July 8. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



37 



made the sign of the cross, and the smarting devil in- 

 stantly galloped away. Soon, however, and naturally 

 enough, the father of sin returned to sloth and ob- 

 stinacy, and Martin hurried him again with repeated 

 signs of the cross, till twitched and stung to the quick 

 by those crossings so hateful to him, the vexed and 

 tired reprobate uttered the following distich in a rage ; 



' Signa te, signa ; temere me tangis et angis ; 

 Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.' 



That is, « Cross, cross thyself — thou plaguest and 

 vexest me without necessity ; for, owing to my ex- 

 ertions, Rome, the object of thy wishes, will soon be 

 near.' " 



Henry H. Breen. 

 St. Lucia. 



Dr. John Pocklington (Vol. ix., p. 247.). — Arms 

 of Pocklington of Yorkshire : Paly of six argent 

 and gules, a pale counterchanged. Cid. 



Byron and Rochefoucauld (Vol. ix., p. 347.). — 

 Allow me to call your attention to the fact, that 

 the Note furnished by Sigma under this head has 

 already appeared in Vol. i., p. 260., with the sig- 

 nature of Melanion, under the head of " Pla- 

 giarisms and Parallel Passages." Your " Notices 

 to Correspondents" bear ample evidence of the 

 vigilance which you are continually called upon 

 to exercise, in order to obviate repetitions of this 

 kind ; but as the volumes continue to increase, 

 the difficulty of verifying such matters will be- 

 come proportionably great ; and it therefore be- 

 hoves your correspondents, by a proper degree of 

 research on their part, to assist you in preventing 

 this most valuable periodical from degenerating 

 into a mere echo of its former self. 



Henrt H. Breen. 



St. Lucia. 



Somersetshire Folk Lore (Vol. ix., p. 536.). — 

 Your correspondent M. A. Balliol says, that, 

 on the highest mound of the hill above Weston- 

 super-Mare, is a heap of stones, to which every 

 fisherman in his daily walk to Sand Bay, Kew- 

 stoke, contributes one towards his day's good 

 fishing. Although the object ascribed to a similar 

 custom in Greece is of a different character, your 

 readers may feel interested in the following pas- 

 sage describing it, from Gell's Narrative" of a 

 Journey in the Morea, p. 113. : 



" On the road from Tragoge to Andrutzena we 

 passed one of those heaps of stones, called by the 

 Greeks anathemas. A person who has a quarrel with 

 another, collects a pile of stones, and curses his uncon- 

 scious foe as many times as there are stones in the 

 heap. It is the duty of every Christian to add at least 

 one pebble as he passes by, so that the curses in a 

 frequented road became innumerable. A Greek who 

 should travel on one of our English roads, would 

 imagine the whole population at war ; and in Italy, 

 where the heaps are larger, and generally occupy the 



whole of the best part of the road, he would be dis- 

 posed to add another curse to fall upon the road- 

 makers themselves." 



N. L. T. 



Black Rat (Vol. ix., p. 209.). — I have noticed 

 an answer to Mb. Shirley Hibberd about the 

 existence of the old Black Rat in England. I 

 believe one of its last strongholds in Britain was 

 Lundy Island, near Ilfracombe ; where they are 

 still, or were till very lately, occasionally met with. 

 Horace Waddington. 



Oxford Union Society. 



Demoniacal Descent of the Plantagenets (Vol. ix., 

 pp. 494. 550). — A detailed account of the legend 

 relative to the extraction of the Plantagenets, and 

 consequently of the Royal Family of England, 

 from the Devil, by the mother's side, is in John 

 Fordun's Scotichronica. There is a whole chapter 

 on the subject, to which, not having the book 

 beside me, I cannot more particularly refer. 



William Broceix. 



South Shields. 



Shelley's " Prometheus Unbound" (Vol. ix., 

 pp. 351. 481.). — I cannot help thinking that your 

 correspondent F. C. H. has missed the peculiar 

 beauty of this passage ; and, though with great 

 diffidence, I beg to offer a conjecture upon its 

 meaning. F. C. H. says that the circumstances 

 which give rise to the feeling alluded to by the 

 poet are : 



" . . . when the winds of spring 



Make rarest visitation, or the voice 

 Of one beloved is heard in youth alone." 



The latter can only mean the circumstance of a 

 young man hearing the voice of a beloved friend ; 

 which obviously, I think, is not what is intended. 

 The interpolation of the word is destroys the 

 sense of the passage : the chief beauty of which, 

 in ray mind, lies in the analogy shown to exist 

 between the feelings which are called up in us 

 upon hearing the soft breezes of returning spring, 

 and those which are awakened in us upon hearing 

 the voice of a beloved friend, who has been sepa- 

 rated from us since the time of our earliest youth : 



" . . . . . the voice 

 Of one beloved heard in youth alone." 



If I understand Shelley's allusion rightly, it is 

 to " that sense, which, when the winds of spring or 

 the voice of a long absent friend returned, recall 

 the remembrance of youthful days, fills the faint 

 eyes," &c. 



It is possible that a line may have dropped out, 

 which may have contained words similar in mean- 

 ing to those given in Italics above ; but the more 

 probable supposition is, that the sentence was in- 

 advertently left unfinished. Such omissions are 

 by no means uncommon. Erica. 



