626 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 217. 



Commonwealth, were ordered to be burned by the 

 hands of the hangman. The people assisted with great 

 alacrity on this occasion." — From Hume, Reign of 

 Charles II., edit. London, 1828, p. 762. 



On a copy of La Defense de la 'Reformation^ SfC, 

 par I. Claude, a La Haye, 1683, I noted the fol- 

 lowing about thirty years ago as a striking pas- 

 sage, but cannot now recollect from whence I took 

 it. This book was condemned by the Pope to be 

 burned, on which circumstance the editor of an 

 old edition of it very appositely observes : 



" Books have souls as well as men, which survive 

 their martyrdom, and are not burnt, but crowned by 

 the flames that encircle them. The Church of Rome 

 has quickly felt there was nothing combustible but 

 the paper. The truth flew upward like the angel from 

 Manoah's sacrifice, untouched by the fire, and unsullied 

 by the smoke, and found a safe refuge at the footstool 

 of the God of Truth." 



G.N. 



JEWS IN CHINA. 



(Vol. vill., p. 515.) 



The only people known as descendants of any of 

 the ten tribes are the Spomerim, or Samaritans ; 

 whose chief peculiarity is, that they acknowledge as 

 sacred only the five books of Moses : for, although 

 other books held sacred by the Jews are known to 

 them, such books are not written in the same an- 

 cient alphabetic character as those of the Samari- 

 tan Pentateuch. The ten tribes were taken captive 

 B.C. 721 (2 Kings xvii. 24 — 41.). The inference 

 is, therefore, that all the books, from Joshua to 

 Malachi .inclusive, had not been composed or ad- 

 mitted into the holy canon till after that date. 

 The criterion then for ascertaining whether the 

 Chinese Jews are descended from the ten tribes, 

 appears to be their adherence to the Pentateuch 

 alone as sacred. I. The Chinese Jews have not 

 the ancient Hebrew character, but the compara- 

 tively modern square Chaldee one, as in our 

 printed Bibles. II. Gozani states that the Jews 

 of Kaafung Foo, in Honan, had some traditions 

 from the Talmud. The Mishnah, constituting the 

 text of the Talmud, is manifestly a compilation 

 subsequent to the closing of the Jewish canon ; the 

 quotations from the books following those of Moses 

 being constantly in use therein. III. On Gozani 

 mentioning Jesus the Messiah, the Chinese Jew 

 said they had a knowledge of Jesus the son of 

 Sirach. As, however, the book of the last-named 

 writer is unknown in Hebrew, Gozani, who was 

 ignorant of that language, may have mistaken him 

 for Jesus (=.Joshua) the son of Nun, with which 

 book the Chinese Jew was acquainted.* In either 



case, more books than the Pentateuch were un- 

 doubtedly held sacred by these Chinese Jews ; 

 therefore the connexion with the ten tribes (house 

 of Israel), as distinct from the house of Judah (the 

 Jews properly so called), cannot be Inferred. The 

 authorities for the Samaritans are Scallger, Ludolf, 

 Prideaux, Jahn, Huntington, Winer, Schnurrer, 

 and Kitto. For the eastern Jews : Josephus, 

 Peritsol, Manasseh, Basnage, Biisching ; Fathers 

 RiccI, Aleni, Gozani, and other Jesuits, in the 

 Lettres edifiantes et curieuses, vol. xviii. ; and the 

 Chinese Repository, vol. i. pp. 8. 44., vol. ill. p. 175. 



Circumcision is too general a practice in the 

 hotter regions of the south and east, to permit such 

 practice to be deemed proof of Jewish descent, 

 unless corroborated by other customs peculiar to 

 the Jews. Besides the physiological characteris- 

 tics of the native Australians preclude us from 

 deducing their natural descent from either the 

 Jews or the ten tribes. T. J. Buckton. 



Lichfield. 



* The opprobrious name of Christ amongst the 

 Jews is Jesus son of Sadta, which Gozani may have 



POETICAL TAVERN SIGNS. 



(Vol. vili., pp. 242. 452.) 

 I made a note of the following specimen of a 

 poetical tavern sign, in one of Mr. Mark Lemon's 

 Supplements to The Illustrated London News 

 (Dec. 27, 1851). I here transcribe it to add to 

 Mr. Warde's collection : 



" The following is a literal copy of a sign conspi- 

 cuously displayed in front of a small public-house in 

 the village of Folkesworth *, near Stilton, Hunts. It 

 contains as much poetry as, perhaps, the rustic Folkes- 

 worth folks are worth ; and doubtless they think it to 

 be (in the Stilton vernacular) ' quite the cheese : ' 



[A rude figure of a Fox.] 



•l . HAM . A . CUNEN . FOX 

 YOU . SEE . THEB, . HIS 

 NO , HARME . ATCHED 

 TO . ME . IT . IS . MY . MRS. 

 WISH . TO . PLACE . ME 

 HERE . TO . LET . YOU . NO 

 HE . SELS . GOOD . BEERE.' 



" The Captain Rawlinson of the district has de- 

 ciphered this inscription, and conjectures its meaning 

 to be as follows : 



' I am a cunning fox, you see ; 

 There is no harm attach'd to me ; 

 It is my master's wish to place me here. 

 To let you know he sells good beer.' " 



CUTHBERT BeDE, B.A. 



mistaken for Sirach ; indeed, the Chinese pronunci- 

 ation of Hebrew is quite peculiar, as they cannot pro- 

 nounce, for instance, the letters b, r, th, naming them 

 respectively p, I, z. 



* It was in the lane between Folkesworth and the 

 Norman Cross Barracks, that Borrow was first induced 

 to try the gipsy life, (Vide Lavengro.') 



