456
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL JUNK :>,
Religions,' I " suffered from headaches, and
developed a very poor and polysyllabic
state of health." The book's big words and
confused ideas caused a mental state
transiently too painful to be brought about
frequently. ROCKINGHAM.
Boston, Mass.
ABDUL THE DAMNED (10 S. xi. 410). Mr. William Watson in his sonnet-sequence
- The Purple East ' ended one of his sonnets
with the line
Abdul the Damned on his infernal throne. JOHN B. WAINEWBIGHT.
Surely the author of the phrase is Mr. William Watson, who begins the poem ' To the Sultan ' in ' The Year of Shame,' 1897, Caliph, I did thee wrong. I hailed thee late " Abdul the Damned."
LAWRENCE PHILLIPS. Sibstone Rectory, Atherstone.
"STORM IN A TEACUP" (10 S. xi. 388). Athenaeus in his celebrated work ' Dei- pnosophistae ' (viii. 19) represents the flute- player Dorion ridiculing Timotheos,"a virtuoso on the zither, who wished to imitate a storm at sea on his instrument : "I have heard a greater storm in a boiling pot."
J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.
The following may be of interest : " Excitabat enini fluctus in simpulo, ut dicitur, Gratidius quos post n'lius ejus Marius in JEeieo excitavit Mari."
Cicero, 'De Legibup, 1 iii. 16 (191b). C. JOHNSON.
FIG TREES : PAPAW : MATURING MEAT (10 S. ix. 389 ; x. 53, 96, 453). Although I have never heard of fig trees being used for the purpose of maturing meat in the way mentioned by your correspondents, I have, both in Fiji and in the West Indies, heard that meat hung up in or underneath a papaw tree will become tender. I believe, however, that the more modern way in both places is for the meat to be wrapped up overnight, or for some hours, in the leaves of the papaw, when the desired effect will be obtained.
It is curious that whilst the papaw (Canca papaya) is generally spoken of in Fiji as the " mummy-apple "and as a truit is, I think, superior to its West Indian fellow the "mammy apple" (Mammea amencana) in the West Indies is quite a different kind of fruit, and as a tree some- times grows to a considerable size.
A f . , T J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.
Antigua, W.I.
SHYLOCK TRACT (10 S. ix. 269). I have
ust come across the following verses on the
ast page of a small quarto tract entitled A New Bloody Almanack for this insuing ear 1645,' &c. The name of the author
nay be of some interest to students of
Shakespeare :
'rophesy found out by the fall of a wall, at | S e Denins, written a hundred Yeares agone by | Caleb Shilok an auntient Jew. eere sixteene hundred five,
Fhe People that are then alive,
Of warres and troubles they shall heare
And put them in a deadly feare.
Vlortall warres then shall wound,
Spread over Christian ground ;
Dhe raging Turke vowes to come,
Into all parts of Christendome,
Bole Monarch of the world to be,
By Mahomet he vaunts soundly,
Some certaine yeers he shall beare sway.
Yet God will have his church alway :
Next Antichrist with criple [triple ?] Crowne,
And Babels Hore be troden downe :
The calling of the ancient Jewes
That did the Lord of Lords refuse,
Vnto the sheep-fold home shall come,
That strayed haue long time from home :
One Shep-herd then, one flock, one fold shall be,
So ends the worlds Catastophree [sic].
ISRAEL SOLOMONS. 91, Portsdown Road, W.
ROAST PIGS CRYING " WHO 'LL EAT ME ?" (10 S. xi. 250,296.) I think the first occurrence of this motif in literature is in the fragment of Teleclides's ' Amphictyones ' (middle of fifth century B.C.) preserved in Athenaeus, vi. 95. The extracts from Cratinus and Crates given with it show that satire on the extravagant social demands of the Athenian democracy had become trite long before Aristophanes, and was veiled in descriptions of the past " Golden Age."
FORREST MORGAN.
Hartford, Conn.
CARLYLE ON THE GRIFFIN : HIPPOGRIFF (10 S. x. 509; xi. 114). Inasmuch as the fabulous griffin was a combination of lion and eagle, both predatory, many writers have described it as carnivorous. The following is from Guerber's ' Legends of the Middle Ages,' p. 23 :
" The poem opens by telling us that Hageii was the son of Sigeband, King of Ireland, which was evidently a place in Holland, and not the well- known Emerald Isle. During a great feast, when countless guests were assembled around his father's hospitable board, this prince, who was then but seven years of age, was seized by a griffin and rapidly borne away. The cries of the child, and the arrows of Sigeband's men at arms, were equally ineffectual in checking the griffin, which flew over land and sea, and finally deposited its prey in its nest on the top of a great cliff on a
