Mar. 5. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



239 



rent of the lands which his father had purchased 

 from Mr. O'Hea, and that, upon proof being 

 made to the Court of Exchequer by Mr, John 

 Burrowes, one of Sir Vincent's executors, that the 

 ■estate was a " Protestant interest," or, in other 

 words, that as the family had been of the Protes- 

 tant religion, and not implicated in the rebellion of 

 1641, the lands were therefore not liable to the 

 payment of quit rent, they were accordingly put 

 out of charge. It appears also by the records 

 which are deposited in the same office, that Thomas 

 Gookin, gentleman, was indicted at the sessions 

 held at Bandon in the year 1671, " for that he, with 

 several others, riotously and unlawfully did as- 

 semble and associatt themselves together at Lislee, 

 on the 27th of December, 1671, and in and uppon 

 David Barry and Charles Carthy, gentlemen, did 

 make a cruel! assaulte and affray, and did beate, 

 wound, and falsely imprison them, under colour of 

 a warrant from Henry Bathurst, Esq., made and 

 interlined by the said Thomas Gookin ;" and that 

 Elizabeth Gookin, of Lislee, spinster, was one of 

 his sureties. This Elizabeth was probably de- 

 scended from a Charles Gookin, who claimed the 

 lands of Lislee in the time of the Protector. By 

 the records in the same department, it appears that 

 in and previous to the year 1719 a suit was pend- 

 ing in tiie Court of Exchequer with respect to the 

 lands of Courtmacsherry ; and by the Receiver's 

 account, which bears the autograph of Robert 

 Gookin, it is shown that a payment was made to 

 Mrs. Dorothy Gookin for maintenance, and that 

 there was an arrear due to Lady Mary Erwin, " at 

 ye time of Captain Gookin's death, which happened 

 in September, 1709 :" and in the same office there 

 is deposited a deed, dated the 30th of October,l729, 

 which relates to the lands of Clouncagh, in the 

 same county of Cork, whereto John Allin, an alder- 

 man of the city of Cork, and Elizabeth Gookin, 

 otherwise Towgood, his wife, and Robert Gookin, 

 Esq., eldest son and devisee of Robert Gookin de- 

 ceased, are parties. I have been informed that a 

 lengthened account of Sir Vincent Gookin is to be 

 found in Lord Strafford's State Letters.; that 

 much information may be gathered from the Privy 

 Council Papers tempore Cromwell, which are de- 

 posited in Dublin Castle, with respect to Captain 

 Robert Gookin ; and that in the year 1620 Daniel 

 Gookin was one of the undertakers in the county 

 of Longford, and that his estate of five hundred 

 acres afterwards passed to an ancestor of the late 

 popular novelist Miss Edgeworth. J. F. F. 



Dublin. 



STABIT QUOCUNQUB JECEEIS. " 



(Vol.vii., p. 65.) 



This little Query may perhaps come under the 

 category you mention in the address of your open- 

 ing Number for the year, although it might be a 



sufficient reply merely to say that it was the legend 

 round the common Manx halfpenny, encircling 

 the three legs of man on its reverse ; but when 

 we consider these three conjoined limbs in their 

 awkward and impossible position, the propriety of 

 the legend may be doubted, and its presence at- 

 tributable only to the numismatic necessity of 

 accompanying the figure with its motto. The fol- 

 lowing epigram has been composed by some Manx- 

 man thoroughly convinced of the propriety of the 

 application : 



" Reader ! thou'st seen a falling cat, 

 Light always on his feet so pat ; 

 A shuttlecock will still descend, 

 Meeting the ground with nether end ; 

 The persevering Manksman thus, 

 A shuttlecock or pauvre puss ; 

 However through the world he's tost — 

 However disappointed, crost — 

 Reverses, losses, Fortune's frown. 

 No chance or change can keep him down. 

 Upset him any way you will, 

 Upon his legs you'll find him still. 

 For ever active, brisk, and spunky, 

 Stdbit jeceris quocunque." 



Where, however, we perceive in the last line 

 the rhyme has destroyed the metre of the Latin 

 poet, if the words be really a classical quotation, 

 which I should wish to form into a Query for 

 some of your readers. 



But the emblem, as the famous Triquetra, is 

 one of the most ancient and celebrated of anti- 

 quity. It figures on the oldest coins of Meta- 

 pontum ; and subsequently on many of those of 

 Sicily, particularly on those of Palermo and Sy- 

 racuse, as island cities ; for to islands, from one 

 use of its name in the Greek word XHAH, as a 

 jutting promontory, a break-water, or a jetty, 

 was it more especially appropriated. Hence it is 

 even now borne in the Neapolitan blazon for 

 Sicily : as Britain, if she followed the continental 

 examples, would be entitled to quarter it in her 

 full imperial escutcheon, not only for Man, but 

 for Malta ; by which latter it was early taken as 

 the device. But under this distinctive name as 

 Chele, it only figured the potency which all 

 pointed or angular forms and substances possessed 

 intensitively or in a triple degree. To under- 

 stand this, we should consider the force that all 

 pointed or sharp instruments possess : the awl, the 

 wedge, the adze, are well known for their assist- 

 ance to the mechanic ; and the transference of the 

 idea to non-physical aid was so easy, and so con- 

 sonant to the human mind, that, when we speak of 

 the acuteness of an intellect, the point of an epi- 

 gram, the keen edge of a sarcasm, we are scarcely 

 conscious that we indulge at all in the maze of 

 metaphor. 



Nor was the adaptation of the figure less suit- 

 able to the purposes of superstition, by which it 



