Aug. 6. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES* 



131 



Also a passage is quoted from an old English 

 Homily, ending with : 



" At the deth of a manne three bellis shulde be 

 ronge, as his knyll, in worscheppe of the Trinetee ; and 

 for a womamie, who was the secunde persone of the 

 Trinetee, two bellis should be rungen." 



In addition to the intention of the "passing- 

 bell," afforded by Durandus above, it has been 

 thought that it was rung to drive away the evil 

 spirits, supposed to stand at the foot of the bed 

 ready to seize the soul, that it might " gain start." 

 Wynkyn de Worde, in his Golden Legend, speaks 

 of the dislike of spirits to bells. In alluding to 

 this subject, Wheatly, in his work on the Book of 

 Common Prayer, chap. xi. sec. viii. 3., says : 



" Our Church, in imitation of the Saints of former 

 ages, calls in the minister, and others who are at hand, 

 to assist their brother in his last extremity." 



The 67th canon enjoins that, " Avhen any one is 

 passing out of this life, a bell shall be tolled, and 

 the minister shall not then slack to do his duty. 

 And after the party's death, if it so fall out, there 

 shall be rung no more than one short peal." 



Several other quotations might be adduced 

 (vid. Brand's Antiq., vol. ii. pp. 203, 204. from 

 which much of the above has been derived) to 

 show that " one short peal " was ordered only to 

 be rung after the Reformation : the custom of 

 signifying the sex of the deceased by a certain 

 number of knells must be a relic, therefore, of very 

 ancient usage, and unauthorised by the Church. 



R. ^Y. Elliot. 



Clifton. 



WHO FIRST THOUGHT OF TABLE-TUBNING ? 



(Vol. viii., p. 57.) 



Respecting the origin of this curious pheno- 

 menon in America, I am not able to give your 

 correspondent, J. G. T. of Ilagley, any inform- 

 ation ; but it may interest him and others among 

 the readei's of " N. & Q." to have some account 

 of what appears to be the first recorded expei-i- 

 ment, made in Europe, of table-moving. These 

 experiments are related in the supplement (now 

 lying before me) to the Allgemeine Zeitung of 

 April 4, by Dr. K. Andree, who writes from 

 Bremen on the subject. His letter is dated 

 March 30, and begins by stating that the whole 

 town had been for eight days preceding In a state 

 of most peculiar excitement, owing to a pheno- 

 menon which entirely absorbed the attention of 

 all, and about which no one had ever thought 

 before the arrival of the American steam-ship 

 " Washington " from New York. Dr. Andree 

 proceeds to relate that the information respect- 

 ing table-moving was communicated in a letter, 

 brought through that ship, from a native of 

 Bremen, residing in New York, to his sister, who 



was living In Bremen, and who, in her correspon- 

 dence with her bi*other, had been rallying him 

 about the American spirit-rappings, and other 

 Yankee humbug, as she styled it, so rampant in 

 the United States. Her brother instanced this 

 table-moving, performed in America, as no delusion, 

 but as a fact, which might be verified by any one ; 

 and then gave some directions for making the 

 experiment, which was forthwith attempted at the 

 lady's house in Bremen, and with perfect success, 

 in the presence of a large company. In a ^qvt 

 days the marvellous feat, the accounts of which 

 flew like wildfire all over the country, was exe- 

 cuted by hundreds of experimenters in Bremen. 

 The subject was one precisely adapted to excite- 

 the attention and curiosity of the imaginative and 

 wonder-loving Germans ; and, accordingly, in 

 a few days after, a notice of the strange pheno- 

 menon appeared in The Ti7nes, in a letter from 

 Vienna, and, through the medium of the leading: 

 journal, the facts and experiments became rapidly 

 diffused over the world, and have been repeated 

 and commented upon ten thousand fold. As the 

 experiment and its results are now brought within 

 the domain of practical science, we may hope ta 

 see them soon freed from the obscurity and uncer- 

 tainly which still envelope them, and assigned to 

 their proper place in the wondrous system of 

 " Him, in whom we live, and move, and have our 

 being." John Macrat. 



Oxford. 



SCOTCHMEN IN POLAND. 



(Vol. vii., pp. 475. 600.) 



" Religious freedom was at that time [the middle of 

 the sixteenth century] enjoyed in Poland to a degree 

 unknown in any other part of Europe, where generally 

 the Protestants were persecuted by the Romanists, or 

 the Romanists by the Protestants. This freedom, united 

 to commercial advantages, and a wide field for the exer- 

 cise of various talents, attracted to Poland crowds of 

 foreigners, who lied their native land on account of 

 religious persecution ; and many of whom became, by 

 their industry and talents, very useful citizens of their 

 adopted country. There were at Cracow, Vilna, Posen, 

 &c., Italian and French Protestant congregations. A 

 great number of Scotch settled in different parts of 

 Poland ; and there were Scotch Protestant congrega- 

 tions not only in the above-mentioned towns, but also 

 in other places, and a particularly numerous one at 

 Kieydany, a little town of Lithuania, belonging to the 

 Princes Radziwill. Amongst the Scotch families set- 

 tled in Poland, the principal were the Bonars, who 

 arrived in that country before the Reformation, but 

 became its most zealous adherents. This family rose, 

 by its wealth, and the great merit of several of its 

 members, to the highest dignities of the state, but be- 

 came extinct during the seventeenth century. There 

 are even now in Poland many families of Scotch de- 

 scent belonging to the class of nobles ; as, for instance. 



