362 



i^OTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 180. 



Indians for his familiar converse with the devil." 

 For the further information of your correspondent, 

 I would add that Walker's account of the Gibbites 

 is very well condensed in that more accessible 

 book BiograpMa Scoticana, better known as the 

 JScots Worthies, where the deluded Gib figures 

 under the head of " God's Justice exemplified in 

 his Judgments upon Persecutors." J. O. 



EDMUND SPENSER. 



(Vol. vii., p. 303.) 



Mr. F. F. Spenser published the results of his 

 I'esearches relative to Spenser in the Gentleman's 

 Magazine for August, 1842 ; and towards the end 

 ■of his communication pi'omised to record " many 

 further interesting particular," through the same 

 medium, but failed to do so. Mr. Craik has made 

 special reference to Mr. F. F. Spenser's paper in a 

 little work upon which he must have bestowed a 

 vast deal of labour, and which contains the com- 

 pletest investigation of all that has been discovered 

 concerning the life, works, and descendants of the 

 poet that I have met with : I refer to Spenser and 

 his Poetry : by George L. Craik, M.A. : 3 vols. 

 London, 1845. The appendix to vol. iii., devoted 

 to an account of the descendants of Spenser, among 

 other interesting matter, contains the history of 

 the family descended from Sarah Spenser, a sister 

 of Edmund Spenser, which is still represented. 

 To which I may add that Spenser's own direct de- 

 scendants are living in the city of Cork, and, I 

 regret to say, in reduced circumstances. This 

 should not be. A pension might well be bestowed 

 on the descendants of Spenser, the only one of our 

 four great poets whose posterity is not extinct. 



J. M. B. 



Tunbridge Wells. 



I have read with much curiosity and surprise a 

 paragraph engrafted into " N. & Q." (Vol. vii., 

 p. 33.) from The Times newspaper, June 16, 1841, 

 announcing that a Mr. F. F. Spenser, of Halifax, 

 had ascertained that the ancient residence of his 

 own family, at Hurstwood, near Burnley, Lanca- 

 shii-e, was the identical spot where the great 

 Elizabethan poet, Edmund Spenser, is said to have 

 retired, when driven by academical disappoint- 

 ments to his relations in the north of England. 



I confess all this appears to me very like a hoax, 

 there is such a weight of negative testimony against 

 it. Dr. Whitaker, the learned historian of Whal- 

 iey, describes Hurstwood Hall as a strong and well- 

 built old house, bearing on its front, in large 

 characters, the name of " Barnai*d Townley," its 

 founder, and that it was for several descents the 

 property and residence of a family branched out 

 from the parent stock of Townley, in the person 

 of John Townley, third son of Sir Richard Town- 

 ley, of Townley — died Sept. 1562. His son, 



Barnard Townley, died 1602, and married Agnes, 

 daughter and coheiress of George Ormeroyd, of 

 Ormeroyd, who died 1586. 



It must be remembered that Hurstwood is in 

 the immediate neighbourhood of Dr. Whi taker's 

 ancient patrimonial estate of Holme ; and he must 

 have been familiar with all the traditionary history 

 of that locality. Yet he is silent on this subject, 

 and does not allude either to the occasional resi- 

 dence of the poet Spenser in those parts, or to the 

 family of Spensers, who are stated in this para- 

 graph to have resided at Hurstwood about four 

 hundred years. Clivigee. 



tAMECH KILLING CAIN. 



(Vol. vii., p. 305.) 



Sir John Maundeville says : 



" Also, seven miles from Nazareth is Mount Cain, 

 under which is a well ; and beside that well Lamech, 

 Noah's father, slew Cain with an arrow. For this 

 Cain went through briars and bushes, as a wild beast ; 

 and he had lived from the time of Adam, his father, 

 unto the time of Noah ; and so he lived nearly two 

 thousand years. And Lamech was blind for old age." 

 — Travels, chap, x., 'Bohn's Early Travels in Palestine, 

 p. 186. 



To which is appended the following note by Mr. 

 Thomas Wright, the editor : 



" This legend arose out of an interpretation given to 

 Gen. iv. 23, 24. Sec, as an illustration, the scene in 

 the Coventry Mysteries, pp. 44. 46. 



Zeus. 



J. W. M. will find this question discussed at 

 length in the Dictionnaire de Bayle, art. "Lamech," 

 and more briefly in Pol. Spiopsis Criticorum^ 

 Gen. iv. 23. 



The subject has been engraved by Lasinio in 

 his Pitture a fresco del Campo Santo di Pisa 

 (torn, xvii.), after the original fresco by Buon- 

 amico Buffalmacco, whose name is so familiar to 

 readers of the Decameron. F. C. B. 



Bayle relates this legend in his account of 

 Lamech as follows : 



" There is a common tradition that Lamech, who had 

 been a great lover of hunting, continued the sport even 

 when, by reason of his great age, he was almost blind. 

 He took with him his son, Tubal- Cain, who not only 

 served him as a guide, but also directed him where and 

 when he ought to shoot at the beast. One day, as Cain 

 was hid among the thickets, Lamech's guide seeing 

 something move in that place, gave him notice of it ; 

 whereupon Lamech shot an arrow, and slew Cain. He 

 was extremely concerned at it, and beat his guide so 

 much as to leave him dead upon the place." 



One of the frescos of the Campo Santo at Pisa 

 gives the whole subject, from the otfering of Abel's 

 and Cain's sacrifice, to the death of the young mau 



