2Q 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 272. 



former writers, who universally alleged that Pue^s Occur- 

 rences was the first Dublin newspaper." 



Abhba. 



^ucrtcjS. 



CALENDAR OF SAINTS* DATS. 



In the Additional Notes appended to Nicliolls' 

 Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer 

 (p. 8. col. 2, 1. 13.), the following passage occurs : 



" In this kalendar, which preserves the memory of 

 some ancient holy men and women that were famous in 

 the Church (although their days be not now appointed 

 by the new statute to be kept Holy Days, nor were they 

 ail of them appointed to be kept so before), there is some 

 difference between this edition and that of Edward VI. to 

 which the Act of Uniformity referreth. In January, 

 Lucian and Prisca are omitted, with Fabian : so Bast is 

 added in the fifth of Edward "VI. In February, Dorothy 

 and Mildred are added. In March, Perpetua, St. Gregory, 

 and St. Benedict are omitted ; Adrian is added. In April, 

 Richard and Alphage are omitted. In May, John Bever- 

 ley, Pancrace, Helena, Adelina, are added, and Pernelle. 

 In June are added Edmund, and the Translation of Edw. 

 In July, Martin and Swithin are omitted ; Seven Sleepers 

 are added. In August, Name of Jesus, and Beheading of 

 St. John Baptist, are omitted ; Assumption of the Virgin 

 Mary, Magnus, IBernard, Felix, and Cuthbert are added. 

 In September, Eunarchus [Enurchus?], Hoh' Cross, 

 Lambert, and Cyprian are omitted. In November, Brice, 

 ^Machute, St. Hugh, B. St. Edmund King, and Cecily are 

 omitted ; and Theodore is added. In December, O Sapi- 

 entia and Sylvester are omitted, and Osmond is added." 



This is an extract from some MS. notes in 

 Bishop Cosin's handwriting. It would appear as 

 if Bishop Cosin had before him a kalendar at- 

 tached to a Book of Common Prayer of the fifth 

 year of King Edward VI., commonly called the 

 Second Book of Edward ; being that which, with 

 certain specified altei-ations, was confirmed by the 

 Act of Uniformity of 1 Eliz. The edition which 

 he compares with this, and speaks of as difiering 

 from it, was that in use prior to 1662. 



Now the difficulty which leads me to apply to 

 *' N. & Q." for help, is this : I have not been 

 able to find a calendar in any Common Prayer- 

 Book of the fifth of Edw. VI., or of any other 

 year of his reign, which answers to the descrip- 

 tion here given. The copies of Edw. VI.'s 

 Common Prayer-Books, which I have met with, 

 contain only our red-letter Saints' Days, with the 

 addition of a very few black-letter days in the 

 editions of 1552. The calendar of the primer of 

 1553 (as printed in the Liturgies, and other docu- 

 ments of King Edw. VI., by the Parker Society, 

 1844, p. 365.) contains many more black-letter 

 days than the Prayer-Books, but yet does not 

 correspond to the calendar Bishop Cosin seems to 

 have had before him. 



What adds to the interest of the Inquiry is, that 

 the Puritans, at the Savoy Conference, desired 

 respecting Saints' Days, " that the names of all 



others (Saints), now inserted in the calendar, which 

 are not in the first and second books of Edward the 

 Sixth, may be left out." Now Bishop Cosin was 

 an active member of the party opposed to the 

 Puritans ; but in the Bishop's Answer nothing is 

 said which implies, that any books of Edw. Vl. 

 contained the Saints' Days objected to. 



I shall be grateful to any of your readers who 

 may be able to point out any calendar which cor- 

 responds, in the List of Saints' Days, with that 

 described by Cosin, Indagatob. 



LEECH QUERIES. 



I hope that you will furnish me with inform- 

 ation respecting what appears to me a curious in- 

 quiry. We all know that the word leech was 

 commonly used some centuries ago to designate a 

 physician. It was employed in that sense by 

 Spenser, and once (in Timon of Athens) by Shak- 

 speare, as well as by many other writers. Sir 

 Bulwer Lytton states, in one of the notes ap- 

 pended to his novel Harold, that the derivation of 

 the word has been perplexing to many of the 

 learned, but that leicli is the old Saxon word for 

 surgeon ; and that it has been traced to lick or 

 lese, a body ; a word not signifying, like the pre- 

 sent German Leiche, a dead body. Lich-fe was, 

 in Saxon, a physician's fee, as I have been in- 

 formed. 



The word has been thought by some to be de- 

 rived from a Saxon verb, signifying, like the- 

 French lecher, to smooth or assuage. But what I 

 wish to ascertain is, whether the worm, the blood- 

 sucker, the use of which appears fast disappearing 

 from medical practice, was named from the phy- 

 sician, or whether the physician was named from 

 the little animal ? It is a curious fact, if it can be 

 known ; either way showing how great was the 

 use of phlebotomy In surgical practice. But how 

 great must have been the belief in the benefit of 

 these small blood-suckers, If the healing physician 

 allowed himself to be called by the same name ! 

 We know that the first surgeons were also bar- 

 bers. When did the use of the leech come into 

 competition with that of the lancet ? Surely some 

 old medical works must contain this information, 

 and would explain if, like many improvements in 

 medical science, the use of leeches was derived 

 from the East. C. (2) 



Minax <Sb\xtxiti. 



Foreign Collections of Floral Poetry. — What 

 works are there similar to our Poetry of Flowers^ 

 and others with like titles, in the French, Italian, 

 Spanish, and Portuguese ? Communications from 

 foreign booksellers will oblige. A. Challsteth. 



