- s. vn. APRIL so, i9oi.i NOTES AND QUERIES.
317
chronicle. Some are inclined to believe, from a
phrase in a Latin poem addressed by Petrarch to
Boccaccio, that Dante came to England, and it is
even stated by Giovanni da Serravalle, a fifteenth-
century writer, that he studied in the University oi
Oxford, but thi* in extremely doubtful " (vide p. 120).
The italics are mine.
HENEY GERALD HOPE. 119, Elms Road, Clapham, S.W.
KING EDWARD VII.'s TITLE IN SCOTLAND (9 th S. vii. 225). The following letter, dated 11 March, which appeared in the Standard of the following day over the signature W. B., may perhaps be of interest in this con- nexion :
"I observe, in the notice of a question he intends to put to the Lord Advocate to-day, that Mr. Black says, ' No sovereign bearing the name of Edward has hitherto reigned in Scotland.' This is an error, for there were two Scottish kings prior to the Union who bore the name. Edward I. was the eldest son of Malcolm III., and was proclaimed king by the army after the death of his father at Alnwick, November 13, 1093. He was, unfor- tunately, slain in battle the following day. Ed- ward II., better known as Edward Baliol, was crowned at Scone, September 24, 1332, and reigned nearly eleven years. His present Majesty is, there- fore r Edward III. of Scotland and VII. of England, but, since the Union, a different numeral for the sovereign in the Northern kingdom has been dis- continued. The exiled Stuarts, who, of course, ignored the Act of Queen Anne, continued the former custom, and consequently Prince James and Cardinal York styled themselves respectively James VIII. and III., and Henry II. and IX."
W. F. PRIDEAUX.
Your correspondent speaks of the precedent in the case of William IV. He does not say what it was. He was William I. of Hanover, William II. of Wales, William III. of Scotland, and William IV. of England.
ISAAC TAYLOR.
It has been pointed out that Scotland already has had two King Edwards, viz., Edward L, circa 1093/4, and Edward (Baliol), 1332. The natives can call our seventh their third, if they please, but it has no legislative support. A. H.
ROMAN STEELYARD WEIGHTS (9 th S. vii. 228). I remember that the Rev. J. J. Goodall, vicar of Bromham, near Bedford, had in his possession the weight of a Roman steel- yard carved into the faint semblance of a female face, dug up in that parish an antique which he prized most highly. On his resignation of the living, he probably took it to his old mansion of Din ton Hall, near Aylesbury, where he had a large collec- tion of curios, pictures, &c. He gave one of the shoes of John Bigg, the Dinton hermit, supposed by some to have been the masked
executioner of Charles I., to the Ashmolean
Museum at Oxford, whence it has migrated
to the Taylor Institution, where it, with other
curiosities, may be seen in a large glass case.
JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.
The current volume of the German Society of Antiquaries, Berlin, pp. 330-43, contains an article on ancient weights svith illustra- tions, one of which is a steelyard with grotesque head lion or human ? The number can be sent to your correspondent on his communicating his address to
J. H. RIVETT-CARNAC.
Schloss Wildeck, Switzerland.
THE BLESSING OF THE THROATS (9 th S. v. 169, 273 ; vi. 197 ; vii. 196). I am able to add confirmation to MR. HIBGAME'S surmise re- specting the administration of Communion wine in a chalice as a remedy for the whoop- ing cough. A few years ago a priest of my acquaintance took shelter in a cottage in a remote Glamorgan valley, and in the course of conversation the old woman who dwelt there mentioned the above cure. To draw her out, my friend (whose sacerdotal cha- racter was unknown to his informant) asked her whether the draught had to be adminis- tered by the Methodist minister. The old lady replied that it must be by a "Papish priest"; so she had heard from "old people." JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS^
Town Hall, Cardiff.
" SIBYL OR SYBIL" (9 th S. vii. 200). It is never quite safe to trust to a reprint, nor would it be justifiable to have increased con- fidence because of the possession of two reprints agreed in support of a reading. It is of the nature, and apparently it is the business, of one reissue to repeat the text of another. But the reprints of which at the moment I am thinking have a certain autho- ritative value, and they may be correct. They are Hazlitt's ' Spirit of the Age,' edited by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1886, and Alex- ander Ireland's ' Selections ' from Hazlitt for the "Cavendish Library," 1889. According to both, Hazlitt used the form "sybil" when writing of Sir Walter Scott. Here it is, e.g., from ' The Spirit of the Age,' p. 107 :
"Our author has conjured up the actual people he has to deal with, or as much as he could get of them, in 'their habits as they lived.' He has ransacked old chronicles, and poured the contents upon his page : he has squeezed out musty re- cords ; he has consulted way-faring pilgrims, bed- rid sybils."
In Alexander Ireland's volume, p. 439, the same reading occurs, and there are evidences
