JjlK. 16. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



67 



the work may be, I suppose some of them must 

 have seen it ; and, under existing circumstances, 

 it is possible that a copy might get into the hands 

 of a desperate creature who would hope to make a 

 profit, by republishing it with Byron's and Moore's 

 names in the title-page. I. W. 



Arms at Bristol, — In a window nov/ repairing 

 in Bristol Cathedral is this coat : — Arg. on a 

 chevron or {false heraldry), three stags' heads 

 caboshed. "Wbose coat is this ? It is engraved in 

 Lysons' Gloucestershire Antiquities without name. 



E.D. 



Passage in Thomson. — In Thomson's "Hymn 

 to the Seasons," line 28, occurs the following pas- 

 sage : 



«' But wandering oft, with brute, unconscious gaze, 

 Man marks not Thee ; marks not the mighty hand 

 That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ; 

 Works in the secret deep ; shoots, steaming, thence 

 The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring," &c. 



Can any of your readers oblige by saying whether 

 the word steaming, in the fourth line of the quo- 

 tation, is the correct reading ? If so, in what sense 

 it can be understood ? if not, whether teeming is 

 not probably the correct word ? W. M. P. 



'■'■For God will he your King to-day" — 



" For God will be your King to-day, 

 And I'll be general under," 



My grandmother, who was a native of Somerset- 

 shire, and born in 1750, used to recite a ballad to 

 my mother, when a child, of which the above lines 

 are the only ones remembered. 



Do they refer to the rising under the Duke of 

 Monmouth? And where can the whole of the 

 ballad be found ? M. A. S. 



35. Dover Road. 



" See v)here the startled wildfowl" — Where are 

 the following lines to be found ? I copy them from 

 the print of Landseer's, called " The Sanctuary." 



" See where the startled wild fowl screaming rise, 

 i, . And seek in martial flight those golden skies. 

 Yon wearied swimmer scarce can win the land. 

 His limbs yet falter on the wat'ry strand. 

 Poor hunted hart ! the painful struggle o'er, 

 How blest the shelter of that island shore ! 

 There, while he sobs his panting heart to rest. 

 Nor hound nor hunter shall his lair molest." 



G.B.W. 



Ascension-day. — Was "Ascension-day" ever 

 kept a close holiday, the same as Good Friday and 

 Christmas-day ? And, if so, when was such cus- 

 tom disused ? ' H. A. Hammond. 



The Grogog of a Castle. —It appears by a 

 record of the Irish Exchequer of 3 Edw. II., that 



one Walter Haket, constable of Maginnegan's 

 Castle in the co. of Dublin, confined one of the 

 King's officers in the Grogog thereof. Will you 

 permit me to inc^uire, whether this term has been 

 applied to the prison of castles in England ? 



J. F. F. 

 Dublin. 



CANONGATE MABBIAGES. 

 (Vol. v., p. 320.) 



I had hoped that the inquiry of R. S. F. would 

 have drawn out some of your Edinburgh corre- 

 spondents ; but, as they are silent upon a subject 

 they might have invested with interest, allow me 

 to say a word upon these Canongate marriages. 

 I need not, I think, tell R. S. F. how loosely our 

 countrymen, at the period alluded to, and long 

 subsequent thereto, looked upon the marriage 

 tie ; as almost every one who has had occasion to 

 touch upon our domestic manners and customs has 

 pointed at, what appeared to them, and what 

 really was, an anomaly in the character of a na- 

 tion somewhat boastful of their better order and 

 greater sense of propriety and decorum. 



Besides the incidental notices of travellers, the 

 legal records of Scotland are rife with examples 

 of litigation arising out of these irregular mar- 

 riages ; and upon a review of the whole history of 

 such in the north, it cannot be denied that, among 

 our staid forefathers, "matrimony was more a 

 matter of merriment"* than a solemn and reli- 

 gious engagement. 



The Courts in Scotland usually frowned upon 

 cases submitted to them where there was a strong 

 presumption that either party had been victimised 

 by the other; but, unfortunately, the require- 

 ments were so simple, and the facility of procur- 

 ing witnesses so great, that many a poor frolick- 

 some fellow paid dearly for his joke by finding 

 himself suddenly transformed, from a bachelor, 

 to a spick and span Benedict ; and that too upon ' 

 evidences which would not in these days have 

 sent a fortune-telling impostor to the tread-mill : 

 the lords of the justiciary being content that some 

 one had heard him use the endearing term of wife 

 to the pursuer, or had witnessed a mock form at 

 an obscure public-house, or that the parties were 

 by habit and repute man and wife. How truly 

 then may it have been said, that a man in the 

 Northern Capital, so open to imposition, scarcely 

 knew whether he was married or not. 



In cases where the ceremony was performed, it 



* Letters from, Edinburgh, London, 1776. See also, 

 Letters from a Gentleman in Scotland to his Friend in 

 England (commonly called Burt's Letters) : London, 

 1754. 



