286 



NOTES AND QUERIES. [2n<«s.N«67.,ArRii.ii. 



people, to be capable of foretelling Events. In this per- 

 suasion a poor Washerwoman at Greenwich, who liad 

 been robbed at night of a large Parcel of Linen, to her 

 almost ruin, if forced to pay for it, came to him, and with 

 great anxiety earnestly requested him to use his Art, to 

 let her know where her Things were, and who robbed 

 her. The Doctor happened to be in the humour to joke : he 

 bid her stay : he would see what he could do ; perhaps he 

 might let her know where she might find them ; but who 

 the persons were, he would not undertake ; as she could 

 have no positive Proof to convict them, it would be use- 

 less. He then set about drawing Circles, Squares, &c., to 

 amuse her; and after some time told her if she would go 

 into a particular Field, that in such a Part of it, in a dry 

 Ditch, she would find them all tumbled up in a Sheet. 

 The woman went, and found them; came with great 

 haste and joy to thank the Doctor, and offered him half- 

 a-crown as a token of Gratitude, being as much as she 

 could afibrd. The Doctor, surprised himself, told her: 

 " Good Woman, I am heartily glad you have found your 

 Linen ; but I assure you I knew nothing of it, and in- 

 tended only to joke with you, and then to have read you 

 a Lecture on the Folly of applj'ing to any person to know 

 Events not in human power to tell. But I see the Devil 

 has a mind that I should deal with him: I am deter- 

 mined I will not. Never come or send any one to me any 

 more, on such Occasions ; for I will never attempt such 

 an Affair again whilst I live." ' " 



Cole adds : 



" This story Dr. Flamsteed told the late reverend and 

 learned Mr. Whiston, his intimate friend, from whom I 

 have more than once heard it." 



E. H. 



Good Friday Buns. — In the Museo Lapidario 

 of the Vatican is a tablet supposed to represent 

 the miracle of the five barley loaves. The loaves 

 are round cakes with a cross thereon, like unto 

 the Good Friday bun. A correspondent in the 

 AthencBum of last week suggests these loaves are 

 representative of a Pagan practice, — that of ofier- 

 ing cakes to Astarte, the Queen of Heaven, to 

 whom the prophet Jeremiah tells us the Jewish 

 women offered cakes and poured out wine. This 

 cake was called boun or bun. Julius Pollux de- 

 scribes it as a cake marked with two horns, and 

 Diogenes Laertius as one made of fine flour and 

 honey. The word bous (oblique case houn) is 

 Greek, but may it not be Tartar, or some lan- 

 guage to which Greek is as modern tongue ? The 

 sacrifice of cake and wine, before it be deemed a 

 Pagan rite, should be considered Patriarfchal, or 

 rather Antediluvian, for in Genesis, ch. iv. v. 3., 

 we read Cain sacrificed the fruit of the ground 

 (cakes and wine), whilst Abel sacrificed the blood 

 and the fat. May it not be possible to show that 

 the bun — the consecrated bread of the Pagan — 

 was in earlier times as bun the consecrated bread 

 of the Patriarch or Antediluvian ? In fact, just 

 as our Lord's Day is no other than the revival 

 of the Patriarchal Sabbath, so the Christian use 

 of the bun may be taken as the parallel to the 

 Antediluvian sacrifice of the fruit of the earth, 

 and symbolical of the bread of life. 



H. J. Gauntlett. 



The Ruins of London, shetched by Walpole, 

 before Macaulay. — We are all familiar with Mr. 

 Macaulay's savages gazing at the wrecks of our 

 fallen metropolis, from a broken arch of Black- 

 friars Bridge. Walpole, in a letter to Mason 

 (Nov. 27, 1775), sketches a picture which has 

 something of the same sentiment in it. 



" I approve," he saj's, " your printing in manuscript, 

 that is, not for the public ; for who knows how long the 

 public will be able, or be permitted to read? Bury a few 

 copies against this Island is rediscovered : some American 

 versed in the old English language will translate it, and 

 revive the true taste in gardening ; though he will smile 

 at the diminutive scenes on the little Thames when he is 

 planting a forest on the banks of the Oronoko. I love to 

 skip into futuritj' and imagine what will be done on the 

 giant scale of a new hemisphere; but I am in little 

 London, and must go and dress for a dinner with some of 

 the inhabitants of that ancient metropolis, now in ruins, 

 which was really, for a moment, the capital of a large 

 empire, but the poor man who made it so outlived him- 

 self and the duration of the empire." 



J. DORAN. 



American Nomenclature. — Mr. Shattuck of 

 Boston, Massachusetts, has recently published a 

 volume of curious American names. From this 

 singular and interesting work the following ex- 

 tract is given : 



" We once had under our instruction in Detroit a family 

 whose sons were named, One Stickney, Two Stickney, 

 Three Stickney ; and whose daughters were named. First 

 Sticknej',. Second Stickney, and so on. The three children 

 of a family nearer home were Joseph, And, Another; and 

 it has been supposed that should they have any more 

 they might have named them Also, Moreover, Never- 

 theless, Notwithstanding. An instance is also given of 

 parents who named their child Finis, supposing it would 

 be their last ; but having afterwards three more children, 

 a daughter and two sons, they were called Addenda, Ap- 

 pendix, and Supplement." 



w. w. 



Malta. 



Suspended Animation. — At the siege of Fort 

 St. Catharine, at Rouen, by the English under the 

 command of Dudley, Earl of Warwick, a young 

 French officer, Francis de S. Sivile, was wounded, 

 and being found motionless, laid in a shallow grave 

 hurriedly dug. His faithful servant searching for 

 his master recognised on a protruding hand the 

 ring which he had carried as a love-token to him 

 from a lady. He instantly disinterred the buried 

 man, and finding the body warm, summoned me- 

 dical aid, which restored " the dead but alive " 

 once more to his home. 



Mackenzie Walcott, M.A. 



China : " The Barbarian Eye.^^ — This term, 

 used by the Chinese to designate Europeans, ap- 

 pears strange because confined to the singular 

 number. A curious passage in the History of the 

 Portuguese Discovery of India, by Faria y Souza, 

 may serve to throw some light on it. The Chinese 

 he says, part iii. ch. ii., boast that their country- 



