Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/402

This page needs to be proofread.

396


NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.m. AUG., 1917.


repeated by Alderovandus cap. de Aranea lib. de insectis, I began to have a better opinion of it, and to give more credit to Amulets, when I saw it in some parties answer to experience."- Partition 2, sect. 5, memb. 1, subsect. 5, ed. 6, 1651.

The rambler in Pliny's ' Natural History ' will come across many beliefs about spiders. Inter alia, a spider's blood on wool is good for ear trouble, xxix. 6 (39), 138, and the leaves of rue are a specific for a spider's " sting," xx. 13 (51), 133. A remedy for toothacne quoted by Pliny in xxx. 3 (8), 26, is to catch a spider with the left hand, pound it in oil of roses, and drop this into the ear on the side where the pain is.

Examples of spider-lore are given in Sir Thomas Browne's ' Pseudodoxia Epi- demica ' :

" The Antipathy between a Toad and a Spider, and that they poisonously destroy each other, is very famous, and solemn stories have been written of their combats ; wherein most com- monly the victory is given unto the Spider." Book iii. chap. 27, sect. 6.

Wilkin in his note mentions the " ridicu- lous story of a monk found asleep on his back, with a toad squatted upon his mouth," told by Erasmus. See the Colloquy called ' Amicitia.'

In vii. 15 Browne writes :

" Thus most men affirm, and few here will believe the contrary, that there be no Spiders in Ireland ; but we have beheld some in that Country ; and though but few, some Cob-webs we behold in Irish wood in England."

For the traditional account of the timber in the roof of Westminster Hall and King's College Chapel, see Goodman's ' Fall of Man ' in Southey's ' Common-Place Book,' i. 138, and Wren's and Wilkin' s notes on the ' Pseudodoxia,' vi. 7.

EDWAED BENSLY.

CHAMPAGNE'S REGIMENT (12 S. iii. 250, 308). Writing from memory and without any references at hand, I gave a wrong date for the embodiment of " Champagne's Regiment." It should be 18*02, not 1798. The Malay Regiment, " a Corps of Foot to serve in the Island of Ceylon," was formally embodied by a general order of Feb. 25, 1802, published in The Ceylon Government Gazette of April 26, 1802 (one of the first issues if not the first of that paper). The regiment had, however, been formed by Governor North at least two or three years before, ar.d officers appointed, who in 1800 were busily recruiting for it. Lieut. William Mercer, who fell in the Kandy massacre, had his commission dated O^t. 1, 1799. Joseph Howe, an ensign in the


corps, was promoted lieutenant June 17,

1800. Ensign Robert Barry, another of the Kandy victims, was in command of the escort of the Malay Regiment that accom- panied Governor North on his tour round the island in June, 1800, and was promoted to lieutenant on June 17, 1800. Ensign John Grant was gazetted to that rank Dec. 25,

1801. Governor North, writing to Lord Clive, Governor of Fort St. George, under date July 15, 1800, says of Lieut. Charles von Driberg : " I gave him a lieutenancy in my corps at its formation, and hope to give by his means another battalion to it." The " other battalion " became the Ceylon Regiment or " Ramsay's Regiment," the formal embodiment of which appeared in the same Gazette. These are the earliest appointments of officers to the Malay Regiment that I have come across. The title of "ensign," at first used,. was soon superseded by that of " second lieutenant." " Ensigns " appear in The Ceylon Govern- ment Gazette up to March or thereabouts, 1806, and after that " second lieutenants." In adopting this change the Ceylon regi- ments were in advance of the times, anticipat- ing the British army by some seventy-five years. PENBY LEWIS.

ARTISTS IN STAINED GLASS (12 S. iii. 299). Most of the older colleges in Oxford have specimens of the work of a family of artists in stained glass whose place of business was in St. Clement's parish in that city in the seventeenth century. Bernard van Linge came over to England in the middle of the reign of James I. He had a son or brother, Abraham, who began to work in Oxford at Christ Church in 1630. Their business was carried on into the eighteenth century by a family named Price, which was connected with them by marriage. Two of them, William and Joshua, were brothers ; and there was a William in the next generation. The best account I know of these artists and their work is contained in a paper by Mr. C. H Grinling of Hertford College, communicatec to the Oxford Architectural and Historica Society, Nov. 20, 1883, and printed in the 29th number (New Series) of the Proceedings of that society. JOHN R. MAGBATH.

Queen's College, Oxford.

A useful little book is ' Ancient Stained and Painted Glass,' by F. Sydney Eden, one of the " Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature." There is, at the end, a select list of ' Aids to further Study.' Among these is Dr. Gessert's ' Geschichte der Glasmalerei' (1839; English translation,