426
NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. in. JUNE 3, 1911.
' THE BALLAD OF SPLENDID SILENCE.'
Miss Edith Nesbit (Mrs. Hubert Bland)
in Longman's Magazine for April, 1887,
and also in her ' Leaves of Life ' (London,
1888), published a touching poem about the
sad case of one Ferencz (Francis) Renyi, a
Hungarian hero, who in 1849 is said to have
been dragged before the notorious Austrian
general Haynau. In order to wrench from
him some information about the hiding-
places of his fellow-rebels, the general had
Renyi' s aged mother, his sister, and finally
his sweetheart shot before his eyes. Accord-
ing to the ballad, Renyi kept silence through-
out the ordeal, but finally, with a super-
human effort, burst his bonds and rushed
towards the general. Suddenly he halted,
his lips opened, and the splendid silence was
broken by the awful laugh of a raving
maniac.
Mr. W. B. Yeats has also a poem on the subject, which originally appeared in The Boston Pilot about 1887, and subsequently in his first book of verse, ' The Wanderings of Oisin, and other Poems,' in 1889.
Both poems were based, I was told by the authors, upon an account published in The Pall Mall Budget of 23 September, 1886, under the title of * A Hungarian Hero of 1848,' and taken from the Petit Parisien, which in its turn quoted Hungarian papers for its authority. According to these, Renyi had then just died in the Central Lunatic Asylum at Budapest, an inmate of which he had been for 37 years.
I made inquiries about Francis Renyi in 1904, when I first came across his name, but could find out nothing about him. Everybody seemed to have forgotten him, and one old gentleman at Nagyvarad, who was thoroughly conversant with, and a leading authority on, the history of the eventful two years 1848-9, at once declared the hero to be a myth.
Dr. Ban of Budapest, who has now taken up the subject again, informs me that they know nothing about Ferencz Renyi at the Central Lunatic Asylum, where, as already . stated, he is supposed to have lived so many years and died.
Dr. Ban has recently translated into Hungarian a Finnish poem on the same subject by Julius Krohn (" Suonio "), accord- ing to whose son the account of the episode was taken by the poet between 1885 and 1888 from the Swedish MorgenUadet, which no doubt got it from an English or French source.
The next step would be to search the files of the Petit Parisien to see whether, any
special Hungarian paper is quoted that
would enable one to trace the legend to
its fountain head. Some reader of L/Inter-
mediaire may be able to help us.
L. L. K.
SIGNS OF OLD LONDON. (See 11 S. i. 402, 465 ; ii. 323 ; iii. 64.) The following early sign references are extracted from the P.R.O. list of Early Chancery Proceedings, vol. iv., covering the period 1500-15, and being in rough chronological arrangement. Cock and Hind (brewhouse) without Cripplegate- " Charyet " (messuage), Fleet Street. Swan (messuage), parish of St. Michael Bassishaw. " Hond " (messuage), Thames Street. Crown (messuage), parish of St. Ewin beside
Newgate. Hart's Horn (brewhouse), " Snorehill," parish of
St. Sepulchre.
Green Hall, St. Paul's Churchyard. Lion, Brentford. Crown, Brentford. Pope's Head, Lombard Street. "Fb
ynthall " (tenement), London (sic)
i (messuage), Cheapside. " Bosse " (tenement and dyehouse), Paul's
King's Head (messuage), Cheapside.
- d
Wharf.
Salutation (messuage and bakehouse), St. Alban's,
Wood Street.
King's Head (wine tavern), Cheap. Saracen's Head, Carter Lane. Ship (inn), parish of St. Clement Danes. " Willoghbisyn " (inn), Old Bailey. Boar's Head (do.), St. Sepulchre's. Maidenhead (messuage), Mark Lane. Swan (do.), St. Giles, Cripplegate. Black Horse Inn, Fleet Street. Salutation, London (sic).
It will be gathered from this and former lists that the Chancery records are rich in interesting and valuable references to London topography. WILLIAM MCMURRAY.
MATHEMATICAL TERMS NOT IN THE
- N.E.D.' The following well-known mathe-
matical terms are not to be found in the ' N.E.D.' : cross-axis and cross-centre (e.g., Filon's ' Protective Geometry'), homothetic, rdbat, rdbatting, rabatment (cf. Filon).
R. C. ARCHIBALD.
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
TIGER OR ARCTIA CAJA MOTH. This in- teresting and beautiful insect has a habit which, so far as I know, is not followed by any of the other English Lepidoptera. When in the early autumn they emerge from the chrysalis state two of them, male and female, usually appear at the very same time, and are stationed near each other before they take wing. I have observed this very often, but have never seen the fact mentioned in any of the books on Lepidoptera that I have consulted. L. S. M.
