Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/222

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. MARCH 15, 1901.


In the story of Anpu and Batu (Flinders Petries 'Egyptian Tales,' Second Series, pp. 48-57) the acacia tree is clearly the link between a deceased body and its soul. The passage runs :

"And this is what shall come to pass, that I draw out my soul, and I shall put it upon the top of the flowers of the acacia, and when the acacia is cut down or falls "

One of the versions of the legend of Isis and Osiris mentions that at each spot where the former interred a limb of Osiris, she placed a sprig of acacia to mark it. This tallies with the reference given by your corre- spondent GNOMON. I regret that I cannot lay my hand on the exact reference. Perhaps one of your correspondents can help me.

RED CROSS.

MOVABLE STOCKS (9 th S. vi. 405 ; vii. 14, 118). Two upright stones, with holes which were evidently used for the insertion of stocks, will be found by the roadside of a village not far from Buxton. I was unable to obtain the name of this place. ANDREW OLIVER.

A very interesting account of a pair of these now in use in India by an English magistrate is to be found in a very recent number of Truth, with appropriate fulmina- tions against the practice.

EDWARD HERON-ALLEN.

FLOGGING AT THE CART TAIL (9 th S. vii. 28, 158). A later example of this mode of punish- ment is recorded in 'Revelations of Prison Life,' by Col. Chesterton (second edition, p. 135). He was appointed Governor of Cold- bath Fields Prison in 1829, and, as one of his duties, had to attend personally to those who were sentenced to be whipped in public. He " had not been two years in office " when he received a warrant that he " should cause " a criminal convicted of robbery " to be publicly whipped for the space of one hundred yards," and he gives a graphic description of the whole of the proceedings. The man was k% made fast by his wrists to the cart's tail," and the cat was administered by the public executioner This took piace either in 1830 or the following year.

T. N. BRUSHFIELD, M.D.

I came across the following in Henry Vizetelly's 'Glances Back through Seventy Years,' vol. i. p. 9. Henry Vi/etelly was born in 1820, and the few words which I quote refer to his youthful days, 1823-9 :

" Culprits guilty of petty thefts from shopkeepers, which a few years previously had ranked as capital offences, were then frequently punished with the lash, and I recollect seeing one ot these delinquents whipped at a cart's tail, under a broiling sun, along


the dusty road between Kennington Turnpike and the Elephant and Castle at Newington, the per- spiration streaming down the parish constable's face as he administered the regulation stripes. These public floggings were of frequent occurrence in the London suburbs, and were only abandoned after the newspapers had protested energetically against such brutalizing exhibitions."

HERBERT B. CLAYTON. 39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

The following, drawn from the Leeds Intel- ligencer of 23 February, 1801, I think is the case referred to by J. W. W. :

" At Wakefield Quarter Sessions Wm. Turner was ordered to be publicly whipped at Halifax on Saturday afternoon, February 28, for having gone about the town of Halifax and its neighbourhood pretending to be deaf and dumb, and professing palmistry and fortune-telling."

In the same issue of this journal it is also stated that at Sheffield a man was publicly whipped for deserting his wife and family, and leaving them chargeable to the town funds. WILLIAM ANDREWS.

Royal Institution, Hull.

" ROUEN " AND " SUCCEDANEUM " (9 th S. vii. 149). Rouen is an unusual spelling of the word "rowen," a riot uncommon East Anglian term for the aftermath or after grass of mown meadows. So the word is explained in Moor's 'Suffolk Words' (1823). "Rowen" also occurs in Tusser's 'Husbandry' (ed. 1580); see Glossary to the E.D.S. reprint (1878). The word also occurs in the form " rawing " in Tusser, with which compare the ' Promptorium ' form " raweyne." In Coles's 'Latin Dictionary' (1699) I find "Rowen, Pascuum stipula et herbis voluntaries infesta- tum" In Richardson's ' Dictionary ' (ed. 1867) the following is cited from Holland's ' Pliny,' bk. xviii. c. 28 : "The rowen grasse afterwards commeth up so thicke and high for pasture and forrage, that ityeeldeth as great a benefit as the crops of hay before." The Latin word succedaneum means a substitute, a makeshift in default of the proper thing. For its occur- rence in English literature see 'The Stan- ford Dictionary ' (1892), where the use of the word is well illustrated by many quotations. A. L. MAYHEW.

Oxford.

Rouen or rowen is "a term made use of to signify after-grass, or the hay made from this sort of grass " (Kees's ' Cyclopaedia,' art. 'Rouen,' which your correspondent will find instructive). Halliwell in his 'Dictionary' notices roiuens, after-grass, as a Suffolk word ; but roiven must have been widely current outside the "silly county," for it is found in Bailey's and Johnson's English as well