450
NOTES AND QUERIES. cio* is. v. JUNE 9, HOB.
with the Icelandic Minni, a month, influenced
by Minni, lesser, while the termination
might then be a form of the suffixed article ?
I cannot find Anglo-Saxon roots to suit, and
Norse influence is strong on the east coast.
Nassa incrassata is given in a list of Ice-
landic shells by A. C. Johansen, Copenhagen,
1901 ; but I can find no Icelandic name for
it. Will PROF SKEAT or some other throw
light on this seemingly new word ?
G. W. MURRAY.
1, Castlebar Road, Baling.
Miss METEYARD. According to the 'D.N.B.' this lady died on 4 April, 1879, at Stanley Terrace, Fentiman Road, South Lambeth. Could not the London County Council see their way to put one of their tablets on the particular house? Where was she buried ? Can any one send a copy of the inscription on her tombstone? Mr. .Roach Smith says in his 'Retrospections' that none of her friends or admirers were notified of the funeral. Is any portrait of her known other than the Fontana medallion ? T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A.
Lancaster.
BANNER OR FLAG. Can any of your readers say if there is a proper name for the banner often seen on gala days hanging by a cord from a cross pole? The lower portion of it is triangular in shape. I am unable to find anything about it in the books I have. C. H. ORFEUR.
MARY MUNDAY AT MULLION COVE. Some years ago (fifty ?) at Mullion Cove, Cornwall, the once-famed Mary Munday kept an inn, visited by Prof. Blackie and other literary lights. Can your readers say what became of her, and if the visitors' books of the inn are still in existence ? F. W. A.
GILD CHURCHES Can any readers supply a list of churches (not chapels or chantries) built and maintained by gilds in mediaeval tim es? j. B. MORRIS.
87, Holyhead Road, Coventry.
RUSKIN AND TAORMINA. It is stated in
- Sunny Sicily,' by Mrs. Alec Tweedie, that
when Ruskin was an old man, not long before he died, he told a relative of his, who chanced to be at Taormina when we were there, that the one spot on earth he would like to revisit before death claimed him for its own was Taormina."
Are there any references to Taormina in Kuskin's works or letters ?
W. A. HENDERSON. Dublin.
BLANDINA.
(10 th S. v. 409.)
I HEARD of Blandina at Lyons, and, when visiting the ancient church of St. Martin d'Ainay, saw the little crypt in which, during the persecution under Marcus Aurelius, she and Bishop Pothinus, a nonagenarian, were imprisoned before their martyrdom was com- plete. I copy the following passage from the * Epistle of the Churches of Vienne and Lyon to the Brethren in Asia and Phrygia,' which I find quoted in Hare's 'South-Eastern France ' (P- 124) :
" Blandina, bound to a stake, also was exposed to the wild beasts. She was bound in the form of a cross, and employed in ardent prayer. None of the beasts at that time touched her, so she was taken down from the stake and thrown again into prison
to be reserved for a future contest On the last
day of the show she was brought in again with Ponticus, a boy of fifteen, who had daily been brought with her to behold the sufferings of the rest. They were commanded to swear by the idols, and when the mob saw that they remained firm, and despised their threats, their fury was so excited that no mercy was shown either to the sex of the one, or the youth of the other. Their sufferings were increased by every imaginable torture, the whole chapter of agony was exhausted, but all was powerless to move them. Ponticus, encouraged by his sister to the end, at length gave up his spirit.
"Then the blessed Blandina, the last of all, having like a mother exhorted her children, and sent them before her victorious into the presence of the King, having watched over all their sufferings, prepared for the pains of death herself, rejoicing as one going to a marriage feast, not as one to be devoured by wild beasts. Having endured scourging, the tearing of beasts, and the iron chair, she was enclosed in a net and thrown to a bull, when, having been long tossed by the animal, raised beyond pain through the power of hope and realiza- tion of her fellowship with Christ, she at last expired."
ST. SWITHIN.
The following particulars about Blandina, the "martyr slave" of Ireland, appeared in The Churchman $ Shilling Magazine, xxi. (1 877), p. 411. She was carried from Ireland by the Romans, and bought by a Christian matron in Lyons, who converted her. In 177 A.D. there was a fierce persecution of the Chris- tians. Blandina was tortured by the scourge, and laid upon a red-hot gridiron, followed by barbarities " too revolting to be recorded." Amongst other fearful cruel- ties, lighted torches were held to her sides, and a lion was let loose upon her, but it is said it refused to harm her. She was then exposed to the fury of a wild bull, but the animal failed to kill her, and she finished her course of sufferings, which is said to have
