482
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xn. DEC. 19, 1903.
wed the Ad riatic. We may be quite sure that
the idea was not invented for that occasion.
The one outstanding fact about the Latin
Neptunalia is that of feasting : " The people
used to build huts of branches and foliage
(umbroe), in which they probably feasted,
drank, and amused themselves." (Cf. Horace,
'Carm.,' in. 28.) Nor are the Consualia,
solemnized on 21 August, to be dissociated
from the Neptunalia, for it was at their
first celebration that, according to the story,
the Sabine maidens were carried off. If
Necht is the Irish Neptune, then Consus
is Conn the Hundred-Fighter, who, after
ascending a mound, happened to tread on a
stone, which thereupon screamed all over the
hind. This was followed by a thick fog, out
of which rode a fairy prince, who led Conn
away to his residence to be informed of the
future history of Ireland. The stone is no
other than the Stone of Fal, afterwards
removed to Scone, and thence, we are told,
to Westminster Abbey (see Rhys, op. cit.).
A very curious thing about the Latin term nexum or nexus is the apparently deliberate avoidance of applying it to marriage, except by implication. This is quite in accordance with the hints as to marriage by capture that we find in the rape of the Sabine women, and the lifting the new-made bride over her husband's threshold to the accompaniment of the cry " Talassio ! " I have elsewhere (Academy, 21 December, 1895) given an account of the survival in Carmarthenshire, well on into the last century, of undoubted traces of marriage by capture. I will now add an illustration from the same locality of Virgil's sparge, marite, nuces. On the Shrewsbury- Swansea railway line, between Pantyffynon and Pontardulais, the traveller to Swansea will see on the hill to the right Llanedy Church. In the early part of last century they had there at marriages a custom of throwing nuts, apples, &c., at the parson during the ceremony, and the easy-going clergyman would take no other notice of it than brushing these missiles off the open page of his prayer-book. But a young curate named Morris, afterwards vicar of Llanelly, where his physical help was in great request at elections and other lively proceedings, put a sudden and final stop to such interruptions. At the first marriage that he celebrated, on being struck by some nuts, he looked up, marked a prominent offender, closed his book, jumped over the chancel-rails, seized the man, and flung him neck and crop right through one of the windows. The culprit was dashed against a tombstone, and had two or three rios broken. Such was the story I heard
when a boy, exaggerated no doubt, but at
all events conclusive as to the existence of
the old custom.
In another note I propose to deal with the Latin term akin to at]u,a, namely sanguis.
J. P. OWEN.
BEN JONSON, GABRIEL HARVEY, ANI>
NASHE. (See 9 th S. xi. 201, 281, 343, 501 ; xii.
161, 263, 342, 403.) Gabriel Harvey opens his
" wittie familiar Letters touching the Earth-
quake" with a passage as follows :
"I will report you a prettie conceited discourse no longer agoe than yesternight in a Gentle- man's house here in Essex. Where being in the company of certaine courteous Gentlemen, and those two Gentlewomen, it was my chance to be well occupyed, I warrant you." Grosart, i. 40, 41. These "familiar Letters" created a great uproar. Nashe constantly attacks them as either "Letters" or "Epistles," always familiar. See Nashe (Grosart), ii. 184, 235, 244; iii. 117, &c. In the folio 'Every Man in his Humour,' I. ii. (8b), "familiar Epistles " is so printed in italics probably an allusion.
But the conceited introductory words were immediately seized on by (Greene and ?> Nashe. See i. 8, 'Epistle to Anatomie of Absurditie,' 1589 :
"Not long since lighting in company with manie
extraordinarie gentlemen it was my chance
to move divers questions," &c.
And in 'Cynthia's Revels,' IV. i. (178a), Amor- phus says :
" Up9n a time, going to take leave of the emperor
besides infinite more of inferior persons, as-
counts and others, it was my chance to wait," &c.
I have seen several other parallels between Amorphus and Harvey since writing the notes referred to above. H. C. HART.
" PHASIS " IN JOHNSON. Here is a notable instance both of Johnson's wonderful memory and of his carelessness in quotation. He explains phasis, k 'the appearance exhibited by any body, as the changes of the moon," and for example gives :
He o'er the seas shall Love or Fame pursue,
And other months, another Phasis view ;
Fixt to the rudder, he shall boldly steer,
And pass the rocks which Tiphys used to fear.
Creech.
The passage is from Creech's translation of Manilius, 'Astronomica,' bk. v. :
atque alios menses aliumque videre Phasin, et in cautes Tiphyn superare timentem.
Creech annotates, " Tiphys, pilot to the Argonauts. Phasis, a river of lolchos, whither Jason with the Argonauts first sailed." John- son very probably, as so often, quoted from memory, and was doubtless led into his
