You are here

قراءة كتاب Notes and Queries, Number 139, June 26, 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

‏اللغة: English
Notes and Queries, Number 139, June 26, 1852
A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

Notes and Queries, Number 139, June 26, 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

تقييمك:
0
No votes yet
المؤلف:
دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 3

In this the nineteenth just as bad."

On this occasion the job proved a tough one, and it was not till a late hour that Prov. set off on his road home. It was a pitchy dark night, and somehow or other the preacher and his nag contrived to lose their way among the green lanes, and it was not till they had floundered about for some time that our hero discerned (as is usual in such cases) a light gleaming through the thick foliage before him, which he incontinently discovers to proceed from a solitary dwelling in the middle of the woods. Of course he dismounts, and knocks at the door; and of course it was opened by a suspicious-looking old woman in toggery which it would do Mr. James's heart good to depict. To his request for a night's lodging, she yielded a ready assent—too ready, Prov. thought; for it seemed from her manner as though he had been expected. He was shown into a bed-room, and was proceeding to divest himself of his garments, when he hears a knock at the door, and a voice asked him to come down to supper. Prov. made answer that he didn't want any, that he was in bed, and that moreover he was engaged at his devotions; but presently the messenger returned, and declared that if he did not join the company downstairs, they would come and sup with him. Poor Prov. quaked with fright, but thought it politic to cloak his fears, so followed the servant to the house-room, where there were a number of people sitting round a table plentifully laden with good things. All of them were little "shrivelled up" old men; and, as the chairman motioned Prov. to a vacant seat, they all regarded him with a stare that made him feel the reverse of jolly. Although he is well acquainted with the neighbourhood, he recognises none of them. The meal proceeded in solemn silence: look which way he would, he encounters the gaze of his companions, who appear to scowl at him with an expression of fiendish hate. Dreadful surmises flit across his brain. Suddenly his attention becomes directed to the posterior portion of the gentleman next him. "By Jove! he has a tail. Yes, he has; and so has his neighbour, and so have they all." He fancies too he can trace a resemblance between the individual who sits at the head of the table and the fiend of the morning's exorcism. All is now clear as a pike-staff. It is a decided case of trepan. That dark fellow on the right has to complain of a forcible ejection from a comfortable dwelling in the portly corpus of Master Muggins the miller; and he on the left is the identical demon who got into Farmer Nelson's cow, and gave our hero a world of trouble to get him out. He is in the power of the incubi, whom he has been so long warring against. Not a moment is to be lost, for already they are whispering together, and the scowls get fiercer and fiercer. What is to be done? A monk would have had recourse to his breviary; Prov. thought of his hymn-book. "Brethren," says he, "it is usual wi' us at the heend of a feast to ax a blessing."

"A blessing quotha! and to us?" roared the fiends. "Ha! ha! Yea! yea!" said Prov.; and instanter he out with that spirit-stirring stanza of "immortal John:"

"Jesus the name, high over all,

In hell, or earth, or sky,

Angels and men before Him fall,

And devils fear and fly!"

Who shall depict the scene while these words were being uttered? The old men turn all sorts of colours, from green to blue, and blue to green, and back again to their original hue. At the last line, the uproar becomes terrible; and, amidst shouts of fiendish wailing, the whole company resolve themselves into a thin blue smoke, in which state they career up the chimney, taking with them a bran new chimney-pot, and leaving behind a most offensive odour of lucifer matches. Prov. saw no more; he fainted.


Some scandalous fellows spread abroad a report that the morning's sun discovered our valiant vessel snugly ensconced in a dry ditch; but as he always denounced strong waters, and was moreover a leading member of the Steeple "United Totals," I, for one, do not believe it. From the examples already given, I trust your readers will think with me that these old world relics are worth preserving. I hope they will not be backward in the good work. A few more years, and the scheme of an English work on the plan of Grimm's will be impracticable. The romance-lore, both oral and written, which erewhile delighted the cottager, is growing out of date. The prosy narrative of "How John the serving-man wedded an earl's daughter, and became a squire of high degree;" and the less placid, but still intolerably dull feats of the "Seven Champions," have no charms for him now. He has outgrown the old chap-book literature, and affectionates the highly seasoned atrocities of the Old Bailey school; which, to the disgrace of the legislature, are allowed to poison the minds of our labouring community with their weekly broad-sheets of crime and obscenity. Even those prime old favourites, the Robin Hood Garland and Shepherd's Kalendar, with its quaint letter-press and grim woodcuts, are getting out of fashion, and beginning to be missed from their accustomed nook beside the family Bible.

T. Sternberg.

P.S. Owing to some unaccountable inadvertence, I have only just seen the number of "N.& Q." containing the highly interesting communications of H. B. C. and Mr. Stephens. Will Mr. Stephens allow me to ask him where he procured his tale, for I agree with H. B. C. that it is "desirable to fix the localities as nearly as possible." My version came from the Gloucestershire side of the county.

Footnote 1:(return)

This story is from Northamptonshire, and by some oversight was omitted in my Dialect and Folk-Lore.

Footnote 2:(return)

I use the term elves advisedly; for though, of course, the creed of rantism does not recognise the existence of the mere poetic beings, yet it absolutely inculcates belief in all sorts of bona fide corporeal demons: which, like the club-footed gentry of the saintly hermits, are nothing more than Teutonic elfen in ecclesiastical masquerade.


DR. THOMAS MORELL'S COPY OF H. STEPHENS' EDIT. OF ÆSCHYLUS, 1557, WITH MSS. NOTES.

As your valuable paper is in the hands of scholars of every description in every part of the world, the following communication may meet the eye, and be of no slight interest to some of your classical readers, and, at the same time, give a stimulus to hunters at bookstalls. Some time since, in one of my hunts, I stumbled upon a very fine copy of Pet. Victorine's (Vettori) edition of Æschylus, printed by H. Stephens, 1557. I was much gratified in finding it had belonged to the celebrated Thomas Morell, D.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., the lexicographer, and had his book-plate and autograph. The margins were filled with many conjectures and emendations written in two very ancient hands, and, besides, some MSS. Scholia on the Prometheus and Poesæ. In carefully examining them I found many were marked with the letters (A) and (P). I remembered the present very learned Bishop of London, in the preface to his edition of the Choæphoræ, mentioned the vast assistance he had received in editing that play from a copy of this very edition of Æschylus (H. Stephens, 1557), lent to him by Mr. Mitford, the margins of which were similarly marked. The bishop observes these

Pages