Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/396

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. XL MAY 15, 1915.


This telling of it to his wife after awakening, she observed that such a stride was enough to tear him in two. Quite amazed with her words, and deeply regretting his imprudence to have related the dream to such a simple woman, IToshio went out to the governor's house. This governor, who was very learned in physiognomy, 'had never generously treated his servant oefore. But this time he received Yoshio with exceptional cordiality, and pressed him to sit on a cushion and face to face with himself as if they were of equal rank. This made Yoshio mindful of what his wife had just uttered, and he much wondered if his master was not intending to rend him after a display of so much kindliness. Then the governor spoke to him : ' Your dream has been a very auspicious one, but you have told it to a wrong person; so now you are doomed to die in penalty, though you will become a powerful grandee for some duration.' Some time after Yoshio went to the capital, and subsequently was preferred to the high office of Dainagon ; but ultimately he was found guilty of a grave offence, and, deprived of his rank and office, he was deported to a remote province [A.D. 866], where he perished quite miserably, thus attesting the accuracy of the sub - provincial governor's prophecy." ' Uji fShui Mpnogatari,' written about "the eleventh century, ch. iv.

"Fujiwara noMorosuke (A.D. 909-60) was doubt- less an extraordinary man ; of all his wishes for posterity there was none that had not been fulfilled sooner or later. Still it is a thousand pities that he acted faultily in but one transaction. Once in his youthhood he dreamed he was standing holding in his arms the Imperial Courts, with his face towards the north, and his feet upon the Western and Eastern Grand Palaces. After awakening he re- counted it to a wiseacre lady who happened then to be in his presence, whereon she made this remark : ' Such a stride as that must have made you ache severely ! ' This ill-sorted utterance caused the happy issue of the dream to stray, so that, so powerful and so prosperous as all his descendants proved to be, he himself could not attain the regentship the highest of all the offices of imperial

investment Tradition says that the real import

of any favourable dream can be totally altered through its malinterpretation. Guard yourself, therefore, against telling your dream to any unwise person." ' Ookagami,' written in the twelfth cen- tury, art. ' Udaijin Morasuke."

Not only the Japanese of yore thus believed in the wrong exposition of a good dream bringing in a bad sequel to the dreamer, but equally they believed in the meliorating interpretation of a bad dream giving issue to his felicity. As an illustration of this I shall subjoin here my abridgment from an undated register entitled ' Chogen Mono- -gatari ' :

, " lb happened one night in the spring of A.D. Io7o that Chosokame Motochika [a warlike lord of iosa, who afterwards made himself almost the sole master of all the four provinces of Shikoku] had an unpleasant dream that he shot an arrow and saw it was fractured and the bowstring ruptured. Next morning he summoned a Shinto priest, by name feakon, and asked him to interpret it. Scarcely had he finished his relation thereof, when Sakon


gave him this answer : * Your dream is extremely propitious: your bowstring was ruptured because of the unsurpassed strength of your bow ; your arrow was fractured because of the measureless force of your shoot ; hence, should you start a war this year, no enemy could withstand your insuper- able army.' Following this advice, Motochika invaded the neighbouring provinces, and succeeded in aggrandizing his domain."

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

Is it superfluous to mention Mrs. Radcliffe and her ' Mysteries of Udolpho,' &c. ? We were informed at school fifty years ago that she made a practice of eating heavy suppers so as to dream of ghastly plots and incidents.

J. K.

Mafeking.

HOUSE OF NORMANDY (11 S. xi. 105, 198). Accounts of the family of Rolf Ganger may be found in Sir John Maclean's ' History of Trigg Minor,' vol. i. pp. 62-6 ; in Lord Craw- ford's ' Lives of the Lindsays ' (in the Appendix of which the various authorities are carefully given) ; and in ' The Gresleys of Drakelowe,' by Falconer Madan. The last- named work gives the descent as follows : Fornjot (King of Finland), Kari, Thorri, Gorr, Heiti, Svei<5i, Halfdan the Old, Ivar, Jarl of the Uplanders (Oplcendingejarl).

Rognvald riki, Jarl of both the Mcereii of Romsdal, married Hilda (or in full Ragnhilda), daughter of Hrolf Nefja, and died in 890. One of his brothers, Sigurd riki, who was the first Earl of Orkney, died in 874 ; another brother, variously called Haldruck, Malahulc, and Malahulsius, accom- panied his nephew Rolf (or Rollo) to Nor- mandy, and was the ancestor of the Da Toenis, hereditary standard-bearers to the Dukes of Normandy. As there are no written pedigrees beyond Halfdan the Old, the line cannot now be verified. Fornjot is some- times called Formioter. E. STAFFOBD.

IMAGE OF ALL SAINTS (11 S. xi. 300). In the English current in and before the six- teenth century " image " means " picture " as often as, if not more often than, it means " sculpture."

I can conceive of no better picture to adorn an altar erected to tjie glory of God and in honour of All Saints than the Van Eycks' 'Adoration of the Lamb,' in the Cathedral of St. Bavon at Ghent.

The restored altar-screens at Winchester Cathedral, at New College Chapel and All Souls' College Chapel at Oxford, at St. Albans Cathedral, and at St. Mary Overy's, now St. Saviour's Cathedral, South wark,