434 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"^ S. No 74., May 30. '57. 



" Young 07'pheus tickled his harp so well" (2"'' 

 S. iii. 250. 320.) — I have two copies of the above 

 named song : the one on a broadside, printed with 

 music, and entitled "The Devill charm'd with 

 Twinkum Twankum, and Uridice releas'd out of 

 Hell for an Old Song;" the second contained in 

 A Complete Collection of Old and New English 

 and Scotch Songs, with their respective Tunes pre- 

 fixed (vol. ii. p. 139.), 8vo., London, 1735. The 

 name of the author is not given in either copy, 

 but the words agree very nearly with those sup- 

 plied by Mk. De Mokgan. Wm. Chappell. 



Ghost Stories Wanted (2°'' S. iii. 389.) — 



" The Appearance of an Apparition to James Sympson 

 of Huddersfield in Yorkshire, an elderly Broad-cloth 

 Weaver, commanding him to do strange things in Pall 

 Mall, and what he did. A wonderful Narrative in Two 

 Parts." 



The above is the heading of a broad-sheet pub- 

 lished by Hone, without date, but probably about 

 forty years ago, as James Sympson saw in the 

 Regent's closet " a pair of stays, and a bottle of 

 noyeau, dragons with tails, and the heads of a 

 divorce, a French clock, and some Roman fiddle- 

 strings." The narrative is a clever political squib, 

 and perhaps a parody on some more serious story 

 of a ghost which expounded the spots on the sun, 

 for the apparition says : 



" Observe what I say, James, and register it in your 

 memory ; for you will have to repeat it in high places. 

 There are seventeen flea-bites between j-our wrist and 

 j'Our elbow, and there are an equal number of spots on the 

 sun, and the bites and the spots have an equal effect on the 

 state of the weather." 



" Personal Recollections of the Little Jew Ghost, re- 

 viewed in connection with the Lancashire Bogie and the 

 Table Talking and Spirit Rapping. By Edgar Hewlett, 

 Minister of the Gospel, Wigan, Lancashire. London, 

 1854." 



A very ordinary case of rapping and talking. 



Hopkins, Jun. 

 Garrick Club. 



Parish Registers (2"^ S. iii. 321.) — The parish 

 of St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford (of which I am 

 curate), affords an instance where the loss of a 

 register may be possibly accounted for, by the 

 supposition of its having been carried off by some 

 one of the too often dangerous race of antiquarian 

 collectors, for the sake of the transcriber's auto- 

 graph. Our earliest register at present in exist- 

 ence commences at the year 1602 ; but extracts, 

 extending from 1574 to 1589, from a preceding 

 register are preserved by Antony Wood in a MS. 

 in the Ashmolean Museum (D. 5. pp. 21-2.), 

 where the Oxford historiographer adds the follow- 

 ing note : 



" Note that this register, which is in paper and much 

 decayed, 1 transcribed into Dutch paper, and bound it up 

 at mine owne charg, and gave it to the parish, 1667." 



The parish seem unfortunately to have proved 



but careless trustees of the careful transcriber's 

 gift. Another instance of a loss which is much to 

 be regretted is that of several rolls of church- 

 wardens' accounts prior to the Reformation 

 (quoted in Wood's account of the parish as pub- 

 lished in Peshall's Oxford), which appear from a 

 reference in a parish-book to have been in safe 

 preservation so lately as the year 1817, but which 

 have now disappeared. The oldest roll at present 

 in existence is dated 1561. W. D. Macrat. 



" Wooden Walls " applied to Ships (2°^ S. iii. 

 368.) — The first mention of wooden walls in this 

 sense is to be found in Herodotus, vii. 141., in the 

 second reply of the Pythian oracle to the Athe- 

 nians, B.C. 480 : 



T € 7x <" Tpnoyevf? ^vXivov 5t5o7 eipvoira ZeiJy, 



which Themistocles interpreted as referring to 

 their ships : consequently the Athenians built war 

 ships in addition to the two hundred built by the 

 advice of Themistocles before this oracle was ut- 

 tered. It must be mentioned that their intention 

 was to desert Athens by embarking in ships 

 (Herod, vii. 140.) ; and Themistocles threatens 

 to sail to Siris, in Italy, which was their ancient 

 possession, and which the oracles said they were 

 destined to occupy. (Herod, viii. 62.) Siris was 

 at the mouth of the present river Agri, in the 

 Gulf of Tarentum. This is an answer to the 

 question what city of Italy was . mentioned by 

 Themistocles. (" N. & Q.," 2"'^ S. iii. 328.) 



T. J. BUCKTON. 



Lichfield. 



W. W. (Malta) will find in Timbs's Curiosities 

 of History, ip. 18., the following passage, showing 

 the above term to have been derived from Grecian 

 history ; the authority, though not here named, is 

 Grote's History of Greece : 



"When the Athenian envoys consulted the Delphian 

 oracle as to their hopes at Salamis, the priestess assured 

 them that ' " the wooden wall " alone should remain un- 

 conquered.' The people inquired what was meant by 'the 

 wooden wall.' Some supposed that the Acropolis itself, 

 which had been originally surrounded with a wooden 

 palisade, was the refuge pointed out; but the greater 

 number, and among them most of those who were by pro- 

 fession expositors of prophecy, maintained that the 

 wooden wall indicated the fleet, as it does at this day in 

 our national boast of 'the wooden walls of Old Eng- 

 land.' " 



Philo. 



The Old Hundredth Tune (2°* S. iii. 58. 234. 

 295. 352.) — Mk. George Opfor establishes that 

 the Genevan copy of 1561 is not the earliest, for 

 he possesses an edition of 1543. Is there not a 

 rare edition of 1542 ? The earliest copy in Stern- 

 hold and Hopkins is 1565, but John Day has it in 

 his Four-part Psalms of 1563. His edition of the 

 Dutch Psalms in 1561, and of Sternhold and 

 Hopkins, 1562-3, have it not. It was never 

 printed by Luther, never ascribed to him in »ny 



