June 5. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



547 



diately after her marriage to James VI., the king 

 ordered Lord Drummond of Perth, who was 

 "principal forester of Glenartney," to provide veni- 

 son for a feast. His deputy, Drummond of Drum- 

 mondernoch, found in the forest some trespassers 

 of clan Donald of Glenco, whose ears he cropped 

 and let them go. The Macdonalds, however, re- 

 turned with others of their clan, killed Drummond, 

 and cut off his head. The atrocious acts of bar- 

 barism which followed need not be told here. 

 They ultimately took the head with them, and 



Proceeded to Balquhidder, among their friends the 

 I'^Gregors, whose conduct is best described in 

 the words of the king's proclamation against their 

 clan, which, after denouncing the " manifest reifs, 

 and stouths" committed by them, and the murder 

 of Drummond, proceeds thus : 



"Likeas after ye murther committed, ye authors yrof 

 cutted afF ye said umqil Jo. Drummond's head, and 

 carried the same to the Laird of McGregor, who, and 

 his haill surname of M<=Gregors, purposely conveined 

 upon the next Sunday yrafter, at the kirk of Buch- 

 quhidder; qr they caused ye said umqll John's head be 

 pnted to them, and yr avowing ye sd murder, laid yr 

 hands upon the pow, and in Ethnic and barbarous 

 manner, swear to defend ye authors of ye sd murder." 



Henry G. Tomkins. 

 Weston super Mare. 



Bhymes on Places (Vol. v., pp. 293. 374. 500.). 

 — Roger Gale, in a letter dated August 17, 1739, 

 states that he saw the following lines in a window 

 at Belford (between Newcastle and Berwick) : 

 " Cain, in disgrace with heaven, retired to Nod, 



A place, undoubtedly, as far from God 



As Cain could wish ; which makes some think he 

 went 



As far as Scotland, ere he pitch 'd his tent ; 



And there a city built of ancient fame, 



"Which he, from Eden, Edinburgh did name." 



ReliqidcB Gahance, 67*. 



Charles Mathews, in a letter directed to his son 

 at Mold N. AY., dated 4th November [1825], says : 



" Lord Deerhurst, who franked this letter, laughed 

 at the idea of your being condemned to be at Mold, 

 and told me an impromptu of Sheridan's, upon being 

 compelled to spend a day or two there : 



^ " * Were I to curse the man I hate 

 From youth till I grow old. 

 Oh might he be condemn'd by fate 



To waste his days in Mold ! ' " 

 ^ Memoirs of Charles Mathews, v. 504. 



C. H. Cooper. 

 Cambridge. 



^ The Silent Woman (Vol. v., p. 468.). — A very 

 similar sign to this is one called " The Honest 

 Lawyer," who is represented in exactly the same 

 position -as " The Silent Woman." The interpre- 

 tation seems tolerably obvious in both cases, such 

 a state being one in which the lady could not be 



otherwise than silent, nor the gentleman than 

 honest. S. L. P. 



Oxford and Cambridge Club. 



Serpent with a human Head (Vol. iv., pp. 191. 

 331.). — Perhaps the most ancient representations 

 of this figure are to be found in those papyri of 

 the ancient Egyptians, called the Ritual, or prayers 

 of the dead, in which are depicted the progress or 

 peregrination of the soul through the regions of 

 the nether world, or Hades, to a future state of 

 existence. Fac-similes of the Ritual have been 

 published in Rosellini's Monumenti deW Egitto, 

 Dr. Lepsius's Todten-Buch, the plates of Lord 

 Belmore's Collection of Hieroglyphic Monuments^ 

 and in the great French work entitled Description 

 de rEgypte. A similar form occurs also in several 

 of the woodcuts inserted in the prose version 

 (printed at Paris by Antolne Verard in 1499) of 

 Guillaume de Guileville's poem entitled Le Pele^ 

 rinaige de VAme, a monastic legend of the four- 

 teenth century, evidently founded on the old 

 Egyptian belief. At the end of the pilgrimage 

 represented in the Egyptian papyri, the soul is 

 conducted by her guardian angel into the great 

 Hall of Judgment, where the deeds done in the 

 body are placed in the balance in the presence of 

 Osiris, the judge of the assize, who passes sen- 

 tence. A representation of the same scene became 

 a favourite decoration in mediasval Christiaa 

 churches, of which many vestiges have been dis- 

 covered of late years in this country ; with this 

 difference, that in these fresco-paintings St. Mi- 

 chael was substituted, as judge of the tribunal, for 

 Osiris. In the woodcuts above mentioned, pub- 

 lished by Verard, the woman-headed serpent pur- 

 sues the soul, like an accusing spirit, into the Hall 

 of Judgment, seats herself even in one of the 

 scales of the balance to counterpoise the good 

 deeds placed in the opposite scale by the soul, 

 telling her at the same time that her name is Sin- 

 deresis, or the worm of Conscience. Thus, by a 

 circuitous route, we arrive at the signification of 

 the original Egyptian symbol. Nhrsl» 



Poem on the Burning of the Houses of Parlia- 

 ment (Vol. v., p. 488.). — As this doggerel is written 

 on the same plan as our old friend " This is the 

 House that Jack built," it will be sufficient to give 

 the last paragraph, which of course embraces the 

 whole. I copy from a newspaper cutting, but 

 from what newspaper I am ignorant. It is printed 

 consecutively (as I send it), and not with reference 

 to the metre. 



" This is the Peer, who In town being resident, 

 signed the report for the absent Lord President, and 

 said that the history, was cleared of its mystery, by 

 Whitbread the waiter, adding his negatur, to that of 

 John Riddle, who laugh'd and said « Fiddle !' when 

 told Mr. Cooper of Drury Lane, had been down to 

 Dudley and back again, and had heard the same day, a 

 bagman say, that the house was a-blazing, a thing quite 



