24 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2->-« S. VIII. July 9. '59. 



2. "Giff* thou gang on the gate thou 's gann, 

 Ilk fearless fieu' shall by thee stan', 

 That bows aneath my high comman'j 



Sae be na frightet, 

 For I sail lend my helping han' 



To see thee rightet." 



And in a similar style proceeds to verse viii. : — 



" Now, Rob, my lad, chear up th}' saul f, 

 In Goshen thou shalt tent thy faul J, 

 An gifF thou's ay as stout an haul §, 



As I'm a Deel, 

 Thou's no give up, till thou's right aul |t, 

 Sae fare thee weel." 

 ' "Anatoer a Fool according to his Folly, Prov. xxvi. 5." 



Mr. Dun acknowledges that it was rather hard 

 work getting on with this poem, having "ham- 

 mered it out something like Pope's poet," "who 

 strains from hard-bound brains nine lines a year." 

 It is no wonder Burns complained of the great 

 " spawn " of imitators that his lays had brought 

 forth. G. JST. 



CELTIC BEMAINS IN JAMAICA. 



A West-Indian friend, on whose accuracy full 

 reliance may be placed, has brought to me two 

 stone implements found in the superficial soil of 

 the island of Jamaica. They are celts of the ordi- 

 nary description, and of medium size and careful 

 workmanship, undistinguishable from the common 

 types of the later stone period in Europe. The 

 material is a hard greenstone, unlike as I am in- 

 formed any rock found on the island. Both bear 

 traces of the lateral attachment of a haft, made 

 probably by bending a supple stout wand horizon- 

 tally round the middle of the tool, and tying it on 

 with fibres ; just as the granite quarrymen on the 

 Cornish moors now do with their small steel chisels. 

 A third implement of larger size, but of the same 

 kind, has also been exhumed. I have not heard 

 of any pottery or other objects of art. The fact 

 and fashion of the tool connect it with the abori- 

 ginal tribes of western Europe, or rather with the 

 first traceable wave of the Indo-European migra- 

 tion. Will one of your correspondents who is 

 gifted with leisure for the investigation follow up 

 the subject by noting the vestiges of the westward 

 course of the great original stream of Celtic popu- 

 lation ? I have some recollection of the occur- 

 rence of similar implements in the United States 

 being recorded, but have not time to pursue the 

 inquiry, though it assumes the more interest at 

 present from the analogous, though different, phe- 

 nomena of the flint implements now under such 

 copious discussion among antiquaries and geolo- 

 gists. No reasonable doubt can be entertained 

 by anyone who sees the articles found near Amiens 

 and Abbeville, and in the Sicilian and-Brixham 

 caves, that they are of man's workmanship, and 



intended for different uses : in fact, that we have 

 the cutlery of the early stone period. At St. 

 Acheul, as at the former jftnd in our own country, 

 the abundance of these remains within a narrow 

 space points to more than a settlement, and shows 

 the existence of a manufactory. Just as future 

 archaeologists will find at Brandon proofs of the 

 fabrication of gun-flints for the million. The oc- 

 currence of the bones of extinct mammals inter- 

 spersed with the implements, and of undisturbed 

 beds of brick-earth with land shells above, and 

 intercalated with implement-bearing drift, are 

 phenomena so remarkable that I prefer waiting 

 for farther facts in confirmation before attempting 

 either to found conclusions or alter present land- 

 marks. There is a well-endowed band of ex- 

 plorers on the quest, and they will doubtless 

 unkennel the truth, which is always well worth 

 the hunting, I recollect a collection of flint im- 

 plements in the museum at Beauvais, which should 

 be examined. An arrow-head of flint has been 

 found in a Cornish stream-work. S. R. Pattison. 



If. 



t Soul. X Fold. § Bold. 



Old. 



THE prisoners' BASKET CARRIER. 



^ An officer bearing this name exercised his func- 

 tions in Canterbury for many years. His duties 

 consisted in perambulating the streets with a 

 basket, into which the charitable dropped their 

 contributions for the poor prisoners. The con- 

 dition of prisoners, more especially of the hum- 

 blest class of debtors, was often very deplorable. 

 Incarcerated by the local court for weeks, and 

 even for months, for the most trifling debts, the 

 amounts sometimes scarcely exceeding a shilling, 

 they remained at one time almost solely depend- 

 ent on the charitable for their daily food. The 

 court by whose judgments they were cast, some 

 years previous to the establishment of the County 

 Court) was denominated by one of those anomalies 

 in our language which have such strange humour 

 in them, the Court of Conscience ! 



The duties of "prisoners' basket carrier" not 

 being sufficiently remunerating, the functionary 

 received, a.d. 1707, the additional appointment of 

 " swine driver," whereby he acquired official au- 

 thority to drive to pound, or elsewhere secure, all 

 these and other animals found wandering at large 

 in the streets and public places. The jury pre- 

 sentments two hundred years since give a vivid 

 picture of the then state of the thoroughfares in 

 Canterbury, which doubtless applied to many 

 other towns In the kingdom. One man, a car- 

 penter or builder, returning from the woods at 

 " Nether Hardres," coolly shoots down a load of 

 timber before his door, for want of a timber yard. 

 Another drives posts Into the footway before his 

 house, on which to display his merchandise. A 

 third keeps a whole team of pigs, which live at 



