12 S. III. MAY, 1917.]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
297
ON^A LEGEND USED BY SHAKESPEARE.
A traditional rather than a literary source
can sometimes be found for legends re-
ferred to by Shakespeare in his plays. In
a previous number of ' N. & Q.' (ante,
p. 168), I indicated the essentially popular
character of the legend of Herod's cock,
which, it is said, crew on the night of our
Saviour's birth. The first reference to this
legend is in an interpolation in the writings
of Nicodemus, which have been printed in
Tischendorf's ' Evangelia Apocrypha.' Like
many apocryphal legends it became current
in popular lore, and it is possibly as an oral
tradition that Shakespeare refers to it in
the lines in ' Hamlet ' :
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated The bird of dawning singeth all night long.
It will be noticed that Shakespeare writes " some say," thus indicating an oral rather than a written source. That the legend was incorporated into English tradition is to be inferred from the' existence of the early ballad of St. Stephen and Herod, and from the following remark of Child in his introduction to it in his ' English and Scottish Popular Ballads ' :
" There is a sheet of carols headed thus : Christus natus est ' with a woodcut. .. .repre- senting the stable at Bethlehem, where, among the usual figures in a crib, there is also a cock, which a commentary represents as announcing the Saviour's birth."
This note of Child's would add force to the suggestion that Shakespeare is using a legend received from direct oral tradition. It has not been suggested, so far as I know, that it was from popular oral tradition Shakespeare derived the legend.
In considering the legend the common apotropaeic functions of the cock in European tradition must be taken into account.
JOSEPH J. MACSWEENEY.
A MARCH HARE. On p. 62 of vol. ii. of
- The Knight and the Mason,' printed by
Rowland Hurst, at Wakefield, in 1801, we read : " mad, by Jupiter ! gone off as strong as a march hare ; catch him who can." Perhaps this item, is worth adding, under the words " hare " and " March," to the Oxford Dictionary, where that leaper is referred to as " mad," but not as " strong." E. S. DODGSON.
CLERICAL BIOGRAPHIES AND TESTAMEN- TARY BURIALS. I have recently come into possession of a number of MS. books, containing brief biographical notes of some .hundreds of clergymen, evidently the nucleus
of a Clerical Biographical Dictionary. The
names are chiefly those of persons living
between c. 1650 and c. 1850. Many of the
entries are fairly complete (parentage, date
of birth, college, livings, marriage, death,
burial, &c.); others only give parentage, or
living, or death, or marriage. With them
are a number of volumes of Testamentary
Burials. As " it's the little bit that I know,
and the little bit that you know, and the
little bit that somebody else knows," which
make the full story, I shall be pleased
to place the information at the disposal of
any querist of ' N. & Q.'
J. W. FAWCETT. Consett, co. Durham.
CURIOUS AUDITORY ILLUSION. Such of your readers as are psychologists and machine gun officers may be interested in discovering the explanation of the following phenome- non : If a Hotchkiss or Lewis gun be fired at a high rate in bursts of four or five shots, the shots can be counted. If six shots are fired, they are almost invariably counted as five, and some demonstration is needed to overcome the obstinacy of the aural illusion. J. C. WHITEBROOK.
24 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, W.C.
rus.
WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.
MARY DAVIES. I am engaged in writing
a book about Mary Davies and the Manor
of Ebury. The Duke of Westminster has
kindly given me access to his archives.
The book will add fresh materials to the
topographical history of London. It has
occurred to me that if I confide some outline
of my researches to readers of ' N. & Q.'
I may be spared the aggravating experience
of some one saying when the work is com-
pleted, " If only I had known you were
doing that I could have supplied you with
valuable information."
Mr. Rutton's article on the Manor in ArchcEologia is not strictly accurate in its later part, which deals with the transition of the property from the Crown to the Grosvenor family. He says that Mary Davies married Sir Thomas Grosvenor in 1676, which should be 1677. He goes on, " the estate "grew." He should have said " the estate diminished," because valuable