2»'» S. No 74., May 30. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



439 



leur avoir dit d'une voix sepulchrale: 'J'ai ^t^ comme 

 vous, vous serez bientot comme moi,' disparut corarae il 

 avait surgi, sans laisser de traces .... A* la vue de cette 

 apparition, les trois chevaux s'agenouillferent et demon- 

 t^rent leurs cavaliers, qui, saisis de frayeur, firent voeu de 

 se convertir, et de fonder une chapelle h, I'eglise de Creances, 

 s'ils peuvent retourner sains et saufs h leur chateau." 



The clergy of France have of late years, much 

 to their credit, attempted to introduce a more re- 

 ligious observance of the Sunday ; and currency 

 may have been given to the Cherbourg story, with 

 a view to the enforcement of their exhortations by 

 60 dreadful an example. 



Hon ORE DE Mareville. 



Petition introduced into the Litany (2""^ S. iii. 

 230.) — Seeing Mr. Gatty's Query and the 

 Editor's reply on this subject, I am reminded of 

 having heard that in Cornwall it was once the 

 custom to pray in church for plenty of wrecks : 

 and a story is told, that on one occasion intelli- 

 gence was brought to the church of a wreck being 

 off the coast, and the congregation were, at once 

 leaving the church to proceed to the shore, when 

 they were checked by the clergyman, who told 

 them he had a few more words to say. They 

 paused, and kept their seats ; upon which the 

 clergyman is said to have walked himself to the 

 church door, and to have exclaimed, " Now breth- 

 ren we will all start fair." Now if we consider 

 that a large portion of the inhabitants of Cornwall 

 are fishermen by trade, who have to depend upon 

 the sea for their livelihood, I think it not impro- 

 bable that they may have prayed, like the Manx- 

 men, for a continuance of the blessings of the sea, 

 as meaning its fish, and not, as some have thought, 

 as asking the Almighty to send wrecks to their 

 coasts. Can any of the correspondents of " N. & 

 Q." throw more light on this interesting subject ? 

 1 am not acquainted with any form of prayer said 

 to have been used, nor can I assert that the prac- 

 tice of praying (supposed, as related to me) for 

 wrecks, is other than a myth ; as I believe the 

 story I have related is a Joe Miller. Any in- 

 formation will be thankfully received by Henri. 



Tread-wheel (2°'i S. iii, 336.) — For the want of 

 a word or two to Mr. Ellacombe's remarks on 

 the tread-wheel, the friends of a man of merit 

 may be unnecessarily agitated, and the dwellers 

 in No. 19. Great George Street, Westminster, 

 astonished even to consternation. I would there- 

 fore suggest that after " the late Mr. Cubitt " be 

 added " now Sir William" since the present name 

 extinguishes the late or last, and the ends of 

 justice will be answered. Tread-well. 



Ehrenhreitstein (2°'> S. iii. 388.) — In Tomble- 

 son's Views of the Rhine it is stated, and the state- 

 ment agrees with the old German works on the 

 llhine, that this famous fortress was once named 

 Irmstein; then it was called Hermannstein, after 



the Archbishop of Treves, Hermann Hillin, who 

 rebuilt it in 1153. But "in 1160, the works 

 being completed on a more extensive scale, the 

 Archbishop, ou account of their noble breadth 

 and spaciousness, gave them the name of 'JEAren- 

 breitstein,' or the ' Broad Stone of Honour.' " The 

 Rheinischer Antiquarius, however, gives an ac- 

 count somewhat different, stating that Archbishop 

 Hillin called it at first Ehrenbreitstein, but after- 

 wards from his own first name, Hermannstein : 



"Anfanglich nante dieser Erzbischof solches Schloss, 

 wegen seines breiten und geraumlichen Urafangs, Ehren- 

 hreitstein, hernach aber nach seinem Vornamen, Hermann- 

 stein." 



There still seems some doubt about the name, 

 for the same old authority states that the castle 

 was also called Erenberti Saxum, which he gives as 

 the Latin for Ehrenbreitstein. But who this Eren- 

 hert was he omits to inform his readers. F. C. H. 



Letter and Verses by Garrich (2°^ S. iii. 383.) 

 — It is a mistake to call this letter, and its ac- 

 companying verses, " Inedited." Both are printed 

 in liichard Ryan's Dramatic Table Talk, vol. i. 

 p. 248. (1825.) Robert S. Salmon. 



Newcastle-on-Tyne. 



Curse in Westminster Hall (2°'* S. iii. 370.) — 

 The Primate and thirteen bishops were present — 



" revested and apparelled in Pontificalibus, with tapers 

 according to the manner; the sentence of Excommuni- 

 cation was pronounced against all transgressors of the 

 liberties of the Church and of the ancient liberties and 



customs of the realm In the end they threw away 



their extinct and smoking tapers, saying, • So let them 

 be extinguished and sink into the pit of hell which run 

 into the dangers of this Sentence.' " — Holinshed, ii. 

 pp. 428-9. 



Mackenzie Walcott, M.A. 



Macaulay's Ruins of London (2"'^ S. iii. 397.) — 

 Dr. Doran has certainly proved, from a letter 

 dated Nov. 5, 1774, that to Walpole belongs the 

 credit of having first sketched the ruins of Jjondon, 

 and, consequently, that Macaulay cannot claim the 

 idea as his own. The historian Gibbon, in the 

 25th chapter of his celebrated history, has also 

 imagined the civilised New Zealander, and as this 

 portion of the Decline and Fall was published in 

 1781, sixteen years before Walpole died, he can 

 surely claim the idea as his own. 



" If in the neighbourhood of the commercial and literary 

 town of Glasgow a race of cannibals has really existed, 

 we may contemplate in the period of the Scottish history 

 the opposite extremes of savage and civilised life. Such 

 reflections tend to enlarge the circle of our ideas, and to 

 encourage the pleasing hope that New Zealqnd may produce 

 in someftiture age the Hume of the Southern Hemisphere." 



P. s. 



Partick. 



" Thatch, as wet as" (2"-^ S. iii. 383.) — Thatch 

 is always thoroughly soaked before it is applied to 

 a building or rick. Hence the phrase. P. R. 



