258 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 101. 



rated in his piece, Playhnuse to he Let. See his Works, 

 fol. 1673, p. 103. ; also Gencst's Account of the English 

 Stae/e, vol. i. p. 38.] 



Sclion. — I have frequently met with the word 

 " selioii " in deeds relating to property in various 

 parts of the Isle of Axholme, co. Lincoln. The 

 term is used in the description of property ; for 

 instance, " All that selion piece or parcel of land 

 situate, &c." It does not signify any particular 

 quantity, for I have known it applied to fields of 

 all sizes, from five acres down to a quarter of 

 an acre. AVill some of your numerous correspon- 

 dents furnish an explanation of the word, and from 

 whence derived ? L. L. L. 



North Liiicohishire. 



[Selion of land, or scHo terrec, is derived from the 

 French sciUon, a ridge of land, or ground arising between 

 two furrows, and contains no certain quantity, but 

 sometimes more or less. Therefore Cromptou says, 

 that a sclion of land cannot be in demand, because it 

 is a thing uncertain.] 



Mcyltc^. 



PKOPHECIES OF NOSTR.\DAMUS. 



(Vol. iv., pp. 86. 140.) 



Mr. II. C. DE St. Croix may be assured that 

 the first edition of the Prophecies of Nostra- 

 damus is not only in the National Library, but in 

 several others, both in Paris and elsewhere. It is 

 now, however, very rare, though until lately little 

 valued ; for at the Due de la Valliere's sale, in 

 178.3, it produced no moi'e than seven livres ten 

 sols, — not quite seven shillings. De Bure makes 

 no mention of it : nor was it in the library of 

 M. Gaignat, or various other collectors ; so little 

 sought for was it then. Printed at Lyons " ches 

 Mace Bonhomme, m:d:i,:v.," it thus closes — 

 " Acheve d'iraprimer le iiii iour de Mai, m.d.l.v." 

 It is a small octavo of 46 leaves, as we learn from 

 Brunet, and was republished the following year at 

 Avignon, still limited to four centuries ; nor was 

 a complete edition, which extended to ten cen- 

 turies, with two imperfect ones, published till 

 1568, at Troyes (en Champagne), in 8vo. Nu- 

 merous editions succeeded, in which it is well 

 known that every intervenient occurrence of 

 moment was sure to be introduced, always pro- 

 ceded by the date of impression, so as to establisli 

 the claim of prophecy. I have before me that of 

 J. Janson, Amsterdam, 1668, 12mo., which is 

 usually associated with the Elzevir collection of 

 works, though not proceeding from the family's 

 press either in Leyden or Amsterdam. Several 

 attempts at elucidating these pretended prophecies 

 have been made, such as Cominentaires sur Ics 

 Centuries de Nostradamus, par Charigny, 1596, 

 8vo. ; La Clef de Nostradamus, 1710, i2rao. ; and 



one so late as 1806, by Theodore Bouys, Svo. 

 The distich " Nostra damns," &c. was the playful 

 composition, according to La Monnoye, of the 

 celebrated Genevan reformer Theodore de Bcze. 

 By others it is attributed to the poet Jodelle : but 

 the author is still uncertain. Nostradamus, born 

 in Provence, died in July, 1566, aged sixty-eight. 

 His second son ptdilished the Lives of the Poets 

 of his native province in 1575, 8vo. 



Among those impositions on public credulity, 

 one of the most famous is that referred to by 

 Bacon, in his twenty-fifth Essay, and which he, 

 as was then the prevalent belief, attributed to the 

 astronomer John IMiiller, usually known as Regio- 

 montanus, of the fifteenth century, and so deno- 

 minated by Bacon. Its first application was to 

 the irruption of the French king, Charles VIIL, 

 into Naples, in 1488, when the impetuosity of the 

 invasion was characterised by the epithet, ever 

 since so well sustained, of " La Furia Francese." 

 Again, in 1588 it was interpreted as predictive of 

 the Spanish attack on England by the misnomed 

 " Invincible Armada ; " and the English llevolu- 

 tion of 1688 was similarly presumed to have been 

 foretold by it, which always referred to the special 

 year eighti/-eight of each succeeding century; while 

 the line expressive of the century was correspond- 

 ingly adjusted in the text. It was thus made 

 .applicable to the great French Revolution, of 

 which the unmistakeable elements were laid in 

 1788, by the royal edict' convoking the States- 

 General for the ensuing year, when it burst forth 

 with dread explosion. Its prediction, with the 

 sole alteration of the century from the original 

 lines, was then thus expressed : — 

 " Post mille expletos a partu Virglnis annos, 



Et SL'ptlngentos rursus ab orbe datos 



Octogessimus octavus rairabilis annus 



Ingrnet : is secum tristia fata trahet. 

 " Si non hoc anno totus malus occidet orbis 



Si non in nihilum terra fretumque ruant, 



Cuncta tamen mundi sursum ibunt atqae deorsnm 



Imperia; et luctus undique grandis erit. " 



Though long ascribed to Regiomontanus, whose 

 death preceded its first appearance, and therefore 

 made its application to posterior events appear 

 prophetic, the real author, according to the astro- 

 nomer Delambre, was a German named Brnschius, 

 of the sixteenth century, who pretended to have 

 discovered it on a tomb (we may suppose that of 

 Regiomontanus) in Bohemia, that learned man's 

 country. Many other similar prophecies have de- 

 luded the world, of which the most celebrated 

 were those of the Englishman Merlin. An early 

 edition, printed in 1528, fetched sixteen guineas 

 in 1812 at the Roxburgh sale, though preceded 

 by three or four. It is in French, and at Gaignat's 

 sale, in 1769, brought only thirty-one livres. It 

 was No. 2239. of the Catalogue. J. R. 



Cork, Sept. 17. 



