Sept. 13. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



193 



The Willow Garland.— In the Third Part of 

 King Henry VI. (Act III. Sc. 3.), the Lady Bona 

 sends this message to King Edward, uttered, as the 

 messenger afterwards reports to liim, " with mild 

 disdain : " 



" Tell him, in hope he'll prove a widower shortly, 

 I'll wear the willow garland for his sake." 



As I find no note upon the willow garland in 

 any edition of Shakspeare to which I have access, 

 I should be obliged by having its meaning ex- 

 plained in your columns. Arun. 



[The willow is considered as the emblem of despair- 

 ing love, and is often associated with the yew and the 

 cypress in the churchyard : hence, a garland made 

 of the boughs of the willow was said to be worn by 

 forlorn lovers. In Much Ado about Nothing, Act 1 1. 

 Sc. [., Benedick says, — " I offered him my company 

 to a willow-tree, either to make him a garland, as 

 being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being 

 worthy to be whipped."] 



Name of Nun. — Can any of your readers in- 

 form me on what principle it is that the name of 

 Nun (I'l^), the father of Joshua, is expressed in 

 the Septuagint by vav?) ? I cannot help regarding 

 the substitution of avn for 1-1 as a very singular 

 circumstance, more especially as it seems impos- 

 sible to account for it by the conjecture that 3 had 

 been mistaken by the LXX for any letter that 

 would be likely to be represented in Greek by tj. 

 There are but few proper names in the Hebrew 

 Scriptures that terminate in Jt ; and the way in 

 which these are expressed in the Septuagint 

 affords, I believe, no analogy to the above case. 



QuiDAM. 



Glllingham. 



[The explanation usually given, after Gesenius, is 

 that early copyists mistook NATN for NATH ; and 

 as some RISS. have No;8i and Na;8r), it is supposed that 

 later copyists thought that it was the Hebrew N'23.] 



^'■M.Lominvs, Theologus." — Is there any printed 

 account of this divine, or of a work on the Pelagian 

 and Manicha;an heresies which he published at i 

 Ghent in 1675? S. W. llix. 



Ueccles. 



[The Bodleian Library contains a work by IVI. Lo- [ 

 minus, entitled, JBlakhancE Hmresis Uistoria et Con 

 futatio. 4to. Gandavi, 1675.] 



iicpltCjf. 

 REMARKS UPON SOME RECENT QUERIES. 



I. Without wishing to protract the discussion 

 about eisell, let me tell the correspondent who 

 questioned whether wormwood could be an ingre- 

 dient in any palatable drink, that crime Wahsiiithe 

 ordinarily appears with noyau, &c. in a Parisian 

 restaurateur's list of luxurious cordials. Whilst 



that eisell was equivalent to wormwood is con- 

 firmed by its being joined with gall, in a page of 

 Queen Elizabeth's book of prayers, which caught 

 my eye in one of those presses in the library of the 

 British Museum, where various literary curiosities 

 are now so judiciously arranged, and laid open 

 for public inspection. 



2. As a decisive affirmation of what rack meant, 

 where the word was the derivative of the Saxon 

 pecan, your correspondents may accept the follow- 

 ing from our martyr, Frith's, Revelation of Anti- 

 christ. He renders the second clause of 2 Peter 

 ii. 17., " And racks carried about of a tempest ; " 

 and he immediately adds, " Racks are like clouds, 

 but they give no rain." 



3. In answer to Mr. Breen's inquiry where 

 there is any evidence from the writings of Gre- 

 gory L, that he could be so shameless as to pane- 

 gyrise that female monster Queen Brunehaut, he 

 may read some of that Pope's flattering language 

 in his letter addressed to her on behalf of that 

 Augustine whom he sent to England, as contained 

 in Spelman's Concilia. Epist. xvii. {Brunichildce, 

 UegincB Francorum) begins as follows : 



" Gratias omnipotent! Deo referimus, qui inter 

 Ct-etera pietatis suae dona, qua; excellentife vestry largi- 

 tus est, ita vos amore Christiana: religiunis impkvit, ut 

 quicquid ad animarum lucrum, quicquid ad propaga- 

 tionem fidei pertinere cognoscitis, devota mente et pio 

 nperari studio non cessetis. . . . Et quidem ha;c de 

 Christianitate vcstra mirentur alii, quibus adhuc 

 beneficia vcstra minus sunt cognita ; nam nobis, qui- 

 bus experlmentis jam nota sunt, non mirandum est, 

 sed gaudendum." — Spelm. Concil. p. 82. 



And in Epist. xi. : 



" Excellenlia ergo vestra, qua: prona in honis consue- 

 vit esse operibus." — Id. p. 77. 



4. The etymology of Fontainebleau (Vol. iv., 

 p. 38.). I can only speak from memory of what was 

 read long ago. But I think that in one of jMontf\iu- 

 con's works, probably Les Monumens de la Monarch ie 

 Frangaise, he ascribed the origin of that name to 

 the discovery of a spring amongst the sandy rocks 

 of that forest by a hound called Bleuu, to the 

 great satisfaction of a thirsty French monarch who 

 was then hunting there, and was thereby induced 

 to erect a hunting-seat near the spring. 



5. To A. B. C. (Vol. iv., p. 57.), your questionist 

 about the marriage of bishops in the early ages of 

 the Christian church, who has iiad a reply in 

 p. 125., I would further say, that as we have no 

 biographies describing the domestic life of any 

 Christian bishop earlier than Cyprian, who be- 

 longed to the middle of tlie third century, it is only 

 incidentally that anything appears of the kind 

 which he inquires alter. It would be enough for 

 the primitive Christians to know that their scrip- 

 tures said of marriage, that it was honourable in 

 all; though such as were especially exposed to 



