Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/206

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. x. S^T. 6, 1902.


TAILED AFRICANS (7 th S. vi., vii., viii. passim).

A.t 7 th S. vi. 328 E. L. G. asked for a quotation

from the 'Travels and Adventures of Joseph Wolff, D.D.,' about a Central African tribe with tails. This, so far as I can make out, was never answered. In the first edition of this book, published in. 1861 (vol. ii. 245), I find the following :

" Wolff heard also from a great many Abyssinians and Armenians (and Wolff is convinced of the truth of it) that there are near Narea, in Abyssinia, people men and women with large tails, with which they are able to knock down a horse ! And there are also such people near China." In a note he adds :

" In the College of Surgeons at Dublin may still be seen a human skeleton, with a tail seven inches long ! There are many known instances of this elongation of the caudal vertebra, as in the Poonangs of Borneo ! "

EMERITUS.

CORONATION SERMONS (9 th S. ix. 501). Charles I. was also "crowned twice." His second coronation took place in the Chapel Koyal, Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, on 18 June. 1633, when Laud and Spotswood officiated, and on the Sunday following he went to St. Giles's Church " to hear sermon " (see ' St. Giles's,' by the Very Rev. Cameron Lees, D.D., Edinburgh, 1889, p. 203).

W. S.

"MOTHERLAND" (9 th S. x. 45). I am fairly well read in Southey, but have not met with this exact word in his works as reported by Annandale. In 'Madoc,' however, there are the analogous terms " my mother isle," " their mother isle," " their mother lan- guage." It is probable that Annandale had in his mind the foregoing expressions in ' Madpc,' but failed to recall the exact terms used in the poem. GEORGE WATSON.

18, Wordsworth Street, Penrith.


NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Jewish Encyclopaedia. Isidore Singer, Pro jector and Managing Director. Vol. II. (Funk & W agnails.) TWELVE months after the appearance of the first volume of this important, worthy, and scholarly undertaking the second volume sees the light, a rati of progress that will probably be maintained aiu even accelerated in the future. An account of the scheme and origin of the work, as full as the limitec space at our disposal permits, was given 9 th S. viii 174. Some things that at the outset puzzled us an now made plain. The fact that two volumes (ou of twelve in all) carryjuyip farther in the alphabe than Benash is explar^^% the additional fact tha 11 three editorial st^fis~sdi>d nearly two hundrei contributors, whose dfcfx^Cd make up these tw volumes, have included in them every archaeological


.istorical, theological, biographical, and sociological opic about which any reader, Jew or Christian, lay desire information." Nothing like an adequate ttempt at a comprehensive historical account f the Jews in the principal European countries nd the United States had previously been ttempted. Jewish biography has hitherto been eglected, and while from the classic general iographies if Bayle and Moreri, the bio- raphical dictionaries of Hoefer and Michaud, na the 'Allgemeine Deutsche Biographic,' Jews

jre all but entirely omitted, the even more

imbitious works of modern days give a very mall percentage of the names that have been ollected for the work now in progress. Among he subjects included in the second volume are Apologists,' ' Apostasy and Apostates,' ' Apostles,' Archaeology,' ' Arianism,' ' Aristotle,' ' Ark of the Covenant,' ' Ark of the Law,' ' Asceticism,' ' Ash-

amnu ' (confession of sins), ' Asmodeus,' ' Ash- ,oreth,' 'Astrology,' ' Atheism,' 'Atonement,' 'Baal '

audits derivative 'Babylon,' 'Bel,' ' Belshazzar,'

and innumerable others. Christian readers are ikely to have hitherto underrated the influence of ,he Stagyrite in Jewish literature and legend. Two mndred years before Christ Aristobulus made the jositive assertion that Jewish revelation and Aris- totelian philosophy were identical. In course of

ime Aristotle came to be claimed and regarded as

a Jew. The story of the love affair between Aris- ,otle and the wife of Alexander as current in the Middle Ages was told in Jewish circles, but owes .ts origin to a Hindoo fable. To the credit assigned ihe spurious work of Aristotle it is attributed that the real Aristotelianism never maintained its bold. Apostasy and apostates from Judaism con- stitute naturally one of the most important, though perhaps not one of the most outspoken essays, in very fact, Jewish apostates may now be held to con- stitute nations, and the founders of Christianity must have been in Jewish eyes renegades. In so temperate a spirit is the whole written that the least possible amount of controversy is challenged. To the affirmations of apostate Jews the worst charges brought in mediaeval times against the race are due. Not until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries do we find the Jewish deserters bringing against the jews the charge of defending as meritorious dis- honest dealings with Christians, and even justifying their murder. Solomon Levi, of Burgos, known as Paul de Santa Maria, an ex-rabbi, who rose to be Archbishop of Carthagena and Privy Councillor to King Henry III. of Castile, was a thorn in the flesh of his former associates. Wolfkan seems to have been the first who brought against his own race the charge of slaying children for the use of their blood in ritual, an accusation the echoes of which are still heard. In an article bearing the signature of Mr. Joseph Jacobs the authorship of ' The Golden Bough' is ascribed to Mr. Fraser instead of Mr. Frazer, an erroneous ascription for which we are confident Mr. Jacobs is not personally responsible. Among many apocryphal works with which Vol. Ii. deals, the ' Life and Confession of Asenath,' the daughter of Potiphar and wife of Joseph, stands out. Asenath is accepted as the type of a true proselyte, who, finding herself forsaken when re- nouncing her idolatry, seeks and finds refuge in God. We should have been glad of further in- formation, supposing such to be accessible, concern- ing Israelitish worship of Astarte, Ashtoreth (1 Kings xi. 5) in Phoenician countries, the female