328 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 232. 



sand was the last operation, inasmuch as I have 

 heard of the artist's wrath visiting a poor pussy 

 because she had shaken a picture, and thereby 

 disturbed the sand not yet fixed. The secret died 

 with him and a friend, a contemporaneous artist, to 

 whom I believe he had communicated the secret ; 

 this friend's name I do not know. Mr. Haas 

 painted landscapes, the friend painted cattle pieces. 

 I have in my possession some of Mr. Haas' work. 

 It is beautifully soft and quiet. The foliage is 

 iine in the extreme, withal a rich depth of colour- 

 ing. The Welsh scenery he felt most at home in, 

 he threw into it a spirit of repose : while it was 

 bold, there was nothing harsh or offensive to the 

 eye. I have tried many experiments with one of 

 his pictures : amongst other things, I find the 

 least moisture will remove the sand. Mr. Haas 

 had a gallery in London for some time (I believe 

 in Regent Street), where there were portraits 

 done in sand. A portrait of himself was con- 

 sidered the gem of the pictures : such a vitality 

 and delicacy of colouring did it possess. I men- 

 tion this merely to show that sand could be ap- 

 plied to other branches of art besides landscapes. 

 The history of the pictures at Windsor Castle is 

 to be seen in one of the old Windsor Guides. 

 Mr. Haas died at Bibrach, where doubtless many 

 of his pictures are. 



Sand-paintings cannot last long ; they have in 

 themselves the element of their own destruction, 

 " their rough surface," which very soon collects 

 and retains the dust. I never heard of their being 

 cleaned. John Mummery. 



Queenwood College, Stockbridge, Hants. 



O BRTEN OF THOSMOND. 



(Vol. ix., p. 125.) 

 In corroboration of my former suggestion, that 

 Nicholas Thosmound of Somersetshire was an 

 O'Brien of Thomond, I beg to add some farther 

 facts. Cotemporary with him was William Tout- 

 mound, who obtained in the sixth year of Henry IV. 

 a grant of the office (in England) of chief car- 

 penter of the king for his life. This singular 

 office, "Capitalis Carpentarius Regis," must, I 

 suppose, be called Lord High Carpenter of Eng- 

 land, in analogy with the offices of steward, butler, 

 &c. It is mentioned in the Calendar of Patent 

 Rolls of England at the 6 Henry IV. ; and in the 

 same repository is mention of a grant long before 

 by Henry III. of the land of Tosmond in Ireland, 

 to A. R. Tosmond (R standing, I presume, for 

 " Regi," for the Irish Toparchs were then thus 

 designated by the English government). In this 

 case then we have the letter s used for t, as in the 

 Inq. P. M. of Alicia, wife of the before-mentioned 

 Nicholas Thosmound. In the Abbreviatio Ro- 

 tulorum Originalium of England, in 15 Edw. II., 



is the expression " Regalitatem de Totamon," ap- 

 plied to the district of Thomond in Ireland. It 

 seems not unlikely that the two cotemporary in- 

 dividuals mentioned above were sons or grandsons 

 of Turloch, or Tirrelagh, O'Brien, sovereign of 

 Thomond from 1367 to 1370, when he was sup- 

 planted by his nephew Brien O'Brien, ancestor of 

 the Marquis of Thomond. For this Turloch was 

 in some favour with the government, by whom his 

 distress was sometimes relieved. Thus it appears 

 from the printed calendar of Irish Chancery Rolls, 

 that a writ of liberate issued in the 4th Rich. II. 

 for the payment to him of forty marks ; and again, 

 5 Rich. II., of twenty marks, " ei concord, p re- 

 compens. labor." He was much befriended by 

 the Earl of Desmond, whose successor being high 

 in favour with the kings Henry V. and VI., ob- 

 tained a large grant of land in the county of Wa- 

 terford, which he immediately conferred on the 

 sons of Turloch. Yet some of those sons may, 

 through his interest, have been established in 

 England. It becomes, therefore, a matter of con- 

 siderable interest to ascertain whether the Inq. 

 P. M. 2 Henry IV. contains any proof that Ni- 

 cholas Thosmound was an O'Brien. 



While on this subject, may I inquire the reason 

 why the O'Briens quarter with their own arms 

 the bearing of three piles meeting in a point ? 

 These latter were the arms of the English baronial 

 family of Bryan, not at all connected with the 

 Irish family. I suspect the Irish were late in their 

 assumption of arms, and borrowed in many cases 

 the arms of English families of nearly similar 

 names. A. B. 



CORONATION STONE. 



(Vol. ix., p. 123.) 



Possibly the following authorities may tend to 

 throw light upon the question started by your 

 correspondent. 



In Ant. Univ. Hist, vol. xvii. p. 287., 4to. ed., 

 London, 1747, it is said: 



" St. Austin tells us that some of the Carthaginian 

 divinities had the name of Abaddires, and their priests 

 that of Eucaddires. This class, in all probability, was 

 derived from the stone which Jacob anointed with oil, 

 after it had served him for a pillow the night he had 

 his vision ; for in the morning he called the place 

 where he lay Bethel. Now it is no wonder this should 

 have been esteemed as sacred, since God himself says, 

 he was the God op Bethel, the place where Jacob 

 anointed the pillar. From Bethel came the baHylus 

 of Damascius, which we find called Abaddir by Pris- 

 cian. This Abaddir is the Phoenician Aban-dir, that 

 is, the spherical stone, exactly answering to the de- 

 scription of the baetylus given us by Damascius and 

 others. The case seems to have been this ; the Ca- 

 naanites of the neighbourhood first worshipped the 

 individual stone itself, upon which Jacob had poured 



