126 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 119. 



which almost every discoverer of Junius has en- 

 cumbered his essa3\ D. J. 



Junius' Letters to Wilkes. — Would Mr. Hallam 

 kindly inform your readers whether the Junius 

 Letters, to which he refers in " N. & Q." Vol. iii., 

 p. 241., wei'e inserted in books or not? And in 

 the former case, whether they were in a separate 

 collection, or mixed with the other correspondence 

 of Mr. Wilkes? I.J.M. 



WHAT IS THE DERIVATION OF " GARSECG f 



This Anglo-Saxon word is used in the poetry 

 of Beowulf and Casdmon, and in ^e prose of 

 Orosius and Bede, &c. The a, in gar is twice 

 accented in Casdmon ; and Mr. Kemble has always 

 accented it in Beowulf. In the Lauderdale MS. 

 of Orosius it is written garsacg and garsecg; and 

 in the Cotton MS. garsegc and garsecg, without 

 any accent. Grimm, Kemble, and Ettmiiller make 

 the first part of the word to ho. gar, a spear, jave- 

 lin, the Goth., gairu; Ohd., her; O. Sax., ger ; 

 O. Nor., geir : and the latter, secg, a soldier, man. 

 Thus garsecg would be literally " a spear-man," 

 homo jaculo armatus. Mr. Kemble adds, it is " a 

 name for the ocean, which is probably derived from 

 some ancient myth, and is now quite unintelligible." 

 Ettmiiller gives it, " Garsecg, es, m. Carex jacu- 

 lorum, vel vir hastatus, i. e. oceanus. — Grymm's 

 Mythol., p. xxvii." 



Dahlmann, in his Forschungen der Geschichte, 

 p. 414., divides the word thus : Gars-ecg, and 

 says, gar is very expressive, and denotes " what is 

 enclosed," and is allied to the Ger. garten, a garden, 

 like the A.-S. geard, a garden, region, earth. 

 Ecg, Icl. egg; Ger. egge, eche, a border, an outward 

 part ; that is, xvhat borders or encircles the earth, 

 the ocean. What authority is there for dividing 

 the word into gars-ecg, and for the meaning he 

 gives to gar ? 



Barrington, in his edition of Orosius, p. xxiii., 

 gives " M. H. The Hatton MS." among the tran- 

 scripts. I cannot find any Hatton MS. of Orosius. 

 Can he refer to the transcript of Junius ? 



Throw. 



Commemoration of Benefactors. — I shall be glad 

 to learn by what authority an office for the Com- 

 memoration of Founders and Benefactors is used 

 in our college chapels, since this office in not found 

 in our Book of Common Prayer. And, farther, 

 whether the office is the same in all places, mutatis 

 mutandis. In my own college (Queen's, Cam- 

 bridge), the order of service was as follows : — The 

 Lesson, Ecclus. xliv. (read by a scholar) : the ser- 

 mon : the list of foundresses and benefactors : Te 



Deum laudamus : proper Psalms, viz, cxlviii., 

 cxlix., cl. : the following versicles and responses : 



" V. The memory of the righteous shall remain for 

 evermore. 



R. And shall not be afraid of any evil report. 



V. The Lord be with you. 



11. And with thy spirit." 



Then followed an appropriate collect, introduced 

 by the words " Let us pray ; " and the office was 

 concluded by the Benediction. 



W. Sparrow Simpson, B.A. 



Pedigree of Richard, Earl of Chepstow. — At a 

 recent meeting of the Kilkenny Archajological So- 

 ciety, there was exhibited, by permission of the 

 Marquis of Ormonde, an original charter, under 

 seal, of Richard, Earl of Chepstow, surnamed 

 Strongbow, whereby he granted certain lands in 

 his newly acquired territory of Leinster, to Adam 

 de Hereford. The charter, which ie beautifully 

 and clearly written on a small piece of vellum^ 

 commences thus : 



" Comes Ilic' fil' com' Ric' Gisleb'ti onmihus aniicis^ 

 suis," &c. 



As the usually given pedigrees (see Sir H. Colt 

 Hoare's T'our in Ireland, Introd. p. Ixxv.) make 

 Richard Strongbow the son of Gilbert, the second 

 son, and not Richard, the eldest son, of Gilbert de 

 Tonbrige ; query. Are we to supply " fil' " before 

 " Gisleberti " in the charter, or are we to suppose 

 that the second " Ric' " is a slip of the pen, — a 

 thing, however, not likely to occur in a legal deed 

 of so important a nature. James Graves^ 



Kilkenny. 



Twenty-seven Children. — In Colonel James 

 Turner's defence {English Causes Celebres, vol. i. 

 p. 11 1 .) he says, speaking of his wife, who was the» 

 also on trial for her life : 



" She sat down, being somewhat fat and weary, poor 

 heart ! I have had twenty-seven children by her ; 

 fifteen sons and twelve daughters." 



Is there any well authenticated instance of a 

 woman having had more than twenty-five children? 



E. D. 



Esquires of the Martyred King. — In the Smith 

 MSS. in the Bodleian Llbrarj-, there are copies of 

 certain petitions addressed to King Charles II., 

 relating to a proposed Order of Esquires of the 

 Martyred King. These forms of petition appear 

 to have been derived ex 3ISS. Asm. 837. 



Where is a full account of these proceedings to 

 be found in print ? J. Sansom. 



Braenis '•'• Memoires touchant le Commerce." — 

 Having lately seen a MS., of which I subjoin the 

 title, and not being able to discover any further 

 account of the writer of it than what is briefly 

 given in the volume itself, I submit my wish to 

 know something more about the author, and his, 



