June 7. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



453 



" For I\'ew- Veares Day. 

 " All yen that doe the bell-man heere, 

 The liibt day of this hopetull yeare; 

 I doe in love admonish you, 

 To bid your old sins all adue, 

 And walk as God's just law requires. 

 In holy deeds and good desires, 

 Which if to doe youle doe your best, 

 God will in Christ forgive the rest." 



" COMMON SOUNDS. 



The belman like the wakefnll movninrr cocke, 

 Doth warne you to be vigilant and wise : 



Looke to youre fire, your candle, and your locke. 

 Prevent what may through negligence ari^ie : 



So may you sleepe with peace and wake with joy, 



And no mischances shall your state annoy." 



" All you which in your beds doe lie, 

 Unto the Lord ye ought to cry. 

 That he would pardon all your sins ; 

 And thus the bell-man's prayer begins : 

 Lord, give us grace our sinful life to mend, 

 And at the last to send a joyfull end : 

 Having put out yoia- fire and your light. 

 For to conclude, I bid you all good night." 



The collection of Bellman's songs here described 

 is sometimes found nppeaded to a little work en- 

 titled Time well Improved, or Some Helps for 

 Weak Heads in their Meditations, 12mo. 1657. 

 The latter jiublication is a reprint, with a new 

 title-page, of Samuel Rowlands' Heavens Glory, 

 seeke it ; Eaj-tlis Vanitie, fiij it ; Hell's Horror, 

 fere it. But whether the songs in question were 

 written, or merely collected by llowlands, does 

 not appear. Edwakd F. Eimbault. 



The Bellman (Vol. iii., p. 324.). — Your corre- 

 spondent F. W. T. will find a very amusing sketch 

 of a night-watchman in Gemidde aus dem hilits- 

 lichen Lehen und Erzuhlungen of G. AV. C. Starke : 

 whether it may help his inciuiries or not I cannot 

 say. It will at least inform him of the difficulties 

 in whieli a conscientious and gallant watchman 

 found himself when he attempted to improve on 

 the time-honoured terms in which he had to " cry 

 the hours." Benbow. 



Birmingham. 



TUB TRAVELS OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, AND THE 

 AUTHOR OF THE SABBATH. 



(Vol. iii., p. 305.) 

 1. In answer to the communication of A Col- 

 LECTOK, allow me to remark, that although Bruce 

 did not publish his Travels till about seventeen 

 years after his return to Great Britain, various 

 details had got abroad ; and, as usually happens, 

 the actual facts, as given by himself, were either 

 intentionally or accidentally misrepresented. Lat- 

 terly, Bruce, indignant at the jtersecution he suf- 

 fered, held his tongue, and patiently awaited the 



publication of his Travels to silence his accusers' 

 Amongst other teasing occurrences, Paul Jodrell 

 brought him on the stage in a clever after-piece 

 which was acted in the Haymarket in 1779, and 

 was published in 8vo. in 1780. A copy of this 

 piece, which is called A Widow and no Widow, is 

 now before me : and Macfable, a Scotch travelling 

 impostor, was acted by Bannister ; and the hits at 

 Bruce cannot be mistaken. 



Further, Bruce himself understood that he was 

 the party meant by " Munchausen," and he com- 

 plained of this and many other attacks to a dis- 

 tant relative of mine, who died a few years since, 

 and who mentioned the circumstances to me ; 

 adding, that Bruce uniformly declared that the 

 publication of his work would, he had no doubt, 

 afibrd a triumphant answer to his calumniators. 



Whilst on the subject of Munchausen, I may 

 observe, that the story of the frozen words is to 

 be found in Niigce venales, or a Complaisant Com- 

 panion, by Head, the author or compiler of the 

 English itogue. It occurs among the lies, p. 133. : 



" A soldier swore desperately tlwt being in the wars 

 between the Russians and Polomon, there chanced 

 to be a parley between the two generals where a 

 river parted them. At that time it froze so excessive 

 that the words were no sooner out of their mouths 

 but they were frozen, and could not be heard till 

 eleven days after, that a thaw came, when the dissolved 

 words themselves made them audible to all." 



As my copy has a MS. title, I should be obliged 

 if any of your readers could furnish me with a 

 correct one. 



2. There were not " two James Grahame " co- 

 temporaries. The author of Wallace was the author 

 of The Sabbath, as well as of Poems and Tales, 

 Scotch and English, thin 8vo., Paisley, 1 794 : a copy 

 of which, as well as of Mary Stewart and Wallace, 

 is in my tolerably extensive dramatic library. The 

 latter is defective, ending at p. 88. ; and was saved 

 some years ago fi-om a lot of the drama about to 

 be consigned to the snufF-shop. Probably the 

 same reasons which caused the suppression of a 

 political romance from the same pen, and of which 

 I have reason to believe the only existing copy is 

 in my library, may have induced the non-comple- 

 tion of Wallace. Grahame, like many other young 

 men just emerging at that p;xrlicular time from 

 the Scotch Universities, had imbibed opinions 

 which in after years his good sense repudiated. He 

 concealed his authorship of the Paisley poems (now 

 very scarce), and the secret only transpired after his 

 death. From the intimacy that subsisted between 

 myself and his amiable nephew and namesake, 

 whose untimely death, in 1817, at the age of 

 twenty, I have never ceased to lament, I had the 

 best means of learning many facts relative to the 

 poet, who was, according to all accounts, one of 

 the most estimable and truly pious men that ever 

 lived. As to the crude opinions of early youth, 



