2«d S. N«> 97., Nov. 7. '67.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



369 



the derivatives. I think this an obvious and natural 

 etymology of arwyl, from the circumstance that formerly 

 in Wales, as well as in most other countries, even those 

 in a state of high civilisation, persons were employed on 

 purpose, and even hired, to weep and wail at funerals. 

 Horace alludes to the custom, de Arte Poet. 1. 431." 

 Again, Mr. Douce (Illustrations of Shakspeare, ii. 202.) 

 says, that " the practice of making entertainments at 

 funerals which prevailed in this and other countries, was 

 certainly borrowed from the ccena feralis of the Romans, 

 alluded to in Juvenal's fifth satire. It consisted of an 

 offering of a small plate of milk, honey, wine, flowers, &c., 

 to the ghost of the deceased. With us the appetites of 

 the living are consulted on this occasion. In the North 

 this feast is called an arval, or arvU-svpper, and the loaves 

 that are sometimes distributed among the poor, arval- 

 bread. Not many years since, one of these arvals was 

 celebrated in a village in Yorkshire at a public-house, 

 the sign of which was the family arms of a nobleman 

 whose motto is ' Virtus post funera vivit.' The under- 

 taker who, though a clerk, was no scholar, requested a 

 gentleman present to explain to him the meaning of 

 these Latin words, which he readily and facetiously did 

 in the following manner : — Virtus, a parish clerk, vivit, 

 lives well,^s^_^ne7a, at an arval. The latter word (con- 

 tinues Douce) is apparently derived from some lost Teu- 

 tonic term that indicated a funeral pile on which the body 

 •was burned in times of paganism. Thus arill in Islandic 

 signifies the inside of an oven. The common parent 

 seems to have been ar, fire ; whence ara, an altar of fire, 

 ardeo, aridus, &c. So the pile itself was called ara by 

 Virgil, vEn. vi. 177. : 



' Ilaud mora, festinant flentes ; aramque sepulchri 

 Congerere arboribus, coeloque educere certant.' " 



Jamieson, following Dr. Hickes (quoted by Boucher), 

 is more satisfactory : " The term," he says, " has evi- 

 dently originated from the circumstance of this entertain- 

 ment being given bj' one who entered on the possession 

 of an inheritance ; from arf, hereditas, and oel, convivium, 

 primarily the designation of the beverage which we call 

 ale.""] 



" The Unconscious Rival." — An old ballad, 

 called " The Unconscious Rival," formed the sub- 

 ject of a painting in the Royal Academy Exhibi- 

 tion in 1850 or 1851, I much wish to get the 

 lines. OxoNiENSis. 



[The old ballad of " The Unconscious Rival " formed 

 the subject of "The Sisters," by C. W- Cope, K.A„ in the 

 Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, 1851. The 

 following are the lines : — 



" Come, leave thy book, thy dreamy nook, 

 There's joyance o'er the sea, 

 Where honeyed voice, and happy look, 

 Are chilled for want of thee. 



" From wave to skies, the whisper flies. 

 And gilded halcyons shiue. 

 With promise for thy truant's eyes. 

 And triumph still for thine. 



" The dreamer smiled, but not the srnjle 

 That beamed before that day. 

 Where many trust the tempting wile. 

 Spare me at least to pray : 



" To pray that hearts too blest to shun 

 Life's blossoms whilst they bloom, 

 May gently prize their triumphs won, 

 They know not over whom."'] 



Public Execution in 1760. — 



"You very justly censure those fine ladies who, with 

 such a thoughtless gaiety, could crowd to a. sight wliicli 

 must strike every feeling heart with compassion and 

 horror. By the accounts one sees in the public papers, 

 with what a shocking insensibility of his own deplor- 

 able condition did that poor unhappy criminal close lug 

 wretched life." — (Extract from Mrs. Carter's Letters to 

 Mrs. Montague, May, 1760, vol. i. p. 87.) 



Who was the criminal, and what was the ofTencq 

 for which he sufTered death ? Fba. Mewburn, 



[The criminal was the Rt. Hon. Lawrence Shirley, 

 fourth Earl of Ferrers, executed at Tyburn, May 5, 1760, 

 for the murder of John Johnson, his steward. For a cir- 

 cumstantial account of his trial and execution, see thei 

 Gentleman's Magazine, xxx. 230.] 



18<t\^\iti* 



MACISTUS, AND THE TELEGRAPHIC NEWS OF THE 

 CAPTURE OF TROY. 



(3°^ S. iv. 189. 295.) 



The course of the beacon-light, transmitted 

 from Troy to the palace of Agamemnon, at My- 

 cense, as described in the justly celebrated passage 

 of iEschylus, begins from Mount Ida, whence it 

 passes to the Hermaean rock on the eastern shore 

 of the island of Lemnos (compare Soph. Phil.. 

 1459). The next station is Moqnt Athos ; anu 

 from Athos the signal is received by Macistua, 

 Macistus (says the poet), " making no delay, and 

 not overcome by oblivious sleep," performs his 

 part, and transmits the light to the watchmen 

 on Mount Messapius, upon the Boeotian coast, 

 near the Euripus. From this point it leaps over 

 the plain watered by the Asopus, and strikes upon 

 Mount Cithaeron, on the western shores of Greece. 

 It next crosses the Gorgopian lagoon — tlie ex- 

 tremity of the CrissEean gulf, north of Megara — 

 and arrives at Mount ^giplanctus, to the north 

 of the isthmus of Corinth. From this height 

 it is transferred along the Saronic bay, on the 

 western shores of the Isthmus, to Mount Arach- 

 na3ura, which is its last station before it finally 

 reaches ClytEemnestra at Mycenas. The intelli- 

 gence is supposed to be conveyed in one night 

 from Troy ; the watchman at Mycenae is de- 

 scribed as having kept 3, nocturnal look-out foi? 

 some years. 



With the exception of Macistus, all the points 

 in this series are mountains or elevated spots, 

 whose names and geographical positions are well 

 ascertained. They occur, moreover, at tolerably 

 equal intervals : so that the transmission of the 

 telegraphic message, though not in fact physically 

 possible, has sufficient plausibility for a poetical 

 description. Judging from the analogy of the 

 other stations, it would be natural to expect the 

 name of a mountain or headland between Athos 



