Sept. 25. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



305 



but on referring to Syer's local history, one of the 

 most absurd compositions ever published, the 

 author, who repeats everything he could hear, 

 merely says : 



" The water from this well is procured by direct access 

 to the liquid itself, through the medium of a few stone 

 steps : it is free to the public, and seldom dry." 



Certain it is, it does not at all add to the 

 romance of wells ; for being formerly in a lonely 

 situation, it was a haunt of pickpockets and other 

 disorderly characters. It is now built over, and 

 in a few years the short subterranean passage 

 leading to the well will be forgotten. Agmond. 



Revolutionary Calendar (Vol. vi.,, p. 199.). — 

 My edition of the English version of the revolu- 

 tionary calendar is the following : 



Jan. Snowy ; Feb. Flowy ; Mar. Blowy ; Apr. 

 Showery ; Mai/, Flowery ; June, Bowery ; July, 

 Hoppy ; Aug. Croppy ; Sep. Poppy (partridge 

 shooting) ; Oct. Breezy ; Nov. Sneezy ; Dec. 

 Freezy. G. T. H. 



Your correspondent is quite wrong in his ca- 

 lendar; this is the right way to describe the 

 months : 



Snowy, Flowy, Blowy ; Showery, Flowery, 

 Bowery ; Droppy, Hoppy, Croppy ; Sneezy, Freezy, 

 Breezy. Feargus O'Connor. 



Chiswick. 



I do not see how your version can be applied to 

 the order of the months and seasons ; for instance, 

 "glowy" {Thermidor) would come between 

 "blowy" (Ventose) and "freezy" (Fritnaire). It 

 is possible that Ellis may (as in your version) have 

 classed his rhymes hj four months instead of three, 

 though it would not be so neat an imitation. I 

 think also that " showery," " flowery," and " bow- 

 ery," may have stood for " germinal," " floreal," 

 and "prairial," and indeed I recollect having 

 heard them; but I know not what "lowery" could 

 mean, and your version, like mine, wants " Fruc- 

 tidor." Altogether your present explanation has, 

 I think, supplied the right (or at least a better) 

 version of the spring triad, and if we could re- 

 cover the epithet for Fructidor rhyming to "glowy," 

 we might be satisfied. C. 



Chantry Chapels (Vol. vi., p. 223.). — W. H. K. 



inquires whether the small chantry chapels situate 

 in hamlets at some distance from the parish church 

 were used for public worship as chapels of ease, or 

 exclusively as sepulchral chantries. 



No doubt these chapels were chiefly erected by 

 the lord or holder of the manor for the use of him- 

 self and family, to avoid the necessity of going a 

 long distance to church at a time when the high- 

 ways and byeways were of a different character 

 from those of the nineteenth century. It is pro- 



bable, moreover, that other persons were permitted 

 to attend the said chapels. They were not always 

 used for sepulture. The parochial records of 

 Severn Stoke, Worcestershire, inform us that in 

 the fourteenth century one Nicholas de Aston 

 obtained a licence to erect an oratory in his own 

 house, which was distant three miles from the 

 parish church, " for that in foul weather the ways 

 were not to be passed with safety." At Himble- 

 ton, also in this county, is a chapel called " Shell 

 Chapel," which was formerly a private chapel at 

 the hamlet of Shell, a mile distant, and which then 

 adjoined the mansion of the Fincher family. The 

 materials of this chapel were removed, and added 

 to the church but a few years ago ; (the roads now 

 no longer, as I suppose, rendering the attendance 

 at church perilous). There is a mural tablet 

 (date 1755) in the chapel to the last branch in 

 the male line of the Finchers : a very reputable 

 family, who resided on their estate at Snell more 

 than two hundred years. J. Noake. 



Worcester. 



Punishment for Treason (Vol. vi., p. 246.). — If 

 Mr. J. B. CoLMAN will refer to Mr. Foss's valu- 

 able work The Judges of England, vol. iv. p. 414. 

 et seq., he will find that both the stories are there 

 shown to be mere figments ; and the references to 

 the State Trials and to the Baga de Secretis 

 (when will this be published separately, as it 

 ought ?) will probably put him in possession of all 

 the details he can desire. I would have quoted 

 the passages, but the work is a modern one, and 

 easily obtainable. N. T. S 



NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC. 



On the 14th of this month Britain was thrown into 

 mourning by the death of the Duke of Wellington. 

 That day closed the long and patriotic life of one whose 

 name is destined to occupy the largest and most bril- 

 liant page in the history, not of his own country alone, 

 but of all Europe and of the nineteenth century. The 

 following morning saw in the columns of The Times 

 the first portion (comprising no less than twenty-one 

 columns) of a memoir of the Duke, worthy alike of its 

 subject and of the journal in which it appeared. This 

 admirable and well-timed narrative was completed in 

 The Times of Thursday, and is now by permission re- 

 printed as the thirty- first part of The Traveller's Li- 

 brary. Those who were disappointed, as thousands 

 were, in their endeavour to secure copies of The Times, 

 will be glad to secure this reprint of its 3femoir of the 

 Duke of Wellington ; and those who were so fortunate 

 as to get them, will be pleased to have this excellent 

 resume of the Duke's wonderful career in the conve- 

 nient form in which Messrs. Longman have now re- 

 published it. 



Though disposed, both from feeling and from due 



