200
NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2s. iv. JULY, IQIS.
In 1803 the 65th Foot which at that
Period bore the title of the 2nd Yorkshire
(North Riding) Regiment, the 19th Foot
being tlio 1st Yorkshire (North Riding)
Regiment was represented in Ceylon by a
detachment which included the Grenadier
Company. Seventy-five men of that com-
pany, under Capt. Edward Bullock and
Lieut. Hutchings, in March garrisoned Fort
Frederick at Kotadeniyawa, where Lieut.
William Ollenranshaw of the same regiment
was already quartered, occupied in forward-
ing stores for the forces engaged in the First
Kandyan War.
" Every individual of the party was seized with the fever, one after the other, and sent down in boats to Colombo, and at the end of three weeks Capt. Bullock was the only European remaining at Fort Frederick."
Lieut. Ollenranshaw died on April 5 ; Capt. Bullock a month later.
" At the end of one month from the com- mencement of his march [from Colombo on March 13], Lieut. Hutchinga and two privates -were the only persons of this party who remained alive. This officer recovered by going imme- diately to sea, a total change of air being one of the most successful remedies for this dreadful malady,"
which is described as " endemial fever. Lieut. - Col. George Maddison, Lieut, and Adjutant John Young, and Lieuts. Thomas Watson and Philip de Lisle were also in Ceylon in this year. The detachment, which seems to have numbered only 83 N.C.O.s and men, arrived in Ceylon from the Cape on Nov. 1, 1802. Lieut. Young was quartermaster of the detachment at Colombo from Dec. 28, and adjutant from Feb. 23, 1803. It left for India .at the end of 1803. A detachment proceeded from Colombo to Trincomalee, March 13-17. Lieut.-Col. Maddison suc- ceeded Lieut. -Col. David Robertson as Commandant of Colombo in June, 1803. (See Cordiner's ' Ceylon,' vol. ii. pp. 192, 271 ; Ceylon Government Gazette of May 11, 1803 ; Capt. Johnston's ' Narrative,' pp. 90- "91 ; ' List of Inscriptions, Ceylon,' Colombo, 1913, pp. 81-2, 413.)
The other North Riding Regiment, the 19th Foot, was at this time also in the island, where it was destined to serve for the long period of twenty - four years, viz., from 1796 to 1820. So, too, was the 51st Foot, then the 2nd Yorkshire (West Riding) Regiment ; it stayed from 1801 to 1807. Both these regiments saw much hard campaigning against the Kan- dyans, and suffered many vicissitudes of fortune from treachery, ambushes,
massacre, climatic and hygienic conditions
imperfectly understood, while the men
remained throughout garbed in the uniform
of Europe, wearing stiff stocks round their
necks, and without any protection appar-
ently from the sun. When the 51st returned
from Kandy on April 11, 1803, after an
absence of less than two months in the
Kandyan country, most of its 400 men
were suffering from this " endemial fever,"
and within the next two months 300 of
these died.
A fourth Yorkshire regiment which has served in Ceylon is the 15th Foot, the York (East Riding) Regiment, which was there from 1846 to 1854, and, curiously enough, came in for the only fighting there has been in the island since the 19th took part in suppressing the Uva Rebellion of 1817-19. A company had a skirmish with a party of Kandyans during the Matale Rebellion of 1848, but I believe the only casualty was one private wounded. Certainly, however, Yorkshiremen of all the Ridings have done their part in acquiring and holding " India's utmost isle " for the British Empire.
PENBY LEWIS.
LAYING A GHOST (12 S. iii. 504; iv. 31, 135). At the last reference Y. T. asks : " Can any one explain the very general belief that our English Church has a form of prayer for exorcism ? " It may be confidently stated that there is now no prescribed form of exorcism having any authorized place in the formularies of the English Church. Such forms are still re- tained in the Roman ritual. The exorcism of evil spirits is older than Christianity itself. The professional exorcist was known among the Jews (see Acts xix. 13), and exorcism was used by the Greeks and other ancient peoples. It was practised by our Lord, His apostles, and the early Church, Ter- tullian and Origen, for instance, speaking of it as an ordinary occurrence. Its history in the Church of England since the Re- formation can be very briefly indicated. In the Order of the Administration of Public Baptism in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. the priest is to ask the name of the children, and to make a cross upon their foreheads, using a similar formula to that contained in our present Prayer Book, but not taking the children in his arms nor bap- tizing them at this point of the service. Looking upon them, he is to say : " I com- mand thee, unclean spirit, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that thou come out, and depart from
