2-^ S. VII, Mar. 26. '59.1 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



261 



offensive matter, The Enthmiasm of (he Methodists 

 and Papists has no ribaldry except the extracts. 



I cannot agree with M. M., that Daille would 

 probably have concurred with Wesley had he 

 lived later. I am not acquainted with any of his 

 theological writings except the book above men- 

 tioned. In that he appears to be a moderate 

 Calvinist, and the name of the Rev. James Sher- 

 man, as translator of his Commentary on the 

 Philippians and Colossians, affords a strong pre- 

 sumption that he would not have been a Wes- 

 leyan. H. B. C. 



U. U. Club. 



MODERN PURIM ; CHILDREN CRUCIFIED BY JEWS. 



(2»'J S. vi. 473, 474. ; vii. 37.) 



Willingly granting that the Jews had never any 

 custom of crucifying or torturing Christian chil- 

 dren out of hatred to the name of our Divine 

 Saviour, I cannot allow that the instances on re- 

 cord of such cruelties having been committed by 

 certain Jews are, as M. G. represents them, " very 

 -doubtful tales." On the contrary, they are well 

 authenticated historical facts. I allude to the 

 n'artyrdoms in this manner of Saints Simon of 

 Trent, Richard of Poiitoise, Hugh of Lincoln, and 

 William of Norwich ; also of another child cruci- 

 fied by the Jews at Norwich in 1235. The mar- 

 tyrdom of St. Simon of Trent took place in 1472, 

 It was authenticated by the solemn deposition of 

 the physician who examined the child's body : the 

 juridical acts are to be seen in the Bollandists. 

 The account is recorded in Martene, and by 

 Benedict XIV., and the holy child's name is in- 

 scribed in the Roman Martyrology. Can this 

 with any fairness be called " a very doubtful 

 tale ? " St. Richard was martyred at Pontoise in 

 1182 by certain Jews, and this with other crimes 

 of the Jews led to their expulsion from France in 

 the same year. The history of his martyrdom 

 was written by F. Gaguin, and his feast is so- 

 lemnly kept at Paris and Pontoise. The martyr- 

 dom in like manner of St. Hugh, eleven years old, 

 at Lincoln, by Joppin and other Jews, is a well 

 proved historical fact. It occurred on the 27th of 

 August, 1255. The murderers, with Joppin, who 

 confessed the crime, were publicly hanged on gib- 

 bets by order of King Henry III. ; and the facts 

 are recorded by the historian Matthew of Paris, 

 Capgrave, and others. The martyrdom of St. 

 William of Norwich by the Jews in 1137, and of 

 another boy by the Jews in Norwich in 1235, are 

 equally authenticated. The English calendars, 

 the history by Thomas of Monmouth, the Saxon 

 Chronicle, the old chapel of St. William in the 

 Wood, the old paintings still visible in churches in 

 Nor/oik, are all attestations of the truth of these 

 martyrdoms, and place them, as well as the others 



above enumerated, far beyond the category of 

 " very doubtful tales." F. C. H. 



ELEPHANTS. 



(2"<J S. vii. 89. 133.) 

 The question, " Are elephants excited to work, 

 in the present day, by showing them wine, after 

 the practice referred to in 1 Maccabees, vi. 34.," is 

 answered in the affirmative by the following ex- 

 tract from the Library of Entertaining Knowledge 

 (Quadrupeds, ii. 157.) : — 



" With the same judgment an elephant will task his 

 strength, without human direction. ' I have seen,' says 

 M. D'Obsonville, ' two occupied in beating down a wall 

 which their cornacs (keepers) had desired them to do,' 

 and encouraged them by a promise of fruits and brandy.^ " 



The word " provoke," in the English version of 

 the Apocrypha, appears to have been introduced 

 from Luther's version, " sie anzubringen und zu 

 erzUrnen," where the former word anzubringen 

 represents correctly the ■rrapaa'Tria-ai of the Greek 

 original (Acts, xxiii. 24., Col. 1. 22.) to present or 

 provide ; the latter, erziirnen, to irritate, or pro- 

 voke to anger, being a gloss of Luther's, intended 

 to be explanatory, at a time when the habits of 

 this animal were less known in Europe than at 

 present ; for the elephant was not in-ilated by the 

 blood of the vine and mulberry, but induced to 

 action thereby, as the reward of labour to be per- 

 formed. This is the view of Dr. Harris {Nat. 

 Hist, of the Bible, Elephant). 



Your correspondent (p. 133.) thinks that show- 

 ing wine was equivalent to giving wine to drink, 

 as '■^exhibited in medical parlance;" but exhibit, 

 so applied, means "to exhibit the effects o/ some- 

 thing," and is used for topical as well as internal 

 medicaments ; besides, eSeilw has not the force of 

 eir6Tiaav in Greek. Eichhorn also speaks of the in- 

 toxication (Berauschung) of these elephants (Apok. 

 Schr. p. 284.) ; but I submit that any quantity of 

 wme or spirits which should so far intoxicate the 

 elephant as to make him heedless of the com- 

 mands of his driver, would render him more 

 dangerous even to friends than foes. The refer- 

 ence to the Third Book of Maccabees throws no 

 light on 1 Mace. vi. 34., that book being " filled," 

 according to Seller (s. 217.) "with fabulous nar- 

 ratives and romantic fictions " ; in which opinion 

 Dr. Milman nearly coincides. 



The writer of the First Book of Maccabees had a 

 much more intimate acquaintance with the habits 

 of the elephant than either Luther or Eichhorn ; 

 and this is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the 

 elephant is nowhere mentioned by the writers of 

 the Old and New Testaments, although they were 

 acquainted with irory. T. J. Buckton. 



Lichfield. 



