Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/292

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284

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. APML w, 1900.

vigorous as ever, though, of course, th primness of some modern scruple may destro it, or, at any rate, do it vital injury befoi another year comes round. In the chie business street, which is nearly half a mi long, and in those adjacent, tradesmen ant others barricade their windows, and at on o'clock the ball, a small one of the usua kind, is thrown out from the " Lambto Arms Hotel," and the five hours' gam begins :

" There are no rules, no referee, no limits to th field of play, no fixed number of players. Only on guiding principle is recognized. If you live down street you kick up, and if you live up-street yo kick down. Nothing could be simpler. If you ar a stranger you are quite at liberty to kick the ba if it should come your way, but you take all risks

'Have you had your kick? 'was the questio

put time after time to those who were not actuall taking part in the game, but who felt wonderfully elated if they could get in a sly kick and escap

with nothing worse than a shaking In the las

few minutes all old hands are on the look-out fo a chance of obtaining possession of the ball, an honour which makes the successful player the hero of the night, and secures for him probably more to drink than is altogether good for him. Instance are on record in which daring players have climbec to the roofs of houses and held the ball there unti the clock struck six in order to earn the place o honour."

ST. S WITHIN.

HORNS OF MOSES. When Mr. F. T. Elworthy in his recent work 'Horns of Honour,' main tains (as your reviewer notes, ante, p. 219 that, in the belief of the Hebrews, Moses descended from the Mount with solid horns upon his head, he draws an unwarrantable conclusion from the wording of the Vulgate of Exodus xxxiv. 29, "faciem esse cornutam.' It is a well-known usage of the Semites to compare the spreading rays of the sun to the horns of an animal, and the Hebrew wore employed in this passage (qdran) means either to emit rays of light or to put forth horns (qereri). I may refer to Goldziher, 'Mytho- logy among the Hebrews,' 178, and my

Babylonian Influence on the Bible ' (Nutt),

99-100, where I give several illustrations. The original merely says that the face of Moses was radiant. St. Jerome unhappily adopted the alternative rendering of horned. The Authorized Version of Habakkuk iii. 4 makes a similar mistake in causing " horns " to come out of the Almighty's hand instead of "bright beams," which has a parallel in Deut. xxxiii. 2, "at His right hand were rays of fire." Cole- ridge, when at Rome, in gazing on Michael Angelo's statue of the horned Moses, read its meaning correctly when he "called to mind

the horns of the rising sun " (' Biographia Literaria,' chap. xxi.). Tertullian mentions

that Carthaginian nurses had nursery songs about "the towers of Lamia and the horns of the sun " ( k Works,' " Ante-Nic. Lib.," ii. 123), but the Latin here, pectines solis, is rather ambiguous. The Rabbins, with their habitual coarse literalism, fable that with one of his horns of glory Moses blinded Satan in the eye when he came to take away his soul (Edersheim, 'Jesus the Messiah,' ii. 755).

Among the Aryans, Apollo Karnaios was the horned, i. e. rayed, sun-god ; the hind of Keryneia with golden horns was the dawn ; and in Lettish folk-songs the wether with golden horns is the sun (see R. Brown, 'Semitic Influence in Hellenic Mythology,' 116; M. Miiller, 'Contributions to Mytho- logy,' 627). A " - - ^

rmfli \\7r

South Woodford.

A. SMYTHE PALMER.

[Of. Milton's ' Par. Lost,' i. 439 Astarte, queen of heaven with crescent horns where the reference is plainly to the moon.]

INSCRIPTIONS ON THE GRAVESTONES UNDER THE NEW ORGAN AT ST. MARGARET'S, WEST- MINSTER. Upon the preferment of Dr. Farrar (who had been rector of this church from 1876 to 1895) to the deanery of Canterbury, his suc- cessor was the Rev. Robert Eyton, of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street. On the incoming of bhis gentleman many changes were made in the services of the churchnotably the music was of a much more elaborate character. The outcome of this was that a new organ became an almost absolute necessity. The old one lad, since the restoration of the church in 1878, occupied the easternmost bay of the north aisle ; but as the very beautiful instru- ment that has now replaced it is double the size, it of course occupies twice the space, and consequently has hidden some old floorstones. ~.t is not thought that they are (like many of

he wall monuments) of any great interest,

Dut it is just as well that the inscriptions- such as they are should be preserved, and no place so proper and fit as the pages of N. & Q.' for the purpose. Most of them were very much broken, and all the in- criptions more or less worn; but as it will Drobably be very many years before they are >rought to light again, it seems desirable that hey should be recorded somewhere for future eference, as, so far as I am aware, this has ot been done at the church :