May 8. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



453 



burjjh, where Burdiehouse has usurped the place 

 of Bordeaux. E. N. 



The Term "Milesian" (Vol. iv., p. 175.). — 

 I beg to direct your attention to the accompany- 

 ing extract, -which furnishes a reply to Mr. 

 Fraser's Query : — 



<' Whoever is acquainted with Irish history, or who- 

 ever has had opportunities of mixing with the natives 

 of that country, cannot be ignorant that they claim a 

 descent from a long race of Milesian kings, who reigned 

 over them for thirteen centuries before the Christian 

 aera. The stock from which this long line of monarchs 

 emanated is traced to a pretended Milesian colony, 

 supposed to have emigrated from Spain into Ireland 

 under the conduct of Heremon and Heber. The most 

 rational inquirers, however, into the subject consider it 

 as nothing more than a tissue of imaginary events, ori- 

 ginating in the fertile fancies of their bards, A very 

 brief and general abstract of this contested part of Irish 

 history shall be given in the words of Mr. Plovvden : 



" ' About 140 years after the Deluge, Ireland was 

 discovered by one Adhua, who had been sent from 

 Asia to explore new countries by a grandson of Belus : 

 he plucked some of the luxuriant grass as a specimen 

 of the fertility of the soil, and returned to his master. 

 After that the island remained unoccupied for 140 years; 

 and about 300 years after the Flood, one Partholan, 

 originally a Scythian, and a descendant from Japhet in 

 the sixth generation, sailed from Greece with his family 

 and 1000 soldiers, and took possession^of the island. 

 They all died off, and left the island desolate of human 

 beings for the space of thirty years. Afterwards dif- 

 ferent sets of emigrant adventurers occupied and peopled 

 the island at different periods. About 1080 years after 

 the Deluge, and 1300 b.c, Niul (the son of Phenius, 

 a wise Scythian prince), who had married a daughter 

 of Pharaoh, inhabited with his people a district given 

 to him by his father-in-law on the Red Sea, when 

 Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. The descend- 

 ants of that Phenius (called more generally Feniusa 

 Farsa) were afterwards expelled by Pharaoh's succes- 

 sors on account of their ancestors having favoured the 

 escape of the Israelites through the Red Sea. They 

 then emigrated and settled in Spain, whence, under the 

 command of Milesius, a colony of them sailed from 

 Brigantia in Galicia to Ireland, gained the ascendancy 

 over the inhabitants, and gave laws and a race of mon- 

 archs to the island. The Milesian dynasty continued 

 to govern Ireland without interruption till about the 

 year 1168, when it ceased in the person of Roger 

 O'Connor, and the sovereignty was assumed by our 

 Henry II. Of this race of kings the first 110 were 

 Pagan, the rest Christian.'" — Barlow's Hist, of Ireland, 

 vol. i. pp. 22-4. 



Geoege Richards, M.A. 

 Queen's Coll., Birmingham. 



Title ofD.D. (Vol. ii., p. 13.). — The remark of 

 your correspondent Eye-Snuff, " that any lay 

 scholar of adequate attainments in theology is 

 competent to receive this distinction, and any 

 university to bestow it upon him," is incorrect in 

 two ways, as far as the university of which I am a 



member is concerned. A reference to the Oxford 

 University Calendar, or to the Statutes of the 

 University, will show him that no one can tajce 

 the degree of B.D., or D.D., without first exhibit- 

 ing his letters of priest's orders : and the theolo- 

 gical attainments represented by the degree D.D. 

 are next to nothing ; the exercise required for 

 B.D. used to be a mere form, and I believe is little 

 more now ; a certain number of terms kept in the 

 university, and payment of certain fees, being all 

 that is necessary for proceeding D.D. The case is 

 the same, I imagine, at Cambridge. W. Eraser. 

 Lass of Richmond Hill (Vol. ii., p. 103.). — I 

 have heard it said, of course with little regard to 

 probability, that this once popular song was written 

 by George IV. when Prince of Wales. 



W. Eraser. 



A Bull (Vol. ii., p. 441.). — I have heard it 

 argued that the word bull, meaning an incoherent 

 blunder, was derived from the Pope's Bulls, the 

 tyrannical contents and imperious tone of which 

 often made so odd a contrast with the humility of 

 the subscription, " Servus servorum Dei," that the 

 name bull was applied to anything that seemed ab- 

 surdly inconsistent or self- contradictory. 



W. Eraser. 



Remains of Horses and Sheep in Churches 

 (Vol. v., p. 274.). — We have good evidence that 

 the Saxons used the places of sepulture which they 

 found in England ; and it is well known that Anglo- 

 Saxon remains have often been discovered in the 

 vicinity of churches, a fact which leads to the sup- 

 position that churches occupied the sites of Pagan 

 temples. The bones of animals have often been 

 found on and near the sites of our London 

 churches. J. Y. A. 



Fern Seed (Vol. v., pp. 172. 356.). — I am led 

 to think there is an error in the notice of your 

 correspondent E,. S. E. on the above subject. The 

 seed of St. John's Eearn cannot be gathered on 

 Midsummer Eve, inasmuch as at that time it is in 

 a merely embryotic state. The seed attains per- 

 fection late in autumn, and it remains attached to 

 the dry brown stem until shaken off by the au- 

 tumnal and winter blasts. The taking of it, there- 

 fore, is not, according to those versed in such mys- 

 teries, the easy task of a Midsummer twilight, but 

 must be performed amid the darkness of a winter's 

 night. On the midnight of Saint John the Evan- 

 gelist, to whom the seed and plant are dedicated, 

 must it be shaken, not pulled, from its stem. Very 

 probably mystic virtues were imputed to the seed 

 before the introduction of Christianity. And it 

 were not perhaps hazarding too much to suppose 

 that the old superstitious monks assigned it to- 

 Saint John from an idea that the potency of the 

 seed might have influenced the wondrous reve- 

 lations with which he, more than any other of the 

 disciples, or all the disciples, was favoured. B. 



