392
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. x. NOV. w,
HELMET WORN AT FLODDEN FIELD (US
x. 270). It should, perhaps, be noted tha
though there may be a helmet said to have
been " worn by the Earl of Suffolk at the
battle of Flodden Field," yet, if it was worn
at Flodden, it cannot have been by an Ear
of Suffolk, because there was no noblemai
of that title present at the battle, nor in
fact living at the time.
Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was executed in April, 1513, for the crime o: being the King's first cousin once removed The Earl's nearest male relative, his brother Richard, who had fled to France, was at tainted, and therefore could not succeed to the title. In any case he was serving in the French army in 1513, and was certainly not at Flodden. Charles Brandon, afterward first Duke (not Earl) of Suffolk, was also in France with Henry VIII. He did not receive the title until 1514. See ' D.N.B. ' under ' Pole ' and ' Brandon.'
M. H. DODDS.
FiELDiNC4 QUERIES : SACK AND " THE USUAL WORDS (11 S. x. 209, 293). The following explanation may be offered of the passage from ' Tom Jones,' bk. ix. chap, iv., quoted by MR. DICKSON.
At the suggestion of the Serjeant, the two parties to the fight, Jones and Partridge on the one side, the landlord and Susan on the other (the landlady has retired with Mrs. Waters), are reconciled, shake hands, and cement their reconciliation with a drink. Fielding's fondness for the mock-heroic makes him describe their drinking as pour- ing a libation. When he says that the Serjeant "proposed a libation as a necessary part of the ceremony at all treaties of this kind," he is referring to the fact that the Greek word for a truce or treaty, <nrov8ai, means literally " libations." To some modern readers this may seem slightly ponderous or pedantic, like Tom Jones's reference to the Greeks and Trojans, which awakened such painful associations in Ensign Northerton's mind. Fielding had in view here the same class of readers for whom he catered when he wrote chap. viii. in bk. iv. : " A battle sung by the muse in the Homerican style, and which none but the classical reader can taste." He calls the large mug in the present passage a " bowl," as being a more dignified word, and, very probably, because Pope used it in translating Homer. See ' Iliad,' xvi. 225, where the 8ras of Achilles, from which he tised to pour libations to Zeus, appears in the English, 1. 273, as a " bowl." What is meant by " made his
libation " in the present passage is ex-
plained by Fielding himself when he says
" the present company poured the liquor
only down their throats " ; and again in
bk. x. chap, vi., where we are told that
"the serjeant and the coachman. .. .being
thoroughly reconciled, made a libation, or,
in the English phrase, drank a hearty cup
together."
" The usual words " I take to be some such formula as " Here 's to your health," " Here 's to our better acquaintance," or whatever the corresponding phrase was in Fielding's time. In any case the humour lies in the act of drinking a common pot of beer after a bout at fisticuffs being spoken of as the solemn libation at a treaty.
It seems likely that beer rather than sack was the medium of reconciliation in this case.
The sack-whey which Sophia asks for in bk. x. chap, iii., we may suppose, allowing for the slight difference in ingredients, to be not unlike the " White Wine Whey," a recipe for which may still be found in Mrs. Beeton's ' Everyday Cookery,' and which is compounded of half a pint of milk, half a glass of sherry, and sugar to taste, by the following method :
" Put the milk and wine into a small stewpan, simmer gently until the milk curdles, then strain through a fine sieve. The whey should be served hot ; the curds, the indigestible part of the milk, are not used."
With regard to Gibbon's much-quoted prophecy, Mr. Austin Dobson has pointed out that in a sense ' Tom Jones ' may be said to have already outlived the Escorial. The fable, however, of the Habsburg descent of the Earls of Denbigh has been com- pletely discredited. See, for example, Ap- pendix A to Mr. G. M. Godden's ' Henry Fielding,' 1910.
LATIN JINGLES (11 S. x. 250, 298, 337). As the rendering of a single line from an
English poet has been mentioned, one ought, I think, not to pass over the best-
oiown example among such experiments, Thomas Parnell's ' Translation of Part of
- he First Canto of the " Rape of the Lock '*
nto Leonine Verse, after the manner of the ancient Monks.'
The Archdeacon of Clogher's lines, begin- ning
t nunc dilectum speculum, pro more retectum, and ending
loria factorum temere conceditur horum, are a version of the last twenty-eight lines of the canto. EDWARD BENSLY.
