620 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[Na 217. 



" Wlierc are they now who wrought this fiendish 

 wrong ? 

 We hate the actors, and have hated long. 

 And where are they, the victims? Always here; 

 We feel their glory, and we hold it dear .' 

 Oh yes, 'tis ours 1 that glory still is ours, 

 And, lo ! how breaks it on these festive hours ; 

 Eacli heart is warm, each eye lit up with pride, 

 'Tis sanction'd in our loves and sanctified ! 

 Far o'er the earth — the Christianised — where'er 

 The Saviour's name is hymn'd in daily prayer, 

 The winds of heaven their memories tender waft, 

 Commix'd with all tlie sorceries of the crafl. 

 The little leather artizan — the boy 

 To whom the shoe is yet but as a toy, 

 A thing to smile and look at, ere the day 

 Severer task will make it one o? pay 

 (A constant duty and a livelihood), — 

 He, the young Crispin, emulous and good. 

 Is told of the Prince Martyrs — sometimes Royal ! 

 (The trade, in its devotion, being so loyal. 

 It fain would stretch the fact or trifle still, 

 Eager, as 'twere, to get on highest hill. ) 

 Through the fair France, through Germany, and 



Spain, 

 The blue-skied Italy, the Russias twain. 

 And farther still, across the Western Main. 

 There is the story known, engraft, 'tis true. 

 With things, as often is, of weight undue ; 

 Yet still 's enough, when sifted to the most. 

 To make the trade rejoice, and as a toast. 

 Now, as is wont, and ever to be given, 

 Hail to the memory of our friends in heaven ! 

 Crispin and Crispianus — they, the two. 

 Who, like ourselves, have made the Boot and Shoe!" 



The story as told in these verses is not exactly 

 the same as the one current among the makers of 

 the boot and shoe in our own island, an account 

 in an old book called The History of the Gentle 

 Craft (the production, no doubt, of the well- 

 known Thomas Delony) being the basis of the 

 tradition as received now by the British shoe- 

 maker. In the Golden Legende, one of the earliest 

 of our printed books, and in Alban Butler's Lives 

 of the Saints, as compiled from the Roman Martyr- 

 ologies, as also in the inscriptions of some pieces of 

 ancient tapestry formerly belonging to the shoe- 

 makers' chapel in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, 

 Paris, but, when I saw them , in one of the gal- 

 leries of the Louvre, is the like version as the one 

 here given. The authority, too, of the Church 

 Calendar of England, even as it still remains after 

 the loppings of the Reformation, is another corro- 

 boration that Crispin and Crispianus, brothers, 

 were early martyrs to the Christian faith, and 

 through that chiefly honoured, and not because 

 the one became a redoubted general and the other 

 a successful suitor to the daughter of some all- 

 potent emperor. In the Delony version — itself, 

 m every probability, a borrowing from the popu- 

 lar mind of the Elizabethan period, — these things 

 are put forth ; while in trade paintings and songs 



the Prince Crispin is assumed to have a wife or 

 sister, one can hardly tell which, in the person of 

 a princess, the Princess Crispianus, and who 

 figures as the patron of the women's branch of 

 the shoemakers' art; Crispin himself presIding^ 

 over the coarser labour for the rougher sex. This 

 artifice, if not purely historical, is at least very 

 excusable, because so natural, seeing that the 

 duplex principle has such an extensive range ; 

 that even the feet themselves come into the world 

 in pairs, and so shoes must be produced after the 

 same fashion — paired, as the shoemakers have 

 done by their adored Crispin and Crispianus. 



It has now but to be stated that the writer of 

 the foregoing lines (a long time now the common 

 property of his fellow-workmen) and this present 

 paragraph, has for many years contemplated the 

 production of something which might assume even 

 the size of a book, in connexion with the various 

 curious particulars which may be affiliated with 

 this Crispin story, and therefore would be glad to 

 find some of the numerous erudite readers of "N". 

 & Q " helping his inquiries either through the me- 

 dium of future Numbers, or as might be addressed 

 privately to himself, care of Mr. Clements, book- 

 seller, 22. Little Pulteney Street, Regent Street. 



J. Davies Devlin. 



Mitxav €i\itviti. 



Barrels Regiment. — I suppose that to this 

 regiment a song refers which has for its burden, ■— 



" And ten times a day whip the barrels. 

 And ten times a day whip the barrels. 



Brave boys."^ 



I shall be very much obliged to any one who will 

 tell me where I can find this song, or the circum- 

 stances or persons to which it refers. It was pro- 

 bably written about the year 1747. E. H. 



Okey the Regicide. — I should be much obliged 

 for any information relative to the descendants 

 of Colonel John Okey, the regicide, executed 

 April 19, 1662, O. S. E. P. H. 



Clapham. 



Lady Mason's Third Husband. — Secretary 

 Davison, in a letter dated London, 23rd Decem- 

 ber, 1581, and addressed to Lady Mason, re- 

 quests this lady " to join with his honour her 

 husband" in standing sponsor with Sir Christopher 

 Hatton, or Sir Thomas Skirley, to his son, born 

 a few days before. Sir John Mason, second 

 husband to Lady Mason, died in 1566. Who 

 then was " this honour," her third ? G. S. S. 



Creation of Knights. — When were the follow- 

 ing knights made? — Sir William Fleming, Sir 

 George Barker, Sir George Hamilton, Sir Edward 



