, an atmospheric spring-tide may be supposed to exist, and to exert some sort of influence. But the existence of any atmospheric tide at all is denied by some naturalists, and is at most very problematical; and the absence of regular diurnal fluctuations of the barometric pressure favours the negative of this proposition. But, granting that it were so, and that the moon, in what is conventionally called the beginning of its course, and again in the middle, at the full, did produce changes in the weather, surely the most sanguine of rational lunarians would discard the idea of one moon differing from another, except in relation to the season of the year; or that a new moon on the Sabbath day, whether Jewish or Christian, had any special quality not shared by the new moons of any other days of the week.

Such a publication as "N. & Q." is not the place to discuss fully the question of lunar influence. Your correspondent J. A., Jun., and all persons who have inconsiderately taken up the popular belief in moon-weather, will do well to consult an interesting article on this subject (I believe attributed to Sir D. Brewster) in The Monthly Chronicle for 1838; and this will also refer such inquirers to Arago's Annuaire for 1833. There may be later and completer disquisitions on the lunar influences, but they are not known to me.

M.

ROCOCO

(Vol. i., pp. 321. 356.)

This word is now receiving a curious illustration in this colony of French origin. Rococo—antiquated, old-fashioned—would seem to have become rococo itself; and in its place the negroes have adopted the word entêté, wilful, headstrong, to express, as it were, the persistence of a person in retaining anything that has gone out of fashion. This term was first applied to white hats; and the wearers of such have been assailed from every corner of the streets with the cry of "Entêté chapeau!" It was next applied to umbrellas of a strange colour (the varieties of which are almost without number in this country of the sun); and it has now been extended to every article of wearing apparel of an unfashionable or peculiar shape. A negro woman, appearing with a blue umbrella, has been followed by half a dozen black boys with the cry of "Entêté parasol!" and in order to get rid of the annoyance she had to shut the umbrella and continue her way under the broiling sun. But the term is not always used in derision. A few days ago, a young girl of colour, dressed in the extreme of the fashion, was passing along, when some bystanders began to rally her with the word "Entêté." The girl, perceiving that she was the object of their notice, turned round, and in an attitude of conscious irreproachableness, retorted with the challenge in Creole French, "Qui entêté ça?" But the smiles with which she was greeted showed her (what she had already partly suspected) that their cries of "Entêté" were intended rather to compliment her on the style of her dress.