510 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°d s. Ko 104., Dec. 26. '57. 



We may remark, in confirmation of this view, 

 that in the ballad of" Thomas and the Elf Queen," 

 as cited by Wright, the expression used is " K.e- 

 nylle bone." Here, again, the u has the force of 

 I', and the pronunciation is Revylle bone. 



It is well known that the Hanse Towns, of 

 which Revel, for a period, was one, traded not 

 merely as places of export for the produce of their 

 respective vicinities, but as marts. In an empo- 

 rium of this kind whalebone was very likely to 

 find a place. From the fairs of Revel, then, 

 there might occasionally find its way to England — 

 so went the phrase — " a ton el of balayne" (whale- 

 bone), which would thus acquire the name of 

 " Revel bone," since modified into " rewel bone." 



" Madrian." — 



" Our hoste saide. As I am a faithful man, 

 And by the precious corpus 3Iadrian." 



Cant. Tales, 13897, 8. 

 ■*' Corpus Madrian," as Tyrwhitt observes, evi- 

 dently signifies the relics of some saint ; but he 

 knows of no saint called Madrian. Urr^yr suggests 

 St. Maternus, and the French have a samt named 

 Materne. Steevens prefers St. Mathurin (see the 

 " Golden Legende"), whose body (corpus) wrought 

 many miracles. 



But on closer examination we shall perhaps 

 find reason for thinking that " Madrian " stands 

 for a far more illustrious saint than any of these, 

 namely Anna, who, according to tradition, was the 

 Mother of the Blessed Virgin : — Anna the mother, 

 that is, Madre Anna, or Madrian. 



Anna, the mother of Mary, unlike Anna the 

 daughter of Phanuel, who has a place in the Ro- 

 man martyrology (her day, Sep. 1), is little known 

 except through oriental traditions. The Blessed 

 Virgin, however, according to R. C. authorities, 

 was daughter of Joachin (also called Heli) and 

 of Anna his wife, both of the tribe of Judah and 

 race of David, dwelling at Nazareth. They had 

 been married twenty years, and remained child- 

 less, when the two saints were separately informed 

 by an angel that they should have a daughter 

 who was to be the glory of Israel, &c., &c. {Encyc. 

 Catholique.) For those who take an interest in 

 such inquiries, there is much in the history of 

 Anna, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, that has 

 an important bearing upon the recently agitated 

 dogma of the Immaculate Conception, though not 

 exactly suited for general reading. 



In the Kalend. Eccles. Constantinopolitance, re- 

 printed 1788, the day of St. Joachim and St. 

 Anna is Sep. 9 : — " MNHMH THN AFinN IHAKEIM 

 KAI ANNH2 TriN FONEnN TH2 0EOTOKOY." A 

 church was built to St. Anna at Constantinople 

 by Justinian ; and she is styled " Sancta Mariae 

 Virginis moier," " Deiparse rnater,^' " Anna Mariae 

 mater." The name Madre Anna, or Madrian, was 

 probably brought to England by crusaders and 



pilgrims returning from the East, and so became 

 known to our forefathers, and found its way into 

 Chaucer's Tales. 



It is proper to observe that there was another 

 Madre Anna, or Madrian, of whom an account 

 will be found in the " Vida de la Madre Ana,'' 

 &c. by Manrique, Brussels, 1632. The relics of 

 this saint, also, wrought many wonderful works ; 

 but she lived too late to be known by Chaucer, 

 as she was born at Medina del Campo in 1545. 



Thomas Boys. 



LANGUAGE SPOKEN AT THE COURT OF SCOTLAND. 



At the coronation of Alexander III., the Bishop 

 of St. Andrew's explained his obligations and duties 

 to the youthful king in Norman-French, a useless 

 expenditure of trouble had that not been the 

 language with which the child was most familiar, 

 whilst, on the same occasion, the Royal Bard re- 

 cited Alexander's genealogy in the "motJier tongue,'' 

 or, in other words, in Scottish Gaelic. When 

 Malcolm III. acted as interpreter between his 

 Queen and his clergy, Gaelic was evidently the 

 language of the court as well as of the great body 

 of the people ; but the long residence of his sons 

 Alexander and David at the court of Henry I., 

 and their marriage with Norman ladies, intro- 

 duced the use of Norman-French. Gaelic, then 

 known as Scotch, remained the national language, 

 or " mother tongue ; " and as Bruce addressed a 

 " Parliament " at Ardchattan in that language, it 

 was probably extensively known, but regarded, 

 like German at the German courts a hundred 

 years ago, as merely " the vulgar tongue." The 

 ancestry of the modern Scots, — a motley tribe, — 

 "Scoti, Franci, Angli, Walenses, Galwalenses," 

 not to mention the Norsemen and " Gallgael " or 

 Scoto-Norsemen of the north and north-west, 

 must have spoken a number of different dialects. 

 Norman-French, confined only to the coui't and 

 nobility and higher clqrgy, died out during the 

 English warti, and as the Royal poet, James I. 

 (of Scotland) composed in that northern dialect of 

 the Anglo-Saxon tongue long known as " Quaint 

 Inglysse," this latter must have superseded French 

 at the court of Scotland some time in the fourteenth 

 century. As Quaint Inglysse, always spoken in 

 the towns, spread over the country, banishing 

 Gaelic to the mountain and the moor, it at length 

 usurped the name of. Scotch, stigmatising the old 

 " mother tongue " as foreign, Irish Scotch (if I 

 may say so), or Erse. Signet. 



Horace, First Edition. — An oilman in Fish- 

 street Hill did actually wrap up his anchovies in 

 the first edition of Horace that ever was printed. 



