232 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 175. 



ducted water to them, they could not have been 

 connected with fountains or water-works ; I came 

 to the conclusion that the planner of the garden, 

 or at least of its walls, must have been an ardent 

 lover of birds, and that these holes were for pro- 

 viding access for his beloved feathered friends (they 

 would only admit the passage of small birds) to 

 the secure resting-places which the hollow stones 

 afforded ; for whose use other niches and recesses 

 seem also to have been planned (though some of 

 the latter were probably intended to hold bee- 

 hives) with a philornithic indifference for the 

 security of the fruit tempting their attacks from 

 all sides, but quite in character with the portrait 

 of Sir David, as depicted by his noble biographer. 



W. C. Treveltan. 

 Athenaeum. 



Unlucky Days. — The subjoined lines on certain 

 days of the several months, I copied some years 

 ago from a MS. on the fly-leaf of an old Spanish 

 breviary, then in the possession of an Irish priest. 

 Though neither their grammar nor prosody are 

 first-rate, yet they may be worthy of preservation 

 as a curiosity. I may add that they appear to 

 have been written by a Trinitarian Brother of 

 Redemption, in the early part of the sixteenth 

 century. 



"January. Prima dies mensis, et septima truncat in 



ensis. 

 February. Quarta subit mortem, prosternit tertia 



sortem. 

 March. Primus mandentem, disrumplt quarta bi- 



bentem. 

 April. Denus et undenus est mortis vulnere plenus. 

 May. Tertius occidet et Septimus ora relidet. 

 June, Denus pallescit quin-denus foedera nescit. 

 July. Ter-decimus mactat, Julii denus labefactat. 

 August. Prima necat fortem prosternit secunda co- 



hortem. 

 September. Tertia Septembris, et denus fert mala 



membris. 

 October. Tertius et denus est sicut mors alienus. 

 November. Scorpius est quintus, et tertius e nece 



cinctus. 

 December. Septimus exanguis, virosus denus et an- 



guis." 



W. PiNKERTON. 

 Ham. 



The Pancake Bell. — At the Huntingdonshire 

 village from which I now write, the little bell of 

 the church is annually rung for ten minutes on 

 Shrove Tuesday, at eleven o'clock in the morninw : 

 this is called " the Pancake Bell." 



CUTHBERT BeSE, B.A. 



Quoits. — The vulgar pronunciation of the irons 

 used in this game is guaits. From the following 



passage in a letter from Sir Thomas Browne to 

 Ashmole, it is probable that the word was formerly 

 thus spelt : " Count Rosenberg played at quaitSy 

 with silver quails made by projection as before." 



Uneda. 

 Philadelphia. 



TAe Family of Toivnerawe. — One great ad- 

 vantage of " N. & Q." is not only that inquiries 

 may be made and information obtained by those 

 who are engaged in any research, but also that 

 such persons as happen to possess information on, 

 a particular subject may make it known before it 

 is sought or asked for. I therefore beg to inform 

 any person that may be interested in the family of 

 Townerawe, that there is in the library of Trinity 

 College, Dublin, a Latin MS. Bible, which be- 

 longed to "Raufe Townerawe," who on the 17th 

 of June, 1585, was married to Anne Hartgrane, 

 at Reavesbye, in Lincolnshire, and that at the 

 end of this Bible are recorded the births, deaths, 

 and marriages of his children and other members 

 of his family, from the date above mentioned to 

 1638. James H. Todc. 



Trin. Coll. Dublin. 



" History of Formosa." — The writer of the fic- 

 titious History of Formosa^ inquired about at 

 Vol. vii., p. 86., was George Psalmanazar, himself 

 a fiction, almost. And this reference to Wiseman's 

 Lectures reminds me that your correspondent Rt. 

 (Vol. vii., p. 62.), who discovered the metrical ver- 

 sion of that passage of St. Bernard in Fulke Gre- 

 ville's poem, was (to say the least) anticipated by the 

 Cardinal, in the magnificent peroration to the last 

 of those Lectures upon Science and Revealed Reli- 

 gion. B. B. Woodward. 



Notes on Newspapers. — The following may be 

 worth a place among your Notes. I copied it 

 from the Evening Mail (a tri-weekly issue from 

 The Times office), but unfortunately omitted to 

 take the date, and the only authority I can offer is 

 Evening Mail, No. 12,686. p. 8. col. 2. (leader) : 



" The Times has its share of antiquities. Our office- 

 stands upon the foundations of Blackfriars, where for 

 centuries Plantagenets, Yorkists, Lancastrians, and 

 Tudors, held court. We have reason to believe that 

 just about where we sit was heard that famous cause 

 for annulling the marriage of Catherine, which led to 

 the English Reformation. Under these foundations 

 others still older are now open to view. First we 

 have under us the Norman wall of the city, before it 

 was extended westward to give more room to Black- 

 friars, and under that presents itself the unmistakeable 

 material and composition of the old Roman wall." 



Tee Beb. 



