408 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 82. 



he able to give an explanation of the following 

 legi-nd, for such I suppose it to be : — 



In the parish cliurch of Frettenham, co. Nor- 

 folk, several alabaster carvings were discovered 

 some years ago, near the chancel arch, having 

 traces of colour The most perfect, and the one 

 which had most claims to merit as a piece of 

 sculpture, represented a very curious scene. A 

 horse was standing fixed in a kind of stocks, a 

 machine for holding animals fast while they were 

 heing shod. But it (the horse) had only three 

 legs : close by stood a Bishop, or mitred Abbot, 

 holding the horse's missing fore quarter, on the 

 hoof of which a smith was nailing a shoe. Of 

 course the power which had so easily removed a 

 leg would as easily replace it. 



The details of the story may be very safely 

 conjectured to have been — a Bisiiop or high 

 church dignitary is going on a journey or pilgrim- 

 .age ; his liorse drops a shoe 4 on being taken to a 

 smith's to have it replaced, the animal becomes 

 restive, and cannot be shod even with the help of 

 the stocks ; whereupon the bishop facilitates the 

 operation in the manner before described. One 

 feels tempted to ask why he could not have 

 rej)laced the shoe without the smith's intervention. 



What I want to know is, of whom is this story 

 tol 1 ? I regret that not having seen the carving 

 in question, I can give no particulars of dress, &c., 

 which might help to determine its age ; nor could 

 my informant, though he perfectly well remem- 

 bered the subject represented. He told me that 

 be had often mentioned it to people likely to know 

 of the existence of such a legend, but could never 

 gain any information respecting it. C. J. E. 



King's Col. Cambridge, May 0^ 1851. 



King of Nineveh bums himself in his Palace — 

 In a review of Mr. Layard's work on Nineveh 

 {Qiuirterly, vol. Ixxxiv. p. 140.) I find the follow- 

 ing statement : 



'• The act of Sardanapalus in mnking. his palace his 

 own funeral pyre and burning iiiinself upon it, is also at- 

 tributed to the king who was overthroivn by Cyaxares." 



May I ask where the authority for this state- 

 ment is to be found ? X. Z. 



Butchers not Jurymen. — 



" As the law does think it fit, 

 No l)utchefs shall on juries sit." 



Butler's Ghost, cant. ii. 

 The vulgar error expressed in these lines is not 

 extinct, even at the present day. The only ex- 

 planation I have seen of its origin is given in Bar- 

 rington's Observations on the more Ancient Statfdes, 

 p. 474., on 3 Hen. VIIL, where, after referring in 

 the text to a statute by which surgeons were 

 exempted from attendance on juries, he adds in a 

 note : 



" It may perhaps l)e thought singular to suppose 

 that this exemption from serving on juries is the 



foundation of the vulgar error, that a surgeon or 

 l>uteher from "the barbarity of their business may be 

 challenged as jurors." 



Sir H. Spelman, in his Answer to an Apology for 

 Archbishop Abbott, says, — 



'• In our law, those that were exercised in slaughter 

 of beasls, were not received to be triers of the life of a 

 man." — Posth. Works, ^ . 112.; St. Trials, -vo). ii. p. 1171. 



So learned a man as Spelman must, I think, 

 have had some ground for this statement, and 

 could scarcely be repeating a vulgar ei-ror taking 

 its rise from a statute then hardly more than a 

 hundred years old. I hope some of your readers 

 will be able to give a moresatisfactory explanation 

 than Barrington's. E. S. T. T. 



Redwing's Nest. — I trust you will excuse my 

 asking, if any of your correspondents have found 

 the nest of the redwing ? for I lately discovered 

 what I consider as the egg of this bird in a nest 

 containing four blackbirds' esss. The ess an- 

 swers exactly the description given of that of the 

 redwing thrush, both in Bewick anil Wood's 

 Sritish Song Birds ; being bluish-green, with a 

 few largish spots of a dark brown colour. The 

 nest was not line<i with mud, as is usually the case 

 with a blackbird's, but with moss and dried grass. 



Has the egg of the redwmg been ever seen in 

 this situation before ? C. T. A. 



Lyndon. 



Earth thrown upon the Coffin. — 1« there any- 

 thing known respecting the origin of the ceremony 

 of throwing earth u|)on the coffin at funerals ? 

 The following note is fiom a little German tale. 

 Die Richiensteiner, by Van der Velde, a tale of the 

 time of the Thirty Years' war. Whether the cere- 

 mony is still performed in Germany as tliere de- 

 scribed, I do not know. 



" Darauf warfen, nach der alten, fromtnen Sitte, zum 

 letzten L;bewolil, der Wittwer, und die Waisen drei 



Hfiiide voll Erde aiif den Sarg hinunter Alle 



Zuschauer drangten s'ch nur um das Grab .... und 

 aus hundert Handen flog die Erde hinab auf den 

 Sarg." 



J. M. (4.) 



Family of Rowe. — Lysons, in his work En- 

 virons of London, gives an extract from the will 

 of Sir Thomas Rowe, of Hackney, and, as Lis 

 authority, says in a note : — 



" Extracts of Wills in the Prerogative Office, by E. 

 Rowe MorLS, Esq., in the possession of Th. Astle, Esq., 

 F. R. A.S." 



Can any of your numerous readers inform me 

 in whose possession the above now is? And 

 whether, wherever it is, it is open to inspection ? 



Tee Bee. 



Porttis Canvm. — Erini, one of the biographers 

 ofBecket, states that the archbishop's murderers 



