Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/85

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ios. ii. JULY SUDD*.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


65


enabled to suggest that the following is what Lord Dartmouth had in mind :

A SONG. When Aurelia first I courted,

She had Youth and Beauty too, Killing Pleasures vrhen she sported,

And her Charms were ever new ; Conquering Time doth now deceive her,

Which her glories did uphold, All her Arts can ne'r retrieve her, Poor Aurelia '# growing old.

The airy Spirits which invited,

Are retir d and move no more ; And those Eyes are now benighted,

Which were Comets heretofore. Want of these abate [sic] her merits

Yet 1 've passion for her Name, Only kind and am'rous Spirits ;

Kindle and maintain a flame.

This is to be found among * Songs in Fashion, Since the publishing of the last New Academy of Complements,' in Head's 'The Canting Academy,' second edit., 1674, p. 142.

ITA TESTOR.

LEONARD Cox. According to the 'D.N.B.' Cox graduated at the beginning of the sixteenth century at Cambridge, removed to Oxford in 1528, and about 1546 travelled on the Continent, visiting the Universities of Paris, Wittenberg, Prague, and Cracow (Leland, 'Encomia Illustrium Virorum,' p. 50). If the latter date is correct, this was his second tour on the Continent, because he was at Locse (Leutschovia) in Northern Hungary in 1520, according to Sperfogel's * Chronicle ' :

" Eodem anno feria sexta ante Lsetare [16 March] D. M. Johann Henckel plebanus Leutschov. una cum judice et juratis civibus rectorem scholse egregium Leonhardum Coxum de Anglia poetam laureatum installarunt, biennio qui elapso schol Cassoviensis Rector factus est. ' Monumenta Hungarise Archseologica,' iii., Henszlmann's article, p. 77 (Brit. Alus. pressmark Ac. 826/6).

John Henckel, the friend of Erasmus and Melanchthon, was plebanus at Locse from 1513 to 1522. He became subsequently court chaplain of Mary, Queen of Hungary, sister of Charles V.

The pronoun qui undoubtedly refers to Cox, and thus we learn the news also that in 1522 he was made the head master of the school at Kassa, another city in the north of Hungary. L. L. K.

DIADEMS. In the Daily Chronicle of the 14th inst. is the following protest against " the absurd custom " of calling diamond diadems tiaras :

" There is, of course, only one tiara in the world, and that is the Pope's, and even he does not wear it very often. It is quite a distinctive crown, triple


in form, and in several ways symbolical. What is the matter with the pretty word diadem, or the still better one carcanet, with its reminiscence of that splendid line

A captain jewel in the carcanet ? "

A. N. Q, [The Globe edition gives the line as

Or captain jewels in the carcanet.]

"RIGADOON." In an article in the July number of the Nineteenth, Centum/, Lady Currie quotes the lines from Wilde's * Ballade- of Reading Jail ' :

They mocked the moon in a rigadoon Of delicate turn and twist,

and asks, " What is a rigadoon ? "

Rigadoon, according to Funk's * Standard Dictionary,' 1902, is (1) an old, gay, quick dance for two, originating, probably, in Provence, also the music of such a dance ; (2) formerly, a beat of the drum, used in the French army when culprits were marching to punishment (Fr. rigodon, a dance).

JOHN HEBB. [See PROF. SKEAT'S note on the word, 10 th S. i. 4.]

FOOTPRINTS OF THE GODS. (See 9 th S. vi. 163, 223, 322, 391 ; vii. 233 ; xi. 375.) I should like to add to my previous articles the following fragments :

Twan Ching-Shih (d. 863 A.D.) says in his ' Yu-yang-tsah-tsu,' Japanese edition, 1697, torn. i. fol. 9a:

" In modern times it is a marriage custom for

the bridegroom's parents to come out of a side gate and enter through the main gate just after the bride has entered it, saying that they ought thus to tread on her footprints."

To judge from similar cases I have quoted previously, this seems to imply that the relatives are more closely connected by uniting their footsteps.

The same work, torn. xix. fol. 6 a, states:

" If a man wishes the egg-plant to fruit abundantly, he should wait till it begins to blossom, and then cover a footpath with its leaves, scattering ashes over them to receive men's steps." This indicates the Chinese belief that a man's foot possesses a mysterious ability to impart his generative power to the plants.

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Mount Nachi, Kii, Japan.

A CABYLE. Readers of Dr. William Beattie's * Life and Letters of Thomas Camp- bell' will probably chance on the entry " Carlyle, Thomas," when scanning the useful index with which that work is furnished. The present writer made the acquaintance of this particular reference long ago, but ignored it, as one is prone to do with what is not immediately to the purpose. Recently, how-