April 5. 1851.] 



NOTES 



AND QUERIES. 



265 



Pope Joan. — Can any information be procured 

 as to the origin of the game called Pope Joan, and 

 (wiiat is of more importance) of the above title, 

 whether any such personage ever held the keys 

 of St Peter and wore the tiara ? If so, at what 

 period and for what time, and what is known of 

 her pei'sonal history ? Nemo. 



[That Papissa Joanna is merely a fictitious cha- 

 racter, is now universully aekiiowletlged by the best 

 authorities. " Clearer confirmations must be drawn 

 for the history of Pope Joan, who succeeded Leo I V, 

 and preceded Benedict 111 , than many we yet dis- 

 cover, and he wants not grounds that doubts it." So 

 thought Sir Thomas Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, 

 B. vii. Ch. 17. Gibbon, too, rejects it as fabulous. 

 " Till the Reformation," he says, " the tale was re- 

 peated and believed witliout offence, and Joan's female 

 statue long occupied her place among the Popes in the 

 Cathedral of Sienna. She has been annihilated by 

 two learned 'Protestant'^, Blondel and Bayle; l)ut their 

 brethren were scandalized by this equitable and ge- 

 nerous criticism. Spanheim and L'Enfant attempted 

 to save this poor engine of controversy, and even IMo- 

 sheim condescends to cherish some doubt and sus- 

 picion." — ■ The Decline and Full of tlie Roman Empire, 

 chap. xlix. Spanheira's work, Joanna P,ipissa Rest'tuta, 

 was printed at Lcydeu in 1692] 



The Well o' the World's End. — I am very anxious 

 to find out, whether there still exists in print (or 

 if it is known to any one now alive) an old Scotch 

 fairy tale called "The \Veary Well at the \V'orld's 

 End?" Ciiarles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., who is 

 unhappily dead lately, knew the story and meant 

 to write it down ; but he became too infirm to do 

 so, and though many very old peOi)le in the hilly 

 districts of Laminermoor and Roxburghshire re- 

 member parts of it, and knew it in their youth, I 

 cannot find one who knows it entirely. 



L. M. M. II. 



[Soma references to the story alluded to by our 

 correspondent will be found in Dr. Leyden's valuable 

 introduction to The Complaijut of Scotland ; and the 

 story itself in Chamliers's admirable colkction of Scot- 

 tish Folk Lore, Popular Rhymes iif Si-olland, p. 'i.ib". of 

 the third edition, whieli form vol. vii. of the Select 

 Writings of Robert Chambers. ] 



Sidea and Angles. — What is the most simple 

 and least comjjlicated method of determining the 

 various relations of the sides and aiiKles of the 

 acute and (>btuse-un<;locl trianifles, without the aid 

 ot trigonometry, construction, or, in fact, by any 

 method except arithmetic ? F. G. E. 



St. Andre'A-'s. 



[The relations of sides and angles cannot be obtained 

 without trigonometry in some shape. A very easy 

 work has lately been published by Mr. Ilumrniiig, in 

 which there is as little as possible of technical tvijo- 

 noinetry.] 



Meaning of Rutche. — In John Erith's Antithesis, 

 published in 1.5>'J, he says: 



" The pope and bishops hunt the wild deer, the fox, 

 and the hare, in their closed parks, with great cries, and 

 horns blowing, with hounds and ratches running." 



I should be glad to have the word ratches satis- 

 factorily explained. H. W. 



[From a note by Steevens on the line in King T.ear 

 (Boswell's Shukspeiire, vol. x. p. 155.), it appears that 

 the late Mr. Hawkins, in bis notes to The Return fiotn 

 Parnassus, p. 237., says, " That a rache is a dog that 

 huiits by scent wild beasts, birds, and even fishts, and 

 that the female of it is called abrache." and in Mut/ui^fi- 

 cence, an ancient Interlude or Morality, by Skelton, 

 printed by Ilastell, no date, is the following line ; 

 " Here is a leyshe of ratches to renne an hare." 

 In a following note, Mr. Toilet, after saying " What 

 is here said of a rache, might, perhaps, be taken from 

 Holinshed's Description of Scotland, p. 14.," proceeds, 

 " The females of all dogs were once called braches ; 

 and Ulitius upon Gratius observes, ' Haclia Saxonibus 

 canem significab.it unde Scoti hodie Rache pro cane 

 foemina habent, ijuod Anglis est Brache.'"] 



" Feast of Reason," Sfc — Seeing your correspon- 

 dents ask where cou[)lets are to be found, I 

 venture to ask whence comes the line — 



" The feast of reason and the flow of soul. " 

 I have often heard it asked, but never answered. 



II. W. D. 



[It will be found in Pope's Imitations of Horace, 

 Book ii. Satire i. : 



" There St. John mingles with my friendly liowl 

 The feast of reason and the flow of soul."] 



Til Autem. — In page 25. of " Hertfordshire," 

 in EuUer's Worthies, there is a story of one 

 Alexander Noiiaam, who, wishing to become a 

 monk of St. Albau's, wrote thus to the abbot 

 thereof: 



" Si vis, veniam. Sin autem, tu aiitem." 

 To which the abbot replied : 



" Si bonus sis, venias. Si Nequam, nequ.tquam." 



Can any of your readers inform me of the mean- 

 ing of " tu autem" in the first line? as I have 

 been long puzzled. 



This puts me in mind of a form which there 

 was at Ch. Ch., O.xfonl, on "gaudy" days. Some 

 junior students went to the " high table" to say a 

 Latin grace, and when they had finished it, they 

 were dismissed by the Dean saying " Tu autem;" 

 on which, I remember, there was invariably a 

 smile pervading the faces of those present, even 

 tluit of the Dean himself, as no one seemed to 

 know the meaning of the phrase. I believe that it 

 was in my time an enigma to all. Can any of 

 your ingenious readers solve me this? II. C. K. 



Rectory, Hereford. 



[Pegge" in lis .'inoni/minna. Cent. iv. Sect. 32. says, 

 " .\t St. John's College, Cambridge, a scholar, in my 

 lime, read some part of a chapter in a I^aliu Bible; 

 and after he had read a short time, the President, or 



