2nd s. No 103., Dec. 19. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



489 



mandments which God handed down to Moses on a table 

 of stone. 



" ' When I see the King,' said the Soldier, ' it reminds 

 me of the Great King of Heaven, which is God Almighty. 



" ' When I see the Queen, it reminds me of the Queen 

 of Sheba, who went to hear the wisdom of Solomon ; for 

 she was as wise a woman as he was a man. She brought 

 with her fifty boys and fifty girls, all dressed in boys' ap- 

 parel, for King Solomon to tell which were boys and 

 which were girls. King Solomon sent for water for them 

 to wash themselves ; the girls washed to the elbows, and 

 the boys only to the wrist, so King Solomon told by 

 that.' 



« ' Well,' said the Mayor, ' you have given a description 

 of all the Cards in the pack except one.' — ' Which is that ? ' 

 said the Soldier.—' The Knave,' said the Mayor.— « I will 

 give your honour a description of that too, if you will not 

 be angry.'—' I will not,' said the Mayor, 'if you will not 

 term me to be the Knave.'— • Well,' said the Soldier, ' the 

 greatest Knave I know is the constable that brought nie 

 here.' — ' I do not know,' said the Mayor, ' whether he is 

 the greatest Knave, but I know he is the greatest fool.' 



" ' When I count how many spots in a pack of cards, I 

 find 365, as many days as there are in a year. 



« ' When I count the number of Cards in a pack,' I find 

 there are 52, — as many weeks as there are in a year. 



» * When I count the tricks at Cards, I find 13, as 

 many months as there are in a year. So you see, Sir, the 

 pack of Cards serves for a Bible, Almanack, and Common 

 Prayer-Book to me.' 



" The Mayor called for some bread and beef for the 

 Soldier, gave him some money, and told him to go about 

 his business, saying he was the cleverest man he ever 

 heard in his life." 



T. Q. C. 



Bodmin. 



[This broadside appeared in the newspapers about the 

 year 1774, and was entitled " Cards Spiritualized." The 

 name of the soldier is there stated to be one Richard Mid- 

 dleton, who attended with the rest of the regiment divine 

 service at a church in Glasgow. — Ed.] 



Mixiav iiatti. 



Solution of a Puzzle proposed by Mrs. Bar- 

 iauld. 



" To find a set of words containing all the letters of the 

 Alphabet and no more. 



" To this tea-table puzzle I settled my Phiz, 

 And I soon cried Eureka, by Jove, here it is ! 

 Nor pretend I in cauldron's ingredients to mix. 

 That my black and white spirits might rise from the 



Styx; 

 Nor ghost have I summoned, for that's all a sham, 

 Not e'en the stage spectre of Counsellor Flam ! 

 My discovery, like other discov'ries, is luck, 

 And might well have been found by child, dandy, or 



Buck; 

 By the same tide of fortune that bears us along, 

 I believe that I'm right, as I might have been Wrong : 

 So allow me but this, — that I's J and U's V, 

 And Voila ! or, as Euclid would say, Q. E. D." 



From my Scrap Book. Y. B. W. J. 



Remarkable Inscription on a Grave- stone in 

 1343. — At a burying-place called Ahade, in the 

 county of Donegal, in Ireland, there was lately 



dug up a piece of flat stone, about three feet by 

 two, the device on which was a figure of Death, 

 with a bow and arrow, shooting at a woman with 

 a boy in her arms ; and underneath was an in- 

 scription in Irish characters, of which the following 

 is a correct translation : — 



" Here are deposited, with the design of mingling them 

 with the parent earth from which the mortal parts came, 

 a mother who loved her son to the destruction of his 

 death. She clasped him to her bosom with all the joy of 

 a parent, the pulse of whose heart beat with maternal af- 

 fection ; and in the very moment whilst the gladness of 

 joy danced in the pupil of the boy's eyes, and the mother's 

 bosom swelled with transport. Death's arrow, in a flash of 

 lightning, pierced them both in a vital part, and totally 

 dissolving the entrails of the son, without injuring his 

 skin, and burning to a cinder the liver of the mother, 

 sent them out of this world at one and the same moment 

 of time in the year 1343." 



w. w. 



Malta. 



Singular Marriage of a Deaf and Dumb Person 

 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, — 



« Decimo quinto Februarii, 18 Eliz. reginse. 



" Thomas Filsby and Ursula Russet were married ; and 

 because the said Thomas was, and is naturally deaf and 

 dumb, could not, for his part, observe the order of the 

 form of marriage, after the approbation had from Thomas, 

 the Bishop of Lincoln, John Chippendale, LL.D. and 

 Commissary, and Mr. Richard Davis, Mayor of Leicester, 

 and others of his brethren, with the rest of the parish, the 

 said Thomas, for expressing of his mind instead of words, 

 of his own accord used these signs : first, he embraced her 

 with his arms ; took her by the hand, and put a ring on 

 her finger ; and laid his hand upon his heart, and held 

 up his hands towards heaven ; and to show his continu- 

 ance to dwell with her to his life's end, he did it by 

 closing his eyes with his hands, and digging the earth 

 with his feet, and pulling as tho' he would ring a bell, 

 with other signs approved." 



The above marriage is recorded in the register 

 of St. Martin's parish, Leicester, " et concordat 

 cum originali." ^^' W. 



Malta. 



MedicEval Condemnation of Trade. — Black- 

 stone, in eulogising the English law for the regard 

 •v^hich it pays to commerce, says that in this re- 

 spect it is 



" Very different from the bigotry of the canonists, who 

 looked on trade as inconsistent with Christianity *, and 



* As to the first of these passages, I find, on referring to 

 Gratian, that it is an extract from the Opus Imperf. in 

 Matthceum, falsely ascribed to St. Chrysostom, the sub- 

 ject being our Lord's expulsion of buyers and sellers from 

 the Temple; that the context contains explanations 

 which considerably modify the meaning ; that the prohibi- 

 tion of merchandise contradicts the chapter immediately 

 preceding, in which, on the authority of St. Augustine, 

 trade is declared to be lawful for a layman, although not 

 for an ecclesiastic ; and that chapter ii. is marked as one 

 of the " paletB," which are not found in the oldest MSS., 

 and are of no authority. If, indeed, the words quoted by 

 Blackstone were valid, they would signify nothing less 

 than that in the middle ages merchants were, as a class. 



