2"* S. V. 130., JuNF, 26. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIEa 



521 



but received no reply. I have now before me a 

 little brochure entitled The J^ractice of the Pre- 

 sence of God the lest Rule of a Holy Life : being 

 Conversations and Letters of Brother Lawrencb. 

 London: J. Masters. 1855." — pp. 63. 



The verso of the title-page contains this Adver- 

 tisement : — 



" The First Edition of this Translation was published 

 by Mr. Hatchard, Piccadilly, in the year 1824, and is 

 now reprinted by his permission." 



The Preface contains the following informa- 

 tion : — 



" The Letters were written by Nicholas Herman of 

 Loraine, a mean and unlearned man ; who. after having 

 been a soldier and a footman, was admitted a Lay-brother 

 among the barefooted Carmelites at Paris in 1666; and 

 was afterwards known by the appellation of Brother 

 Lawrence. 



" His conversion, which took place when he was about 

 eighteen years of age, originated in the high notion he 

 conceived of the Wisdom and Power of God .... 



" After his conversion he grew eminently in the know- 

 ledge and love of God, endeavouring, to walk as in His 

 Presence, and to direct all his actions to His Glory. In 

 this godly course he continued to the advanced age of 

 eighty, when God gave him to rest from his labours. 

 The piety of his Letters rescued them from oblivion ; and 

 the Conversations which are prefixed to them are sup- 

 posed to have been written by M. Beaufort, Grand Vicar 

 to M. de Chalons, formerly Ca'rdinal de Noailles, by whose 

 recommendation they were published." 



I am desirous of knowing, 1. the date, &c. of 

 the original edition ; 2. some further particulars 

 of Herman of Loraine ; 3. whether the transla- 

 tion of 1824 was the first English translation ; 4, 

 the name of the translator. 



The character of Brother Lawrence's mind 

 seems to accord closely with that of Gregory 

 Lopez, " a Spanish Hermite in the West Indies," 

 whose life is recorded by Father Losa. 



EiRIONNACH. 



Caroline Countess of Melfort (2°^ S. v. 393.)— 

 Born May 17, 1768, married July 28, 1788. 

 Count Melfort descended from the Earls of Perth. 

 See some notices of her in the Gentleman s Maga- 

 zine. John Eibton Garstin. 



Dublin. 



" Whipultre " (2"'^ S. v. 24.) — If we may trust 

 the Niederdeutsches Glossarium, wliich Hoffman 

 von Fallersleben has appended to the Niederlan- 

 dische Glossare des XIV. und XV. Jahrhundests, 

 which form the seventh Part of his Hora BelgiccB, 

 the Whipultre is the Cornel-tree; for there we 

 read Wipelbom Cornus and Wipe Cornum — his 

 authority being a paper MS. Vocabularius Rerum 

 of the fifteenth century in his possession. 



William J. Thom^. 



In the North of Ireland it is a common prac- 

 tice for boys to select a smooth even branch of 

 the Sycamore and to cut it into pieces of about 

 four or five inches long and about half an 

 inch to three quarters in diameter, and then. 



by gently beating the bark to separate it from 

 the wood ; the latter is then drawn out without 

 breaking the bark, and cut in a peculiar way, 

 and inserted into the bark, which is carefully cut 

 with proper holes for the production of sound 

 when blown into at the upper end like a common 

 whistle. This rude musical instrument is called 

 " a wheeple," and the tree " the wheeple-tree," 

 i. e. the whistle-tree. I may be wrong as to the 

 tree being the Sycamore, as it is some time since 

 I made a wheeple from a wheeple- tree, but I 

 eould recognise the tree if I saw it. I need 

 hardly say that there is nothing far-fetched in 

 taking an illustration from the North of Ireland 

 of old English customs and sayings, as many re- 

 main to this day in full force among the de- 

 scendants of early English settlers there. 



Francis Crosslbt. 



AnglicB NotitioR and the Chamberlaynes (2"* S. 

 V. 456.) — The distinction of the early Christian 

 names of the Chamberlaynes of Maugersbury in 

 Gloucestershire, as given in Sir Bernard Burke's 

 lineage of that family, suggests that the Irish 

 lines, of which some notices are subjoined, were 

 offshoots of the great Norman House of Count 

 Tankerville. The name is recorded in Ireland on 

 its first invasion, and Adam Chamberlayn was one 

 of them, who overran Ulster under the command 

 of John de Courcy. Chamberlaynes were subse- 

 quently extended along the eastern coast of Ire- 

 land from Down to Wicklow, and it has occurred 

 to me, in the course of genealogical inquiries, 

 which I was making some few years since, to 

 have before me no less than fifteen deeds and 

 conveyances connected with this family from 1306 

 to 1519, purporting to pass lands and premises in 

 the county and city of Dublin, and in the county 

 ofMeath, to Richard Chamberlayne, to William 

 Chamberlayne his son, to John Chamberlayne and 

 Walter Chamberlayne, &c., with bonds of the 

 latter. All these documents have been drawn up 

 with such singular and pithy brevity, that I have 

 astonished a meeting of the legal profession by 

 producing from my coat pocket the muniment 

 chest in which these fifteen deeds were preserved, 

 on parchment, and mostly with their seals perfect. 

 It was the vacated slide-box of a lilliputian map of 

 England ! John D' Alton. 



John the Blind (2'"» S. v. 397.) — Is your cor- 

 respondent sure that he has not misread the legend 

 upon his coin ? It seems to me, that it must be 

 the same as that engraved by Lelewel {Numis' 

 matique du Moyen Age, Plate xx. No. 47), the 

 legend on which is iohannes »ei gha on the ob- 

 verse, but with a spread eagle inserted between 

 the E and s of Johannes, which on an indiffer- 

 ently preserved coin would have much the ap- 

 pearance of lOHAN D L ET s DBi GRA. There is 

 another spread-eagle after pol on the reversQ. 



