10 s. VIIL JULY is, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
35
slightly reddish tinge. It moves slowly thirty to
forty feet above the ground, and vacillates irre
gularly. When it falls, it breaks, loses light, and
looks like a gluten-cake boiled to excess. Where it
has fallen, a host of small black beetles is found, in
the shape of small chafers or whirl-wigs, but their
exact nature is unknown. Sometimes there is
person conscious at the time of the exit of his owi
4 soul,' and talking about something which he has,
just felt going out of one of his ears. Such a one
will die a few days or more than ten days after
the event. It must not be presumed, however, thai
every dying man's ' soul ' has necessarily to appear
out ot his body." Terashima, 'Wakan San sa
Dzue,' 1713, reprint 1906, p. 633.
_In another Japanese work, ' Shukai Sho, 1591, tome i. chap, xix., any one who may happen to behold a hitotama unexpectedly, is instructed to fasten at once the lower corner of his or her garment, uttering at the same time a folk- verse meaning " A sou] have I seen now, though knowing not whose it is ; yet I assure you I've stayed it, tied in my garment." Cf. my letter ' On Chinese Beliefs about the North ' in Nature S^Nov., 1894, p. 32.
KlTMAGTJStr MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.
KIBKSTEAD CHAPEL, LINCS (10 S. vii. -For a ' Memoir relating to the Estate at Kirkstead, in Lincolnshire, lately re- covered to the Dissenters,' see The Monthly Repository, 1813, p. 81 et seq. ; for further particulars see ' Lincoln,' by John Saunders, jun., 1834, ii, 79 ; and for previously un- printed matter, and black-and-white draw- ings, see Antiquarian Notes, 1904, vol. iii. p. 77 et seq. For the ministerial succession, and photograph of interior of the chapel ttaken through the keyhole !), see ' Vestiges of Protestant Dissent,' 1897, pp. 123-4. MB. HEBB will find copies of the Repository and of ' Vestiges ' issued only to sub- scribers at Dr. Williams's Library, Gordon Square ; and of Antiquarian Notes at the Omldhall Library. The large estate and the chapel, opened in 1821, have from that time been in Unitarian hands. Dr. John Taylor, the eminent Hebraist, was minister in the abbey chapel from 1715 to 1733. The present minister to the congregation is the venerable and venerated Rev. Robert Holden, who was appointed to the charge in 1858. GEO. EYBE EVANS.
Ty Tnngad, Aberystwyth.
"HOBSSEKYNS" (10 S. vii. 425). Your correspondent apparently reads the diminu- tive -kin in the above. The suffix is the modern -kind, the meaning of the testator having been to divide the horses of other description than those named. Had he
lived in an earlier age, he woujd have written
" other kyns hors," and, in a still earlier,
" 65res ciinnes hors," where " kyns " is the
gen. sing. H. P. L.
PBINCESS ROYAL : EABLIEST USE OF THE TITLE (10 S. vii. 469). I cannot say when the Princess Mary, daughter of King Charles I., first bore the title ; but she is referred to as Princess Royal from 1647 onwards in the ' Calendars of State Papers.' See, e.g., ' Cal. S. P. Dom., 1645-7,' at pp. 525, 577, and ' Cal. S. P. Dom., 1660-61,' at p. 52. JOHN B. WAINEWBIGHT.
In Miss Strickland's ' Tudor and Stuart Princesses,' in the original preface to the ' Stuart Princesses,' it is stated that the eldest daughter of King Charles I. was the first lady who inherited the title of Princess Royal of Great Britain at her birth, and this she never relinquished.
R. J. FYNMOBE. Sandgate.
The distinction between the eldest daughter of the king and her sisters dates back at least to 1350, though the title of Princess Royal does not. The Act 25 Ed. III. st. 5, cap. 2, declares the offences which are to be adjudged treason, and one of them is "si homme violast la compaigne le Roi on leisnesce fill le Roi nient marie " (if any one shall violate the king's consort or his eldest daughter unmarried).
The reason for the distinction lies in the fact that the eldest daughter may possibly inherit the crown on failure of male issue, and is therefore regarded by the law with greater respect than her sisters. R. S. B.
" GULA AUGUSTI " (10 S. v. 408, 499 ; vi. 15, 72, 135; vii. 257, 313, 394). The various names by which the August festival was known point to a time long anterior
- o these names, when the festival was
selebrated in Celtic countries. August was hen one of the quarter seasons of the old Celtic year, when the cattle were passed hrough fire, and various fire rites were jerformed to secure the fertility of the land and crops.
Anatole le Braz in ' The Land of Pardons ' describes in a very graphic manner a survival of this ancient custom ; and it is a significant 'act that though the present ceremony takes place on St. John the Baptist's Day (24 June),
- he first day of August was the original day
on which the miraculous transportation of he finger of St. John took place from Normandy to Traoun Meriadec, in Brittany,
