346
NOTES AND QUERIES. [)2s.i. APKIL 29, me.
experience, for he certainly suffered much
through the parsimonious and niggardly spirit
of Elizabeth, having the greatest difficulty in
obtaining from her the means of keeping
himself and his army from absolute starva-
tion, even after having spent his own money
on his sovereign's and country's welfare.
The Queen did, however, pay the expenses of
.his funeral from her own purse.
CHARLES DRUBY. 12 Ranmoor Cliffe Road, Sheffield.
FOLK-LORE : REMEDY FOR " WASTING."
.'At Magdalen Laver in Essex I received a
<jure for wasting in young children that I
communicated to a learned member of the
Faculty of Medicine, but of which he has not
availed himself : to tie the cast hackle of a
snake round the baby's body. Is the
.remedy known ? MARGARET W.
IRISH FLAG DAY. St. Patrick's Day (March 17) was this year declared to be
- ' Irish Flag Day," when many thousands
of small flags were sold about the streets of London and elsewhere as buttonholes for charitable purposes connected with Irish soldiers. But I see in the daily press that a question has been raised as to whether the emblem upon these flags does rightly Tepresent the Irish insignia in the British crown, either as a component part of the arms of the United Kingdom or as a badge. The principal point seems to have been that the harp shown on the flag is represented as uncrowned.
There is a very interesting letter from Lord MacDonnell in The Morning Post of March 24, which sets out, as the result of an appeal to the College of Arms, what is the proper Tendering both of the arms of Ireland and of the badge of Ireland, and Lord Mac- Donnell maintains the correctness of what was done in the matter of these flags. Of course, everybody with any knowledge of heraldry, or who has taken any interest in regal armorial insignia, will egree with the opinion vouchsafed from the Heralds' College as to what is the proper representa- tion of the arms and of the badge of Ireland ; but there may be those for whom it will be an advantage if Lord MacDonnell' s letter is enshrined in the pages of ' N. & Q.' I omit the introductory part of it.
" The appeal of the organizers of the St. Patrick's Day sale was made on behalf of Irish soldiers of all Irish divisions, without distinction of religious or political creed or class. These organizers were warned that the use of the un- crowned harp on the Irish flag might be objected ^to, and on their behalf I sought to obtain th e 1 most authoritative inf ormation as to what the
flag really is. I need not repeat here what I
related yesterday in my letter to your contem-
porary The Daily Express as to the steps I
X)ok in order to make sure that the flag purposed
X) be sold on the London streets on St. Patrick's
Day should be free from objection. Since then
[ have learned, through the courtesy of one of
bhe Heralds of the College of Arms, that the Earl
Marshal, and not the Admiralty (as I had erro-
aeously understood), was the proper authority
bo decide on this flag question. Accordingly I
have to-day consulted the Garter King of Arms
upon it. The result, expressed in the Herald's
words, is this :
" ' 1. That the arms (and therefore the flag) of Ireland is a gold harp with silver strings on a blue ground.
" ' 2. That the badge of Ireland is a crowned harp ; that this badge is " one of the ornaments of his Majesty's State " ; in other words, is one of the King's badges, and, like other parts of the King's personal heraldic insignia, cannot be used for other purposes without his consent.'
" This fully authoritative statement confirms what I have already written on this subject. May I venture to surmise that the Duchess of Abercorn has confused the quartering of the Royal Standard with the King's Irish badge (a crowned harp, as the English badge is a crowned rose, and the Scotch badge a crowned thistle) ?
" But the badges are purely personal insignia and entirely unconnected with the quartering which, when detached, forms the flag. The Irish quartering of the Royal Standard has never, from the earliest times, exhibited the crown. The present Standard, with the badges, included in the Royal insignia, was fixed at the time of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland by Order in Council, which I was permitted to read at the College of Arms, and it would be entirely wrong to introduce the crown into it, and there- fore wrong to introduce the crown into the flag. Indeed, any such tampering with the flag would be a flagrant invasion of the King's prerogative.
" Yours, &c.,
" MACDONNELL.
" 3 Buckingham Gate, March 23." I would like, however, to point out to Lord MacDonnell that the " Irish flags " that were issued last month, as I have seen them, represent an uncrowned harp on a green ground, so that, so far as I can see, they are correct neither as part of the Imperial arms (which are on an azure field), nor as a badge, being uncrowned.
J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.
KILIMANJARO. A London magazine in giving recently an illustration of this mountain, fell into an error in stating that its first ascent was made by Meyer in 1889. The Rev. Charles New, who in 1861 went to Africa as the representative of the United Methodist Free Church Conference held at Manchester under the presidency of Mr. C. Cheetham of Heywood the previous year, gives among other illustrations in his 1 Wanderings in Africa ' (a portly volume of
