Dec. 23. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



661 



life, whence also bile is sacrificed to the gods ; or whether 

 it is because death liberates from molestation, but the 

 present life is laborious and bitter. All Souls, however, 

 proceeding into generation, are not simply called Bees, 

 but those who will live in it justly, and who, after having 

 performed such things as are acceptable to the gods, will 

 again return (to their kindred stars). For this insect 

 loves to return to the place from whence it first came, 

 and is eminently just and sober. Whence also the liba- 

 tions which are made with honey are called sober. Bees 

 likewise do not sit on beans, which were considered by 

 the ancients as a symbol of generation, proceeding in a 

 right line, and without flexure," &c.* 



ElEIONNACH. 



AN OLD-WOBLD VILLAGE AND ITS CHRISTMAS 

 FOLK LOBE. 



Years hence, in the time of Mr. Macaulay's New 

 Zealander, when the Great Holyhead Road is good 

 pasture, and Gary has sensitive commentators, I 

 don't imagine that the precise locality of Newton 

 Prodgers will be settled without inkshed. It is 

 the very height of improbability that any reader 

 of " N. & Q.," unless he is a taxman, ever went 

 there ; still less, having done so once, that he would 

 be desirous of enjoying the felicity twice, for the 

 road to Newton Prodgers is not only not the road 

 to any other place whatsoever, but is moreover 

 the true and only jrenuine site of the stupendous 

 adventure of the Manchester Bagman, wliich the 

 Yankees have appropriated with characteristic 

 coolness, and pitched somewhere or otLer down in 

 Alabama. The tiling itself actually occurred to a 

 respectable farmer of our village, no way con- 

 nected with the public press, who set to work one 

 fine morning to dig out a riding whip, the tip of 



And like that angry insect, so 

 They sorely wound the enjoyn too." 

 Young condenses this in two lines : 

 " Disappointment lurks in every prize, 

 As Bees in flowers, and sting us with success." 

 See also the Third Emblem of Quarles' first book. We 

 have only room for one stanza and the concluding epi- 

 gram: 



« The World's a Hive 

 From whence thou canst derive 

 'No good, but what thy Soul's vexation brings : 

 But case thou meet 

 Some petty-petty-sweet. 

 Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings." 



Epigram. 

 *' What, Cupid, are thy shafts already made? 

 And seeking honey to set up thy trade, 

 True emblem of thy sweets ! thy Bees do bring 

 Honey in their mouths, but in their tails a sting." 

 On the Symbolism of Bees, see Dr. Dinet's Cinq Livres 

 des Hierogiyphiques, oil sont contenus les plus Rares 



Secrets de la Nature et Froprietez de toutes choses 



k Paris, m.dc.xiiii., 4to. 



Cf. riop(^iipiov <j>i.\o<Toij>ov TTfpc TOv fv 0Sv(70-eia Tuv Nvn- 

 ^jxav Avrpov, Romaj, Ji.D.cxxx. ; and Taylor's Select Works 

 ofPorpiiyry, Load. 1823, 8vo. 



which he saw sprouting out of the middle of the 

 road. After an hour's hard digging he came to a 

 hat, and under that, to his intense horror, was a 

 head belonging to a body in a state of advanced 

 suffocation. Assistance was procured, and after 

 several hours of unremitting exertion, worthy of 

 Agassiz or Owen, the entire organism of a bag- 

 man was developed. " Now, gentlemen," said the 

 exhumed commercial to his perspiring diggers, 

 who of course concluded their labours finished, 

 " now, gentlemen, you've saved my life; and now, 

 for God's sake, lend a hand to get out my mare ! " 

 I am aware that at first sight this anecdote appears 

 to tell against our village ; but then everybody 

 knows it is the business of the Little Pudgington 

 folks to mend these roads, and not ours. We 

 never have repaired them, and it is not very 

 likely we shall begin now, for we have a religious 

 antipathy to all innovation, especially when it is 

 likely to touch the rates In M'Adam's time, 

 when the aforesaid Little Pudgington folks were 

 going to bring the branch turnpike through a 

 corner of Newton Prodgers, we rose as one man, 

 called a public meeting, and passed a resolution 

 expressing strong abhorrence of French prin- 

 ciples ; and we have not degenerated, for it is 

 only the other day since we thrashed the sur- 

 veyors of the " Great Amalgamated Central." 

 Search the whole county, and I doubt if you find 

 such another respectable old-fashioned place. 

 When I get out at the Gingham Station, and 

 mount for Newton, after an absence in town, I 

 feel I am stepping back two centuries, and am 

 quite disappointed next morning that the postman 

 don't deliver a Mercurius Politicus with the latest 

 intelligence of his Majesty's Forces in the north, 

 and the last declaration of his Majesty's affectionate 

 Parliament. It is true we have no resident cler- 

 gyman or squire either since the last Prodgers 

 was cleaned out at Crockford's ; but then, by way 

 of set-ofF, we haven't a school or a sanitary law in 

 the parish ; no spelling-books to put improper 

 notions into the people's heads ; and as for pig 

 legislation, I should just like to see them try it on 

 at Newton Prodgers, that's all. 



Our village is not one of those rural paradises 

 which the adventurous explorer might discover 

 among the properties at the Adelphi, nor one of 

 Mr. James's receptacles for benighted horsemen, 

 not even one of Miss Mitford's charming villages — 

 all gables and acacia, — nor anything, in short, but 

 a plain average parish of the Bedford Level, still 

 in a state of refreshing pastoral simplicity, or, as 

 our radical paper perversely has it, "frightfully ne- 

 glected condition." W'e have a church, green, and 

 stocks in tolerable repair. A green is always the 

 germ of the Saxon thorpe, no matter where found 

 — Schleswig, Kent, Massachusetts, Australia, 

 or New Zealand. In our village, as in most 

 others of our country side, it is called the Cross 



