April 10. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



357 



not always such savages as R. S. F. shows us 

 the Scotch once were in this respect. I fear at 

 that time we were not much better. 



A. Holt White. 



To my previous Note, I beg leave to append 

 a passage from Arnot's Ci'iminal Trials (p. 368.), 

 which may tend to throw some light on this sub- 

 ject. In speaking of the witch prosecutions in 

 Scotland, this writer says : 



" If an unfortunate woman, trembling at a citation 

 for witchcraft, ended her sufferings hy her own hand, 

 she was dragged from her house at a horse's tail, and 

 buried under the gallows." 



R. S. F. 



Perth. 



Large Families (Vol. v., pp. 204. 304.). — To 

 the instances of unusally large numbers of children 

 by one mother given in " N. & Q." may be added 

 that of a Lady Elphinstone, who is said, by tradi- 

 tion, to have had no less than thirty-six children, 

 of whom twenty-seven were living at one time. 



There is a story told of this lady and her hus- 

 band, Lord Elphinstone, which seems to corro- 

 borate the tradition ; it is, that they once asked a 

 new and somewhat bashful acquaintance to visit 

 them, telling him that he should meet no one but 

 their family circle. Their guest arrived shortly 

 before dinner, and, being shown through the 

 dining -hall on his way to the drawing-room, was 

 much disconcerted at seeing a long table laid for 

 about twenty people. On remonstrating with his 

 host and hostess for having taken him in, as he 

 thought, he was quietly informed that he had been 

 told no more than the truth, for that their family 

 party, when all assembled, only fell short of thirty 

 by one. 



I \ believe that John eighth Lord Elphinstone 

 and his lady, a daughter of the Earl of Lauderdale, 

 who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth and 

 beginning of the eighteenth centuries, are the pair 

 to whom this story refers ; and, though the Scotch 

 peerages make no mention of any such phenome- 

 non in the Elphinstone family, yet I am strongly 

 inclined, from the goodness of the authority from 

 which I derive the tradition, to believe it to be 

 true ; the more so, as it is now acknowledged that 

 the Scotch peerages, not excepting Douglas's, 

 which has hitherto been the chief book of refer- 

 ence respecting the noble families of Scotland, are 

 so full of errors and omissions, that very little re- 

 liance can be placed on them. 



Can any of your readers inform me whether any 

 documentary evidence exists that a Lady Elphin- 

 stone had this extraordinary number of children? 



C. E. D. 



Twenty-seven Children, Sfc. — About fifty years 

 ago, Mrs. Edwards, residing in Quickset Row, 

 Ifew Road, had her twenty- eighth child, each a 



single birth; they were all born alive, and all 

 lived several months, but she never had more than 

 ten living at a time. 



A former pupil of mine knew a lady, of whom 

 he wrote to me, that she had borne thirty children, 

 all single births ; seven only of them arrived at 

 the age of manhood. He says, " This statement 

 may be relied upon with the utmost confidence as 

 a fact." S. M. 



The last of the Palceologi (Vol. v., p. 280.). — 

 This is a most interesting subject ; I beg to refer 

 your readers to Archceologia, vol. xviii. p. 93., and 

 to Burn's History of Foreign Refugees, p. 230. 



J. S. B. 



MiittllantaitS, 



NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC. 



The readers of " N. & Q." who are lovers of Folk 

 Lore are, we well know, very numerous ; those who 

 take an interest in that subject, and are at the same 

 time acquainted with the great philological acquire- 

 ments of the learned editor of the Ancient Laws and 

 Institutes of England, we have no doubt shared our 

 satisfaction at the announcement that Mr. Thorpe had 

 undertaken a work, comprehensive yet not too volumi- 

 nous, in which he would exhibit the ancient mythology 

 and principal mythologic traditions of Scandinavia and 

 the North of Germany. The book is now before us ; 

 and in three small volumes, entitled Northern Mythology, 

 comprising the principal popular Traditions and Super- 

 stitions of Scandiiiavia, North Germany, and the Nether- 

 lands, Mr. Thorpe has presented us with such an 

 amount of information illustrative of the intimate con- 

 nexion subsisting between the heathenism of the Ger- 

 manic nations of the Continent and that of our Saxon 

 forefathers, gathered from the writings of the best 

 scholars of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Low 

 Countries, as was never before within the reach of the 

 mere English student, and, in so doing, has produced a 

 book which the general reader will devour for the sake 

 of the amusement to be found in it, the philosopher for 

 the view of the human mind which it presents, and the 

 antiquary for the abundance of new light which it 

 throws upon many of the most obscure points in the 

 Folk Lore of Merry England. We shall probably 

 often have occasion to refer to it, in illustration of 

 communications upon a subject which is yet far from 

 exhausted. 



We were reminded, by the excellent explanation of 

 the word Bigot, quoted by a correspondent in our last 

 Number (p. 331.) from the Rev. R. Chevenix Trench's 

 Lectures On the Study of Words, of a duty we owed to 

 our readers, namely, that of calling their attention more 

 directly to this admirable little volume. The Lectures, 

 which are " On the Morality in Words," " On the His- 

 tory in Words," " On the Rise of New Words," " On 

 the Distinction of Words," and " The Schoolmaster's 

 Use of Words," may be said to be a continuous and 

 well-digested series of proofs of the truth of the remark, 

 that " there are cases in which more knowledge of more 

 value may be conveyed by the history of a word, than 



