194 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2'"' ?. No 36., Sept. 6. '56. 



*' Feria V. in Ccena Domini ; " among the Italians, 

 " Giovedi Santo ; " in England it used to be 

 known as " Sherethursday," though most of us 

 term it now " Maundy Thursday," and the Ger- 

 mans, " Green Thursday. This last designation, 

 like all the others, drew, we maybe sure, its origin 

 from something or another belonging to the cere- 

 monial of the day. Both the English names have 

 been already accounted for in The Church of Our 

 Fathers, t. iii. part 2nd, pp. 84. 2-35., and the 

 origin of the German one may be easily found. 



In olden times, as well in Germany as here in 

 England, and elsewhere throughout Christendom, 

 in most churches all the altars were washed, in a 

 solemn manner, with water and wine, and bunches 

 of fresh green herbs made up into little brooms 

 were employed for the occasion ; with one of such 

 brooms in hiis hand each of the clergy went in his 

 turn and rubbed the water and wine about on the 

 table or upper side of the high altar ; and the 

 same ceremony, but in a less formal manner, was 

 used at all the other altars of the church. The 

 York Missal expressly prescribes hyssop mixed 

 with savin to be employed for the purpose (see 

 Church of Our Fathers, as above, p. 235.) ; so too 

 does the " Liber Agendendorum " for the metro- 

 politan church of Salzburg : — " altaria nudentur, 

 et laventur aqure et ramis savince fricentur " (Pars 

 Secunda, p. 147.). The same ceremony, after 

 much the same way, was followed throughout 

 Germany, Poland, and in places bordering on the 

 Rhine, as may be seen in the old editions of the 

 Missals for Cologne, Treves, Mentz, and Liege; 

 and hyssop and box are almost always required by 

 their rubrics to be used for rubbing the altar dry 

 after the washing with water and wine. 



The use of green herbs at the washing of the 

 altars on Maundy Thursday has not been over- 

 looked by liturgical writers, some of whom, while 

 speaking of it, have afforded us its symbolical 

 meaning. Rupert, Abbot of Duyts, which is on 

 the German side of the Rhine, says : 



" Hispidi quoque ramusciili cum quibus lavantur (al- 

 taria in Coena Domini) flagella significant quae pectus 

 illud sacratum Deique caput atrociter secuerunt." — De 

 Div. Off. 1. V. c. 31. 



And John Beleth writes : 



" Altare ergo abluitur quia corpus Christivernm altare, 

 sangnine et aqua in cruce aspersum fuisse creditur. Rami 

 autem asperi quibus altare fricatur, significant spineam 

 coronam qua coronatus est Christus, aut flagella amara, 

 et ictuum vibices, et graves dolores quos in morte sus- 

 tinuit." — Divin. Off. Explic. c. 104, 



Our own John Mirk tells us that : 



"Thaulter stone betokeneth cristes body that was 

 drawen on the crosse — the besomea that the aulter is 

 ■wasshen wyth, betokeneth the scourges that they bete our 

 lordes body with and the tornes that he was crowned 

 with," &c. — Liher Festivalis, feria iiii. post ramos Pal. 

 fol. xxxiii. 



This name of " Green Thursday " could not, as 

 some imagine, have originated from the verse of 

 Psalm xxii. aliter xxiii : " Dominus regit me, et 

 nihil mihideerit in loco pascuae ibi me collocavit" 

 — rendered in the Protestant version, "He maketh 

 me to lie down in green pastures " — for this rea- 

 son, that neither on this day, nor on any Sunday 

 or day of Lent, does the public office begin with 

 those words, as imagined. 



By itself the conspicuous employment upon 

 such a solemn occasion of newly-gathered herbs 

 and boughs was quite as ready to suggest to Ger- 

 man minds the name of Oreen Thursday, as those . 

 different incidents out of which arose the terms 

 " Shere " and " Maundy " were to make our own 

 countrymen bestow these epithets upon the same 

 day. 



Here in England, though it is in France and 

 Italy, Holy Thursday is not another name for 

 Maundy Thursday, but for Ascension Day, or 

 the Thursday next before Whitsunday, and the 

 term is employed as such in the table of Fasting- • 

 days in the Book of Common Prayer. The well- 

 flowering spoken of by Edwards in his Tour of the 

 Dove is not done on Maundy Thursday, but on 

 Ascension Thursday, and several times have I 

 gone, while living not far from the Dove, to 

 Tissington, to see it, and have referred to it in my 

 Hierurgia. D. Rock. 



GUANO. 



(2"'i S. i. 374. 482. 52^ ii. 99.) 



Though I am not able to fix the precise date at 

 which Peruvian guano was first used as a manure, 

 it may be interesting to Mr. Stephens to be re- 

 ferred to the following passage in an old work 

 written in Spanish by Albano Barba, curate of 

 the parish of St. Bernards, in Peru, in 1640, and 

 translated in 1669 by the Earl of Sandwich, which 

 has been published in the last Journal of the Bath 

 and West of England Agricultural Society : — 



" Cardanus, among his curiosities makes mention of 

 another kind of earth, antiently called Brittanica from the 

 Country where it is found ; thej' were fain to dig very~ 

 deep mines to come at it. It was white ; and after they 

 separated the plate that it contained, they manured their 

 tilth fields with the earth, which were put in heart 

 thereby for one hundred years after. Out of Islands 

 in the" South Sea, not far' from the City of Ania, they 

 fetch earth that does the same effect as the last afore- 

 mentioned. It is called Guano, id est, Dung : not because 

 it is the dung of sea fowls, as many suppose, but because 

 of its admirable virtue in making ploughed ground fer- 

 tile. It is light and spongy, and that which is brought 

 from the Island of Iquej-que is of a dark grej' colour, like 

 unto tobacco ground small ; although from the Islands 

 nearer Ania, they get a white earth, inclining to sallow, 

 of the same virtue. It instantly colours water whereinto 

 it is put, as if it were of the best leigh, and smells very 

 strong. The quantities and virtues of this and of many 

 other samples of the New World, are a large field for 



