110
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. i. FEB. 5, 1910.
chevron between three pears or ; crest, out of
a ducal coronet a unicorn's head between
two ostrich feathers), and more particularly
of the branch of the family now partly
settled in the Levant whose arms are Erm.,
on a pale gules three pears or ; crest, a
demi-unicorn armed and maned.
G. F. ABBOTT. Royal Societies Club, St. James's Street, S.W.
SPHINX WANTED. Can any reader tell me where can be bought a Sphinx, either in metal or plaster, something like the Embankment Sphinx, small size ? Please reply direct. (Mile.) A. THIRION.
35, Paulton's Square, Chelsea, S. W.
JOHN HUNTER'S CLUB is referred to in J. F. Palmer's volume. Was it a literary or a social club ? E. O.
SEA SONGS. When, at the end of " the fifties, 1 ' I was cruising about the Mediter- ranean on one of the biggest of the old two- deckers, I was given the run of her gunroom mess. There we had a good deal of miscel- laneous singing at times, and scraps of the words and jingles of the tunes which I heard then still run in my head every now and again. There are three amongst these nearly forgotten songs which recur at inter- vals to worry me ; of these I am especially anxious to recover the words, and I shall be grateful to any of your readers who can furnish them.
The first had as its refrain : " Pick it up, pick it up," said the lady in the boat, " For I 'd rather have a guinea than a one-pound
note; Though a guinea it would sink and a pound it
would float, Yet I'd rather have a guinea than a one-pound
note."
The second had these two lines (its open- ing lines, I fancy) :
There's the captain, what is our commander ; There 's the bcrsun, and likewise the crew
The third song recounted a conversation between an old white-haired, but still festive Irish lady and a youthful lover who demanded an explanation of certain facts which he was unable to reconcile. Of this I only recal] a stanza which commenced with this couplet : "Alas!" she exclaimed, "from each day to its
morrow The hairs of my head have known nothing but
sorrow."
As my recollection is that the humours of these old-time sailors' songs, which com- mended themselves to the midshipmen then afloat, were of rather too broad and outspoken a character for reproduction in the
pages of ' N. & Q.,' I would ask any one who
is kind enough to supply copies of the words
to send them to me direct.
FRANK REDE FOWKE. 24, Netherton Grove, Chelsea, S.W.
BEN JONSON IN WESTMINSTER
ABBEY.
(11 S. i. 67.) DEAN STANLEY in his ' Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey,' 3rd ed., 1869, pp. 299-300, says :
' According to local tradition, he asked the King [Charles I.] to grant him a favour. ' What s it ? ' said the King. ' Give me eighteen nches of square ground.' ' Where ? ' asked the King. ' In Westminster Abbey.' This is one explanation given of the story that he was buried standing upright. Another is that it was with a view to his readiness for the Resurrection. He lies buried in the north aisle [of the Nave], in the path of square stone [the rest is lozenge], opposite to the scutcheon of Robertas de Bos, with this inscription only on him, in a pavement- square of blue marble, about fourteen inches square,
O rare Ben Johnson !* which was done at the charge of Jack Young (afterwards knighted), who, walking there when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteen- pence to cut it.'t
" This stone was taken up when, in 1821, the Nave was repaved, and was brought back from the stoneyard of the clerk of the works, in the time of Dean Buckland, by whose order it was fitted into its present place in the north wall of the Nave. Meanwhile, the original spot had been marked by a small triangular lozenge, with a copy of the old inscription.
" When, in 1849, Sir Bobert Wilson was buried close by, the loose sand of Jonson's grave (to use the expression of the clerk of the works who superintended the operation) ' rippled in like a quicksand,' and the clerk ' saw the two leg-bones of Jonson, fixed bolt upright in the sand, as though the body had been buried in the upright position ; and the skull came rolling down among the sand, from a position above the leg-bones, to the bottom of the newly-made grave. There was still hair upon it, and it was of a red colour.' It was seen once more on the digging of John Hunter's grave ; and ' it had still traces of red hair upon it.' "J
" * He is called Johnson on the gravestone,
as also in Clarendon's ' Life ' (i. 34), where see his
character.
" f Aubrey's ' Lives,' 414. His burial is not in the Begister.
" J For full details, see Mr. Frank Buckland's interesting narrative in ' Curiosities of Natural History ' (3rd series), ii. 181-189. It would seem that, in spite of some misadventures, the skull still remains in the grave."
