204 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 254. 



Windsor. Good and favour to all ladies of Great Britain. 

 Pull no caps on his account, but favor him with your 

 smiles, and paeans of pleasure await your steps." 



Anon. 



Versus Cuncrimis. — There is, it is well known, 

 a difference between the Greek Palindromon and 

 the Latin versus cancrinus ; both read the same, 

 forward and backward, but while the Palindromon 

 changes the sense in the backward reading (like 

 our teji, net; god, dog, etc.), the versus cancrinus 

 retains the sense in both instances unchanged. As 

 a specimen is quoted the well-known Hexameter 

 put into the mouth of the devil : 



" Signa te, signa, temere me tangis et angis." 



A similar verse is said to have been penned by the 

 Jewish philosopher, Aben Ezra (in the twelfth 

 century). During a long absence from home he 

 wrote the following verse to his children : 



■■■•■■■■■' • • • :^^i^!Q ^i 



(Know of your father, I shall not tarry, and return to 

 you, it being high time). 



There has lately also been given in the Augsburg 

 Gazette a German v. c. 



" Bei Leid lieh stets Heil die Lieb." 

 (In trouble, comfort is lent by love). 



Edwaed H. Michelsew. 



Submerged Bells. — At Raleigh, Notts, accord- 

 ing to the legend, the village and church in the 

 valley was swallowed down by a great earthquake. 

 In former days on Christmas morning, the old 

 people used to meet to hear the bells chiming be- 

 neath them. Even now the remembrance of this 

 t[uaint belief is preserved. 



Mackenzie Walcott, M. A. 



Slackguard Boys. — It appears pretty certain 

 that originally the blackguards were the scullions 

 and lowest servants in the houses of the great. It 

 is not improbable that they were so called, from 

 "being in especial the guards or watchers of the 

 spit. In the " Customs and Manners of the En- 

 glish," from the Aubrey MSS., in the first volume 

 of the Antiquarian Repertory, p. 71., we find it 

 stated that in old times " The poor boys did 

 turn the spits, and licked the dripping for their 

 pains." Henry T. Eilet. 



Indian Rubber. — It may amuse some of your 

 readers to know, that in Northumberland, among 

 the lower classes, India-rubber is almost univer- 

 sally called " lead-eater :" of course, from its use- 

 ful property of erasing marks from lead. 



Henkx T. Riley. 



caucrtc^. 



QUEBIES CONCERNING SPENSER. 



1. Has any fresh information been obtained re- 

 lative to " E. K.," the writer of the Glosse to the 

 Skepheard's Calendar, and of the epistle prefixed 

 to that poem ? 



We are not much helped by supposing these 

 initials to represent Edward Kerke, or Kirk, or 

 King. Mr. Craik (^Spenser and his Poetry, i. 40.) 

 suggests that, — 



" If E. K. was really a person whose Christian name 

 and surname were indicated by these initial letters, he was 

 most probably some one who had been at Cambridge at 

 the same time with Spenser and Harvey, and his name 

 might, perhaps, be found in the registers either of Pem- 

 broke Hall, to which Spenser belonged, or of Christ 

 Church or Trinity Hall, which were Harvey's Colleges." 



Some commentators have imagined the poet 

 and the Gloss writer to be one and the same 

 person. A classical allusion in reference to Ro- 

 salinde occurring in the Glosse and in Colin Clout, 

 and not, I think, previously noticed, seems to de- 

 note that both these compositions proceeded from 

 the same pen, and thus to lend support to, what 

 has been deemed, a somewhat extravagant hypo- 

 thesis. In the Glosse to the fourth Eclogue, Ro- 

 salinde is spoken of as deserving to be commended 

 to immortality as much as Myrto, or Petrarch's 

 Laura : 



"Or Himera the worthy poet Stesichorus his idol; 

 upon whom he is said so much to have doted, that, in 

 regard of her excellencie, he scorned and wrote against 

 the beautie of Helena. For which his presumptuous and 

 unheedie hardinesse, he is sayd bj' vengeance of the 

 gods, thereat being offended, to have lost both his eies." 



Compare this with the following lines from CoHu 

 Clout : 



" And well I wote, that oft I heard it spoken. 

 How one, that fairest Helene did revile, 

 Through judgment of the gods to been ywroken. 

 Lost both his eyes and so reraaj'nd long while. 

 Till he recanted had his wicked rimes. 

 And made amends to her with treble praise." 



L.919. 



2. In George Turbervile's Tragical Tales^ 

 printed in 1587, an epistle and two other poems 

 are addressed to his friend Spenser, who is con- 

 sidered to be the poet, by Antony a Wood. But 

 as the epistle was written in 1569, when Edmund 

 Spenser was only sixteen years old, and had just 

 entered Pembroke Hall as a sizar, he could scarcely 

 have been the friend of Turbervile. Who then 

 was this Spenser ? 



3. Previously to the year 1580, when Edmund 

 Spenser proceeded to Ireland in the capacity of 

 secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Grey of 

 Wilton, there was a Mr. Spenser employed under 

 the Irish government, and deputed to England on 

 various important employments described in the 

 Lambeth Manuscripts (Todd's Life of Spenser, 



