.2"<« S. VII. Feb. 12. '59.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



127 



" In y* day remember Lord 

 Edom's brood ; thus in our groans 

 They triumphe with fire and sword, 

 Burn their city, hew their bones, 

 And make all one heap of stones. 



" Cruell Babell, thou shalt feel 

 The revenger of our groans. 

 When y« happy victors steel, 

 As thine ours, shall hew thy bones, 

 And make all one heap of stones. 



" Men shall bless y« hand y* tears 

 From y« Mother's soft embraces 

 Sucking infants, and besmears 

 W^^ their brains y« rugged faces 

 Of y« rocks and stony places." 



D. P. C. 



KING HENRY STEWABT. 



In tLe volume of Scotch Songs and Ballads re- 

 cently published by Mr. T. G. Stevenson of 87. 

 Princes Street, Edinburgh, there is a very re- 

 markable old isallad, entitled the " Conn3laint of 

 Scotland," written upon the murder of Darnley. 

 The editor has prefixed some observations on 

 the character of the murdered monarch which do 

 not correspond with those usually entertained by 

 those various writers who have had occasion to 

 consider it. 



There is grave subject for reflection in what has 

 been urged on behalf of the unhappy youth who 

 was murdered at the early age of twenty-one, hav- 

 ing espoused in minority his cousin Mary, who 

 was his senior by at least two years. An addi- 

 tional suggestion may be added to those there 

 given as to the unfair manner in which historians 

 have uniformly dealt with his character. 



Scotland was at the time of Darnley's marriage 

 divided into parties — the Eoman Catholics and 

 the Presbyterians — each regarding the other with 

 the most inveterate hatred. The boy-husband 

 lived and died a Papist. From the Protestant 

 party he had little justice to expect. On the other 

 hand, the Roman Catholics could not uphold him 

 without throwing discredit on his wife, who they 

 were bound to support at all risks. To invest 

 him with anything like goodness was to render his 

 assassination the more detestable. By making 

 Q,ueen Mary the injured wife, sympathy was on 

 her side : hence originated all the stories about his 

 ill usage of her and so forth. Had he been a 

 Calvinist he would have no lack of defenders ; but 

 as he adhered to the ancient faith no one arose to 

 say one Word in his favour. 



Nevertheless scripta litem manet; his poems exist, 

 and show, not only a highly cultivated and amiable 

 mind, but afford positive proof of much poetical 

 excellence. He was confessedly an accomplished 

 lad. In England his education had been care- 

 fully attended to ; he was a scholar, a translator, 

 besides excelling in those manly sports in which it 

 was the pride of youths of high birth to indulge. 



Mr. John Colville, who had every means of know- 

 ing the truth, in the life of his son, tells us that 

 Darnley was affable, courteous, and generally 

 liked ; adding that his great fault was his inabi- 

 lity to keep a secret. 



Such a lad was of all others the most likely to 

 be early influenced by designing persons, and the 

 Scotch nobles by whom he was surrounded were, 

 with few exceptions, a set of most unprincipled 

 ruffians. Even as regarded Bothwell their beha- 

 viour was infamous ; they sanctioned his dealings 

 with Mary, and when they had got him in the pit 

 left him there. Whatever may have been the 

 real nature of the connexion between Rizzio and 

 the queen, it is easy to see that the admitted 

 familiarity between them was an excellent ground 

 for infuriating the youthful husband, and bring- 

 ing him forward as the leader of the persons en- 

 gaged in the slaughter of her majesty's minion. 

 Mary's abominable French education, in a court 

 where all was vice, and where virtue was only 

 mentioned to be laughed at, was not the one ex- 

 actly suited for the climate of her northern do- 

 minions, and a familiarity which Catherine de 

 Medici might in Paris with impunity indulge in 

 with a menial, could not very safely be introduced 

 by her daughter-in-law amongst the Calvinistic 

 citizens of Edinburgh. J. M. 



Best mode of repairing fractured Sepulchral 

 Urns. — During the sojourn of the late John M. 

 Kemble in Ireland, and a very short time before 

 his lamented death, I receited from his lips the 

 following recipe for the best mode of repairing 

 fractured unglazed pottery, of the class usually 

 denominated " sepulchral urns." As few persons 

 had more experience in such matters than Mr. 

 Kemble, I think it may be useful to place on re- 

 cord in the pages of "N. & Q." the following 

 "Note" which I made February 21, 1856 : — 



" Put the pieces together with best cabinet-maker's 

 glue, then glue thin calico inside the urn. Mix equal 

 parts of rye meal (or, if that is not at hand, oatmeal,) 

 and plaster of Paris, and moisten : with this fill up cracks 

 and breaches. Dry perfectly in the sun, or by slow heatj 

 when dry, dap over the mended parts with linseed oil." 



James Graves. 



Kilkenny. 



Painless Operations without Chloroform. — Dr. 

 William Turner, in his Herball, published in the 

 year 1551, mentions a wine made 



" of the roots of the mandrake, to be given to persons 

 who had to be cut, seared, or burned, and they shall feel 

 no pain, but they shall fall into forgetfulness and sleepish 

 drowsiness. The apples, if a man smell of them will 

 make him sleep, and also if they be eaten." 



These are facts similar to those which the poet 

 in a Pleasant Comedy refers to, as cited by T. C. 



