April 1. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



307 



scent ; so he was to Marlborough by congeniality 

 of sentiment with the burghers. Query, Whether, 

 in affection to the latter, he granted to the town 

 a new coat, some such as the following : Gules, a 

 bull passant argent, armed or, impaling a cow 

 passant regardant gules : and so might originate 

 " The Red Cow" upon Granham Hill. History is 

 entirely silent upon this point ; but if such a com- 

 bination were ever given to Marlborough, it is 

 quite certain that Harvey's grant was resumed at 

 the Restoration. I have quite forgotten to remark, 

 that there is a suburb at Marlborough called 

 Cowbridge — a fact which seems to strengthen my 

 hypothesis. 



A cow may be borne by some name, but at 

 present I only recollect that of Vach : to which is 

 accorded, Ar. three cows' heads erased sable. 

 Bulls and oxen occur frequently; as in Fitz- 

 GefTrey, Cowley, Bull, Oxley, Oxcliffe, Oxendon, 

 &c. Bulls' heads belong to the families of Bul- 

 lock, Hillesdon, Fleming, Barbor, Frend, Gornay, 

 Bullman, and Williams, a baronet, &c. 



Patonce. 



EOX-HCNTING. 



(Vol. viii., p. 172.) 



As no answer to the Query on "Fox-hunting" has 

 yet appeared in " N. & Q.," I venture to send the 

 following extracts from an article in the Quarterly 

 Review, March 1832, on "The Management of 

 Hounds and Horses," by Nimrod. It appears that 

 " the first public notice of fox-hunting" occurs in 

 the reign of Richard II., who gave permission to 

 the Abbot of Peterborough to hunt the fox : 



" In Twice's Treatise on the Craft of Hunting, Rey- 

 nard is thus classed: 



* And for to sette young hunterys in the way 



To venery, I cast me fyrst to go ; 

 Of which four bestes be, that is to say, 



The Hare, the Herte, the Wulf, and the wild Boar : 

 But there ben other bestes, five of the chase, 



The Buck the first, the seconde is the Do ; 

 The Fox the third, which hath hard grace, 



The ferthe the Martyn, and the last the Roe.' 



" It is indeed quite apparent, that until at most a 

 hundred and fifty years ago, the fox was considered as 

 an inferior animal of the chase ; the stag, buck, and 

 even hare, ranking before him. Previously to that 

 period, he was generally taken in nets or hays, set on 

 the outside of his earth : when he was hunted, it was 

 among rocks and crags, or woods inaccessible to horse- 

 men : such a scene in short, or nearly so, as we have 

 drawn to the life in Dandie Dinmont's primitive chasse 

 in Guy Mannering. It is difficult to determine when 

 the first regularly appointed pack of hounds appeared 

 among us. Dan Chaucer gives the thing in embryo : 



' Aha, the fox ! and after him they ran ; 

 And eke with staves many another man. 



Ran Coll our dogge, and Talbot, and Gerlond, 

 And Malkin with her distaff in her hond. 

 Ran cow and calf, and eke the very hogges, 

 So fered were for the barking of the dogges, 

 And shouting of the men and women eke, 

 They ronnen so, hem thought her hertes brake.' 



" At the next stage, no doubt, neighbouring farmers 

 kept one or two hounds each ; and, on stated days, met 

 for the purpose of destroying a fox that had been doing 

 damage to their poultry yards. By and bye, a few 

 couple of strong hounds seem to have been kept by 

 the small country esquires or yeomen who could afford 

 the expense, and they joined packs. Such were called 

 trencher hounds, implying that they ran loose about 

 the house, and were not confined in kennel." 



These are but short extracts, but they comprise 

 the whole of what is said on the first origin of 

 fox-hunting. The rest of the article treats of the 

 quality and breed of horses and hounds. 



Frederick M. Middleton. 



WEATHER RULES. 



(Vol. viii., pp. 50. 535.) 



St. Vincent' 's Day, Jan. 22. — In Brand's Popular 

 Antiquities, Bohn's edition, vol. i. p. 38., is to be 

 found the following notice of this day : 



" Mr. Douce's manuscript notes say : ■ Vincenti festo 

 si Sol radiet, memor esto ; ' thus Englished by Abraham 

 Fleming : 



' Remember on St. Vincent's Day, 

 If that the Sun his beams display.' 



" T Dr. Foster is at a loss to account for the origin 

 of this command, &c.]" 



It is probable that the concluding part of the 

 precept has been lost ; but a curious old manu- 

 script, which fell into my hands some years since, 

 seems to supply the deficiency. The manuscript 

 in question is a sort of household book, kept by a 

 family of small landed proprietors in the island of 

 Guernsey between the years 1505 and 1569. It 

 contains memoranda, copies of wills, settlements 

 of accounts, recipes, scraps of songs and parts of 

 hymns and prayers ; some Romanist, some An- 

 glican, some of the Reformed Church in France. 

 Among the scraps of poetry I find the following 

 rhymes on St. Vincent's Day ; the first three lines 

 of which are evidently a translation of the Latin 

 verse above quoted, the last containing the fact 

 to be remembered : 



" Prens garde au jour St. Vincent, 

 Car sy ce jour tu vois et sent 

 Que le soleil soiet cler et biau, 

 Nous erons du vin plus que d'eau." 



These lines follow immediately after the rhymed 

 prognostications to be drawn from the state of 

 the weather on St. Paul's Day, Jan. 28. As these 



