476
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. x. DEC. 12,
1909 ed., confuses the author with the
author of ' The History of Wales,' 1786, &c.,
who was the Rsv. William Warrington. The
Rev. George Warrington may be the subject
of an obituary notice in The Gentleman's
Magazine for September, 1830, which de-
scribes its subject as
" Rector of Pleasley, Derbyshire, to which he was presented in 1793 by B. Thornhill, Esq., and Vicar of Hope, in the same county, and a Canon in the Cathedral of St. Asaph, to which he was instituted in 1791."
A large woodcut illustration of the Xannau Oak is in The Saturday Magazine for 11 Aug., 1832. W. B. H.
GERMAN STREET-NAMES (11 S. x. 409). Friedrich Wilhelm Karl (1754-1816) suc- c?eded his father as Duke Friedrich II. of Wiirttemberg in 1797, and assumed the title of King Friedrich I. on 1 Jan., 1806. In 1797, during his father's lifetime, he married, as his second wife, Charlotte Augusta Matilda (1766-1828), Princess Royal of England and eldest daughter of George III. Was not Wirtemberg Street so called after this queen ? Her Christian name, Char- lotte, would hardly have been distinctive enough, as it must have suggested the wife of George III. or the daughter of George IV. EDWARD BENSLY.
MEDICINAL MUMMIES (11 S. ix. 67, 70, 115, 157, 195 ? 316; x. 176, 234). Baron C. A. de Bode's ' Travels in Luristan and Arabistan,' London, 1845, vol. i. p. 301, has this passag3 :
" Near the straits of Tengi-Teko, from whence the Kurdistan river issues into the plain above the ruins of Arrajan, and not far from the village of Peshker, is a fissure high up in the mountains, out of which runs a black substance resembling pitch, which is gathered by the natives, and is much esteemed in Persia for its healing qualities, especially for bruises and fractures. It is called Mumid, and sometimes Miimia-i-Na'i, from the name of the village, Nal-deh, which lies at the foot of these mountains. The fissure was doubt- less originally produced by a volcano now extinct. At the time Sbiraz was visited by an earthquake
(25 or 30 years ago) the rent of the hill from
whence the mumid oozed out sparingly was widened, and since that time it runs out more abundantly, but the quality is said to be dete- riorated."
In a note on p. 324 we read :
" May not this mumid be the gum mentioned by Dioscorides (iii. 99), which was obtained from Persia, of singularly healing qualities, and hence named Sarcocolla 1
" The author of these pages has himself experi- enced the efficacy of the Persian mumid on apply- ing it to a bruised side occasioned by a fall down some rocky cliffs. A piece of the hard black sub- stance of which it consists is mixed with melted
sheep's fat, and while hot the bruised part of the
body is well rubbed with it.
" According to Sir William Ouseley, the only- genuine mum-i-ay is produced in the Darabjird district, its name signifying ' the wax of a " village called Ayi.' And according to Comte Ferrieres Sauvebceuf, the mummiayi was usually among the choicest presents made by the Persian sovereigns to their neighbouring allies. Thus, Ali Murad Khan sent about one ounce of this mummy contained in a golden box to the Empress of Russia (see his ' Me'moires Historiques, Poli- tiques, et Geographiques des Voyages,' torn. iii. p. 33, Paris, 1790)."
The following account occurs in Robert Shaw's ' Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand, and Kashghar,' London, 1871, p. 352 :
" Kashghar, April 4 [1869]. Sarda's friend reports that in the time of the Chinese they used to extract ' moomiai ' from the heads of slaves t ' Moomiai ' is a mysterious drug, which, according to Oriental superstition, is an infallible cure for every wound and disease. All conquerors (even the English) are accused of sacrificing prisoners to obtain it. Sarda's friend says that he heard the following story apropos of ' moomiai ' from an escaped slave, who made his way from Yarkand back to his home in Gilgit some years ago. This slave and twenty more had been put into a garden to eat their fill of grapes for twenty days. He had seen the roasting-pans over which the victims are suspended head downwards, while their skulls are gashed with razors to let the ' moomiai ' drop out into the red-hot pans ! He and others contrived to make their escape. It is supposed the others were converted into ' moomiai ' ! "
In China the Egyptian mummy is called " Muh-nai-i." It is first described in Teou Kiu-Ching's ' Cheh-Kang-luh,' finished in A.D. 1366, as follows :
" In the country of Tien-Fang there is some- times a septuagenarian or octogenarian who eagerly wishes to devote his own body into the benefit of others. Such old man shuns all sorts of food and drink except honey, which not only he does eat, but also washes himself with. After some months' practice thus he excretes nothing but honey. When he dies, people put his body in a stone coffin filled with honey, engrave it with the date, and bury it. A century after, it is opened, and the corpse is found to have turned into a melligenous drug, which, when internally taken in a small quantity, instantaneously heals fractures and contusions. It is not abundantly procurable even in that country, its other name being ' Honey-Man ' (Mih-jin)."
KUMAGUSU MlXAKATA.
Tanabe, Kii, Japan.
"YARDLAXD" (11 S. x. 429). In 1675 " one half -yard of meadow and pasture ground in the fields of Shottery," near Stratford-on-Avon, divided into detached strips scattered over the parish, was mort- gaged to Henry Freeman. There is no doubt that the term " yardland " (virgata terra?) signified a different quantity in various places, but I am unaware of any evidence
