210
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 e. xn. SEPT. n, 1915.
EPITAPHS: WINTERTON, LINCS (11 S. xii.
118). The lines,
So thou, with sails how swift ! hast reached the
shore,
Where tempests never beat nor billows roar," are in Cowper's poem * On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture.' In Dr. Aikin's ' British Poets," 1829, a foot-note attributes the line placed by Cowper within inverted commas to Dr. Samuel Garth, the physician- poet (d. 1718). W. B. H.
"HOMO BULLA" (11 S. xii. 85, 145). With reference to those interesting replies, it may be profitable to tack on what the Hebrews have said on the subject. My extract is taken from the Ritual of the New Year and JDay of Atonement Services, and is just the portion alloted to the Chief Cantor, who reserves all his melodic science for due rendering of this pathetic part, when there is not a dry eye anywhere in the synagogue to be found :
" Granted Thou hast created them and knowest their structure, which is of flesh and blood. Yea, the foundation of man is dust, and his end is dust. With his soul's wastage getteth he his bread. He is like to a fragile potsherd, to the grass that withereth, to a fading bloom, to a shadow that passeth, to the cloud that_vanisheth, to the restless wind, to the flying dust, and to a dream that speedeth away."
M. L. R. BRESLAR.
South Hackney.
TRANSLATION OF VERLAINE WANTED (11 S. xii. 160). See The Academy, vol. Ivi. p. 414. In some respects the poem which received the prize it was by Nora Hopper, I think- was not so satisfactory as the version by W. : W. T. (Newcastle). It seems impossible to make an adequate rendering of the French lines. M. P.
There is a version of this poem in Ernest Dowson's collected * Poems ' (John Lane). It begins,
The sky is up above the roof So blue, so soft.
REGINALD HOWITT. Nottingham.
JAMES HOOK AND HIS WIVES (US. xii. 119, 163). I think there must be an error in MR. FRED. E. BOLT'S answer to my query. James Hook's first wife, nee Madden, authoress of ' The Double Dis- guise,' died at South Lambeth on 18 Oct., 1805. I am anxious to discover her Chris- tian name, and also the Christian name and surname of James Hook's second wife, who is said to have survived until 5 April, 1873. HORACE BLEACKLEY.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF IRISH COUNTIES AND
TOWNS (11 S. xi. 103, 183, 315; xii. 24).
May I be permitted to add to MR. MAC-
ARTHUR'S ' Bibliography of Histories of Irish
Counties and Towns '" the extremely in-
teresting ' History of Pettigoe, co. Donegal,'
by Mr. Robert Read, which ran in the
columns of the Enniskillen Impartial Re-
porter about ten or fifteen years ago ? I do
not think it has so far been published in
book-form. S. J. CRAWFORD.
Madras Christian College.
0n
Folk- Lore Notes. Vol. II. Konkan. Compiled,
from Materials collected by the late A. M. T.
Jackson, Indian Civil Service,by R. E. Enthoven,
C.I.E., l.C.S. (Mazgaon, Bombay, British India
Press ; London, Kegan Paul & Co., 3s. Qd.
net.)
THIS collection of folk-lore has the merit of revealing both the superficial differences and the underlying resemblances which are found to exist whenever the village credulities of India can be compared with our own European super- stitions. With us a temperate climate, in com- bination with the checks imposed by a religion which even in its popularized forms has to some degree bridled vain imagination, seems to have hindered the expansion of conceptions which have never endured restraint or frustration in India. The folk-lore collected in the volume before us clearly forms part of a highly evolved and complicated body of belief, by the side of which the theories of Spain, France, Italy, or Greece, heterogeneous as their various sources may be, appear comparatively simple. Nevertheless, parallels between East and West may frequently be discovered. In India godlings and ancestors occupy the position filled by popular saints in Barcelona, Marseilles, Naples, or Corinth ; and in some instances the thoughts of the region north of the Mediterranean and the thoughts of the region south of the Himalayas have followed much the same lines, if, indeed, some of the convictions common to both were not arrived at before the Aryan peoples parted from each other. It has, indeed, been said that thejmentality of the Orient and the Occident was the same till the Renaissance.
Whether this be strictly true or not, the folk- mind of the two seems still to work much in the same way. For instance, the beliefs connected with the heavenly bodies are not identical, but still comparable. The ' Yoga Sutras ' of Patanjali prohibit a man from looking at the setting sun, and at Kolaba the rainbow or the fall of shooting stars should not be regarded ; while beliefs of European origin teach that to point at the moon, stars, or rainbow is very unlucky. Generally speaking, eclipses are of evil omen in both East and West, yet " the people of the Thana district believe that corn, grows abundantly in a year of many eclipses," and " the Konkan villagers, on an eclipse day, strike barren trees with a pestle, in order that they may bear fruits and flowers." Planets and stars are worshipped by the Hindus,
