450 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2ad s. No 75., June 6. '57. 



Consult Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, i. 7. ; Wood's 

 Athence Oxon., i. 653. ; and Burke's Extinct Baronetage.'] 



Charles I.'s Vow to restore Church Lands. — 

 The late William Upcott, in his privately printed 

 catalogue of his valuable MS. collections, gives 

 the title of a remarkable paper written by 

 Charles I., of which he had a transcript, but does 

 not mention the source from whence he derived 

 it. It consists of a vow made by that monarch at 

 Oxford in 1646, to the effect that, if God restored 

 him to his throne, he would restore all impro- 

 priations to the church, and give back to every 

 see and capitular body the rents which had been 

 unjustly transferred from them to the crown. 



In ypcott's sale catalogue, June 22, 1846, I 

 find no entry of this document. Can anyone in- 

 form me into whose hands it passed, or from what 

 source Upcott originally obtained his transcript ? 



A. Tatlok, M.A. 



[This important document is printed in the Appendix 

 to Robert Nelson's Address to Persons of Qualify and Es- 

 tate, 1715, and in Spelman's History of Sacrilege, p. 170., 

 edit. 1846. It is omitted in the first edition of the latter 

 work, 1698.] 



Bucellas Wine. — A Reader will feel obliged 

 if any one will inform him whence this wine de- 

 rives its name ? 



[Bucellas is the name of a vineyard in the neighbour- 

 hood of Lisbon.] 



Lights offered after Childbirth. — Hume, a.d. 

 1087, speaking of the misunderstanding between 

 William the Conqueror and Philip of France, 



" William, who was become corpulent, had been de- 

 tained in bed some time by sickness ; upon which Philip 

 expressed his surprise that his brother of England should 

 be so long in being delivered of his big belly. The king 

 sent him word that, as soon as he was up, he would pre- 

 sent so many lights at Notre Dame, as would, perhaps, 

 give little pleasure to the King of France ; alluding to the 

 usual practice at that time of women after childbirth." 



What practice is here alluded to by the his- 

 torian ? George Lloyd. 



[It was formerly a general custom for women in Eng- 

 land to bear lights when they were churched : a custom 

 which probably originated in the offerings of candles 

 always made on the festival of the Purification, which 

 was commonly called Candlemas Day from the lights 

 which were then distributed and carried about in proces- 

 sion. See Brand's Popular Antiquities, ii. 43. et seq. 

 ed. 1849.] 



good fridat bttns. 

 (2°« S. iii. 286. 397.) 



Receiving the " N. & Q." of April 1 1 only now, 

 and The Athenceum referred to unseen, this answer 

 to Dr. Gauntlett may be imperfect ; and the 

 more from my having nothing at hand to consult. 



The five (barley-loaves) is a mystical number, 



of Pagan origin and Christian continuance. The 

 circular form, and the cross, are phonetic of that 

 Pagan race with whom the cross was a sign ; from 

 Asia, to Egypt, and Mexico. The word Pagan 

 means anterior, foreign, and inhabitant. 



The offering, like the word, is of Central Asia ; 

 addressed there to Ashtoreth, corrupted by the 

 migrant Phoenician to Astarte ; and elevated 

 into the Queen of Heaven, as far as China on the 

 one hand, and to Yucatan on the other : thus, 

 "Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians called 

 Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns," 



bore these from Turan, the land of the Bull, with 

 equal appropriateness to Phoenicia. The horns 

 are, as a symbol, partly equivalent to the cross ; 

 but have their own peculiar sense, of wandering 

 or wanderer (thus Horn-Fair ; mercantile-sale). 

 Astarte came from Agtara, the Titanic Heaven of 

 Hesiod and the Greeks ; a fact which in modern 

 times has so distressed Erskine and his followers, 

 who abjure the Desatir on this ground. Hence 

 came the Heifer lo, and the Ethiopians, to Africa; 

 and the respectable Apis to Egypt, when once we 

 give up the nonsense of its Autochthonic claims. 



" Sous, oblique boun " is both Greek and Tar- 

 tar ; in one dialect at least of Tongusian, Buriat, 

 &c. Thence the direct form Bull ; for how else 

 supply the terminal II ? Greek and Latin have 

 it not, and are but collateral derivations. I may 

 add, that a scholar, to whom I showed some texts 

 and translations of rock-inscriptions, at once re- 

 marked, he " now saw the origin of the Greek," 

 i.e. in the Tartar. 



The cross, thoth, of the mystics is found in 

 Egypt and Yucatan, &c. This round cake, with 

 a cross on it, was most certainly an offering in 

 Mexico, though I cannot here refer to any au- 

 thority. The linguistic phonetical system, — which 

 alone and invariably solves every difficulty of all 

 our unexplained derivatives and customs, — shows 

 the bun and cross in the above two words as, aban- 

 doning SIN. These Tartar forms, Yukajjir or 

 Calmouk, might well coexist in America with the 

 other Asiatic tongues — Toltek, Aztek, Iroquois, 

 &c. ; andjthe seven sacred alphabets of Asia, ap- 

 parent in Stephens's daguerreotypes of Yucatan. 

 This thoth was the mystical dark-blue, symbol of 

 fidelity, and Chaldaic. 



But is not the ivine, strictly speaking, an as- 

 sumption ? Astarte probably might prefer this, 

 with Dr. Gauntlett, if offered the choice ; but 

 Jeremiah, in ch. vii., speaks simply of " drink- 

 offerings" "poured out" "to other gods;" twice 

 the phonetic word or symbol, boun, as libations ; 

 boon, as companion. 



Further : we can no more have " cakes and 

 wine" with Cain the sinner, than "cakes and ale" 

 with the virtuous of Shakspeare. The word must 

 be ns, piri ; " fruit of the ground," as our trans- 

 lation gives it, and nothing more. We know no- 



