22 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"d S. VII. Jak. 8. '69. 



But there is another question closely connected 

 with the present, which, to the best of my belief, 

 has never yet been discussed by any writer on the 

 history of literature or art in England. Where 

 did we get our early woodcuts from ? Were they 

 imported ? If so, were they second-hand blocks, 

 or were they executed specially for the printers 

 by whom they were used ? Two or three years 

 since I had occasion to make a reference to the 

 Collection of Roxburghe Ballads in the British 

 Museum. I had found what I wanted, and was 

 amusing myself by examining the various wood- 

 cuts by which they are illustrated, when I was 

 joined by the late Mr. Kemble, whose attention I 

 directed to the various styles of art, Italian, Ger- 

 man, Flemish, &c. by which the woodcuts at the 

 heads of the different ballads were distinguished, 

 and he fully agreed with me that the question as 

 to the source from which our earlier woodcut 

 illustrations of the ballads * were derived was 

 one well deserving of investigation. 



Shortly afterwards I had the opportunity of 

 purchasing a copy of the well-known old German 

 poem, the Heldenbuch. It is a small folio printed 

 in 1560, of which the title is as follows : Das 

 Heldenbuch welchs auffs new Corrigiert und gehes- 

 sert ist, mit schonen Figuren geziert. Gedrucht zu 

 Franckfurdt am Mayn, durch Weygand Hand, und 

 Sygmund Feierahendt. 



The worthy publishers, when they produced 

 this edition, did their best to make their book 

 attractive. Perhaps it was one of the Christ- 

 mas Books of the year 1560. Be that as it may, 

 it is profusely illustrated with wood blocks, there 

 being nearly two hundred impressions in the 

 book ; although, as some of the cuts do duty in 

 difierent parts of the volume, there are probably 

 not above seventy or eighty distinct engravings. 

 The blocks are all about 2 inches high, and 2J 

 or 2f inches broad. They correspond exactly 

 with some wood blocks which must be familiar to 

 the readers of " N. & Q.," I mean those by which 

 the small 12mo. English Chap-books are illus- 

 trated. I say correspond with, which is certainly 

 true of many of them — for the woodcuts in some 

 of our Chap-books are mere copies of some in the 

 Heldenbuch; while I have no doubt a diligent in- 

 vestigator would find proofs that many of the 

 original blocks from the Heldenbuch were used in 

 the Chap-books of this country. I will give in- 



* In my friend Mr. Collier's interesting volume, A 

 Book of Roxburge Ballads, will be found a nnmber of fac- 

 similes of such woodcuts as used to be prefixed to the old 

 broadsides themselves. One of these, at p. 146., repre- 

 sents a Fool with a quantity of geese strung round his 

 girdle, and holding two others bj- the neck in his left 

 hand. This has nothing to do with the ballad to which 

 it is prefixed in the Roxburghe Collection, but represents 

 an incident in the life of the German Fool Claus Narr, 

 and exists as a frontispiece to the Volkshuch in which his 

 history is related. 



stances of both. In a little 12mo. History of the 

 Seven Champions, without date, but marked on 

 the title-page " Ninth Edition," and " printed for 

 L. Hawes & Company at the Red Lion in Pater 

 Noster Row " and others, we have a woodcut re- 

 presenting a knight passing over a plank to a ship 

 in which he is embarking. The costume is Ger- 

 man, and it is a coarse but very unmistakeable 

 copy of a woodcut at the verso of folio 44. of the 

 Heldenbuch. In the same way, in a Chap-book 

 edition of Fortunatus, without date, "printed by 

 and for T. Norris at the Looking Glass on London 

 Bridge," at p. 118., we have a woodcut representing 

 a knight and lady, possibly a queen (for she wears 

 a coronet), seated at table, with an old woman 

 bringing in to them a cup, the cover of which she 

 is lifting off : this is a copy of one which occurs 

 twice in the Heldenbuch, namely, at pp. 25. and 32. 

 While in the same edition of Fortunatus, at p. 159, 

 we have a woodcut representing a knight or per- 

 son in authority, accompanied by three others 

 waiting, while a fifth is unlocking the arched 

 door of a dungeon or cellar. This block, which is 

 greatly wormed, is, I am inclined to believe, the 

 identical block which figures in the Heldenbuch at 

 p. 135. 



I could add other instances, but having, as I 

 trust, said enough to call attention to the subject, 

 I leave it to be treated by abler hands, 



William J. Thoms. 



GUANO : THE KOORIA-MOOEIA ISLANDS. 



Some controversy is active at the present mo- 

 ment, as to the priority of discovery, claimed by 

 certain parties respectively, of the deposits of guano 

 on these solitary rocks at the western entrance to 

 the Persian Gulf, So far as the modern visitants 

 have turned their inquiries to practical account 

 by the actual removal of the substance they have 

 discovered, they are entitled to merit. But it has 

 been known for more than five hundred years 

 that these islands possessed the rare combination 

 of incidents essential to the production of guano 

 in any locality. In the 725th year of the Hegira, 

 which corresponds to our date of a.d. 1324-5, the 

 Moorish traveller Abu Abd Mohammed Ibn Abd- 

 allah El Lawati, better known by his surname, 

 Ibn Batuta, set out from Tangier to perform the 

 pilgrimage to Mecca; and in the course of his long 

 wanderings, extending over the eight-and-twenty 

 years which followed, he sailed from Zafar (the 

 farthest city in Yemen) for Ormus, and an inci- 

 dent in this voyage is thus described by him. I 

 quote from the French version of Defremery and 

 Sanguinetti, which has been made from a more 

 complete MS. of the Arabic text than that used 

 by Lee in his translation for the Oriental Fund : — 



"Nous voyageames encore quatre jours depuis le port 

 de Hacic : ensuite nous arriv&mes h, la montagne Loum'&a 



