12 S. V. DEC., 1919.]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
315
"NEVER PROPHESY UNLESS YOU KNOW."
A correspondent (8 S. vii . 346) wrote
that
" A writer in The Spectator of March 30 [18951 shows that this phrase originated with Lowell, who .makes Hosea Biglow say :
My gran'ther's rule was safer'n 'tis to crow ; Don't never prophesy onless you know.
The following appears in a letter from Horace Walpole to his nephew Thomas Walpole, Minister Plenipotentiary at Munich, -dated Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1785 :
" Prognostics do not always prove prophecies at least the wisest prophets make sure of the event iirst." ' Some Unpublished Letters of Horace Walpole,' edited by Sir Spencer Walpole, 1902, p. 89.
ROBERT PIERPOINT.
' ST. STEPHEN AND HEROD.' The iballad called ' St. Stephen and Herod ' is preserved in a single MS. version. The legend with which it deals still lives in Scandinavian tradition. Child in his ' Eng- lish and Scottish Popular Ballads ' wrote that there exists in Sweden and Denmark what is called a ' Staff ans Visa,' which
"was wont to be sung all over Sweden on St. Stephen's Day in the Christmas sport, nob yet given up, called Staffan.*skede, which consisted in -young fellows riding about from house to bouse
- arly in the morning of the second day ot Yule, and
levying refreshments."
A similar custom exists in Ireland, with which the following lines are associated : The wren, the wren, the king of all birds, On St. Stephen's Day he was caught in the furs
(lurch),
-Although he is little his family is great, "Come, pray, my good landlady, give us a treat, And if you fill it of the best, 1 hope in heaven your soul may rest ; Bub if you fill it of the small, It won't agree with our wren-boys at all.
An Irish version of these words is to be found in a work called ' Siamsa an Gheim- Ihridh,' published at Dublin m 1892. The 'Custom of hunting the wren appears to be a (prevalent one in the West of Ireland, for I read the following protest against the custom in a tetter to the editor of a Dublin rnewspaper :
"Sir, 'I hope everyone will kindly help in the suppression of cruelty to the wren this coming St. Stephen's Day, by refusing money to children -who may bring them round, dead or alive, in boxes, as is the custom still in some out-of-the-way places. This is the only way by which this cruelty to wrens can be put a stop to. 5 " The Freeman's Journal. Dublin, Dec. 24, circa 1918.
'The wren is also referred to in ' Irish Folk- JLore,' pp. 135-6, by Lageniensie.
In a previous note (12 S. iii. 168, 'The Cock : the Carving of a Legend ') I referred
to the story of Herod's cock, which the
ballad of ' St. Stephen and Herod ' enshrines.
Some interesting notes on this legend will
be found in a book of Ulster proverbs,
'Seanfhocla Uladh,' pp. 148-9, ed. Morris.
JOSEPH J. MACSWEENEY.
- * Howth, co. Dublin.
RIME ON DR. FELL. The well-known impromptu verse, by means of which a schoolboy is said to have avoided a flogging, appears to be not so entirely original as is commonly thought. Quoting from memory, it ran somewhat like this :
I do not love you, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I need not tell,
Of this assured, 1 know full well,
I cannot love you, Doctor Fell.
Apparently it is founded upon a passage in Catullus, which commences : " Non amo te Volusi," and was Englished by Thomas Nabbes so far back as 1638, thus :
I do not love thee, Volusius, but for what Know not. I only know 1 loue thee not.
See Knolles, ' Generall historie of the
Turkes 1638,' (second pagination) p. 23.
W. JAGGARD, Capt. Central Registry, Repatriation Records, Winchester.
PERSISTENT ERROR. In an old copy of Jeremy Taylor's ' Holy Living ' that has lost its title, but is probably of about 1700,1 find in Sect. II., chap, ii., p. 57: "The Quails stuck in their nostrils," apparently a misprint for "stunk." But the same reading is given in an Oxford edition of 1849.
J. T. F.
Winterton, lanes.
LITERATURE AND ICONOGRAPHY OF LONDON PEACE CELEBRATIONS. (See ante, pp. 175, 213). At the first reference I dis- missed, perhaps too briefly, the showman's interest in these celebrations, yet to record all the panoramas and exhibitions that sought to perpetuate the glory of the achievement while earning a profit would have required several pages. Yet I am tempted to record two very unfamiliar celebrations of the Crimean campaign.
There was an exhibition at 83 Fleet Street (November, 1854) of " Russian Prizes ! Trophies taken from the Great Fort of Bomarsund, consisting of military accoutre- ments, sacerdotal robes and many other interesting objects. Admittance Qd. each." From the style of the handbill I infer this did not persist more than a few weeks.
To commemorate the Peace there had been painted by Thomas Jones Barker
