472 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 211. 



book, and candle ? And was not tlie ceremony of his 

 oath, to lay three fingers a-top of the book, to signify 

 the Trinity ; and two fingers under the book, to signify 

 damnation of body and soul if they sware falsely ? 

 And was not there a great number of people that 

 -would not swear, and suffered great persecution, as 

 •read the Booh of Martyrs but to I3onner's days ? And 

 ■it is little above an hundred years since the Protestants 

 got up; and they gave forth the oatii of allegiance, 

 and the oath of supremacy : the one was to deny the 

 €'ope's supremacy, and the other to acknowledge the 

 ■kings of England ; so we need not tell to you of their 

 form, and show you the ceremony of the oath ; it saith, 

 ' Kiss the hook ; ' and the book saith ' Kiss the Son,' 

 which saith ' Swear not at all.' " 



Still the laying of the hand on the book seems 

 to have been an essential form ; for, during the 

 trial, when the oath was offered to Margaret Fell, 

 " the clerk held out the book, and bid her pull off 

 Ler glove, and lay her hand on the book" (-fiT. M., 

 p. 285.). And directly after, when the oath had 

 been read to Fox, the following scene is described : 



" ' Give him the book,' said they ; and so a man that 

 stood by him held up the book, and said, ' Lay your 

 hand on the book.' 



" Geo. Fox. ' Give me the book in my hand.' Which 

 set them all a-gazing, and as in hope he would have 

 sworn." 



And it appears from the case of Omycbund v. 

 Barker, that, at that time, the usual form was by 

 laying the right hand on the book, and kissing 

 it afterwards (1 Atk. 42.). It seems not impro- 

 bable that Paley's suggestion, in his Moral Philo- 

 sophy, vol. i. p. 192. (loth edit.), may be correct. 

 He says : 



" The kiss seems rather an act of reverence to the con- 

 tents of the book, as, in the Popish ritual, the priest 

 kisses the gospel before he reads it, than any part of 

 the oath." 



The Query respecting the Welsh custom I 

 must leave to those who are better Informed re- 

 specting the judicial forms of that country ; merely 

 suggesting whether the practice alluded to by 

 your correspondent may not originally have had a 

 meaning similar to that of the three fingers on the 

 book, and two under, as described by Fox In the 

 passage above quoted. Erica. 



Warwick. 



In the bailiwick of Guernsey the person sworn 

 lifts his right hand, and the presiding judge, who 

 administers the oath, says : " Vous jurez par la foi 

 et le serment que vous devez a DIeu que," &c. 

 Oaths of office, however, are taken on the Gospels, 

 and are read to the person swearing by the 

 greffier, or clerk of the court. The reason of this 

 difference may be accounted for by the fact that 

 the official oaths, as they now exist, appear to 

 have been drawn up about the beginning of the 



reign of James I., and that in all probability the 

 form was enjoined by the superior authority of the 

 Privy Council. 



Which of the two forms was generally used 

 before the Reformation, I have not been able to 

 discover; but in .in account of the laws, privileges, 

 and customs of the Island, taken by Avay of inqui- 

 sition In the year 1331, but more fully completed 

 and approved In the year 1441, It appears that the 

 juries of the several pai'Ishes Avere sworn " sur 

 Sainctes Evangiles de DIeu par eulx et par 

 chacun d'eulx corporellement touche," — " par 

 leurs consciences sur le peril de la dampnation de 

 leurs ames." 



I remember to have seen men from some of the 

 Baltic ports, when told to lift their right hands to 

 be sworn, double down the ring finger and the 

 little finger, as is done by bishops In the Roman 

 Catholic Church when giving the benediction. 



In France the person making oath lifts his right 

 hand. The oath is administered by the presiding 

 judge without any reference to the Deity, but the 

 person who swears is required to answer " Je le 

 jure." I observed that In Britanny, when the 

 person sworn was Ignorant of t!ie French lan- 

 guage, the answer was "VaDoue," which, I be- 

 lieve, means in tlie Breton dialect, " By God. " 



In the Ecclesiastical Court of Guernsey I have 

 seen the book presented to the person swearing 

 open at one of the Gospels ; but In the Royal 

 Court the book Is put into the right hand of the 

 party making oath, shut. In either case it is re- 

 quired that the book should be kissed. 



HONOKE DE MaBEVILLE. 



Guernsey. 



CO.MMINATORT INSCRIPTIONS IN BOOKS. 



(Vol. vlli., pp. 64. 153.) 



Many inscriptions, commlnatory or exhortatory, 

 written In books and directed to readers, have 

 been commemorated in " N. & Q." Towards the 

 beginning of the present century, the most com- 

 mon epigram of the kind in the French public 

 schools was the following elegant motto, with its 

 accompanying illustration : 



" Aspice Pierrot pendu. 

 Quod librum n'a pas rendu !" 



Poor Pierrot is exhibited In a state of suspen- 

 sion, as hanging from the inverted letter L (r), 

 which symbolises the fatal tree. Commlnatory 

 and exhortatory cautions not to soil, spoil, or tear 

 books and MSS. occur so frequently In the records 

 of monastic libraries, that a whole albuna could 

 easily be filled with them. The coquettish bishop, 

 Venantlus Fortuuatus, has a distich on the sub- 

 ject. Another learned Goth, Theud-widf, or Theo- 

 dulfus, Charlemagne's Missus ilomiiiicus, recom- 



