298 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 103. 



cricket bat into the sti-eara, which floated to a spot 

 where it turned round in an eddy, and from a deep 

 liole underneath the body was quickly drawn. 

 This statement is entirely from memory, but I 

 believe it to be substantially correct. 



I heard the following anecdote from the son of 

 an eminent Irish judge. In a remote district of 

 Ireland a poor man, whose occupation at certain 

 seasons of the year was to pluck feathers from live 

 geese for beds, arrived one niglit at a lonely farm- 

 house, where he expected to glean a good stock of 

 these " live feathers," and he arose early next 

 morning to look after the flock. The geese had 

 crossed the river which flowed in front of the 

 house, and were sitting comfortably in the sun- 

 shine on the opposite bank. Their pursuer im- 

 mediately stripped off the few clothes he had, de- 

 posited them on the shore, and swam across the 

 river. He then drove the birds into the water, 

 and, boldly following them, he maintained a long 

 contest to keep them together on their homeward 

 voyage, until in the deep bed of the river his 

 strength failed him, and he sank. The farmer and 

 his family became aware of the accident, the cries 

 of the drowning man, and the cackling of the geese, 

 informed them, in the swimmer's extremity, of his 

 fate, and his clothes lay on the shore in witness of 

 his having last been in their company. They 

 dragged the river for the body, but in vain ; and 

 in apprehension of serious consequences to them- 

 selves should they be unable to produce the 

 corpse, they applied to the parish priests, who un- 

 dertook to relieve them, and to " improve the oc- 

 casion " by the performance of a miracle. He 

 called together the few neighbours, and having 

 tied a strip of parchment, inscribed with cabalistic 

 characters, round a wisp of str.iw ; he dropped 

 this packet where the man's head was described to 

 have sunk, and it glided into still water where the 

 corpse was easily discovered. Alfred Gatty. 



The discovery of drowned bodies by loading a 

 loaf with mercury, and putting it afloat on a 

 stream, or by c.nsting into the river, as the Indians 

 do. " a chip of cedar wood, which will stop and 

 turn round over the exact spot," is referrible to 

 natural and simple causes. As there are in all 

 running streams deep pools formed by eddies, in 

 which drowned bodies would be likely to be caught 

 and retained, any light substance thrown into the 

 current would consequently be drawn to that ] art 

 of the surface over the centre of the eddy hole. 



J. S. C. 



MAKRIAGE OF ECCLESIASTICS. 



(Vol. iv., pp. 57. 125. 193. 196.) 



In the early ages, your correspondent H. Wal- 

 ter assumes that the primitive Christians knew 

 " that their Scriptures said of marriage that it was 



honourable in all" (Vol. iv., p. 193.). H. AValter 

 is under more than one mistake with regard to 

 the text of St. Paul (Heb. xiii. 4.) on which he 

 grounds his assertion. This whole chapter being 

 full of admonitions, the apostle, all through it, 

 speaks mostly in the imperative mood. He begins 

 with, "Let brotherly love continue;" "Be not 

 forgetful," &c. ; " Remember them that are in 

 bonds," &c. Then he says : Tl/xios 6 ydaos iv irScri, 

 Kol 7) Koirt) afxluvTos, that is : " Let (the laws of) 

 marriage be revered in all things., and the marriage 

 bed be undefiled ; " and as a warning to those who 

 might not heed such an admonition, he adds, 

 " whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." 

 H. Walter mistakes the adjective feminine iv 

 iracri as meaning " all men," whereas it signifies 

 here, " in all things ; " accoi-ding to which sense 

 St. Paul uses the same form of speech in 2 Co- 

 rinthians xi. G. True it is, the authorized version 

 translates thus: "JMarriage is honourable in all;" 

 but the is is an insertion of the translators, and 

 therefore printed in Italics. Parkhurst, however, 

 in his Lexicon, at the word rdfios, says : " Wolfius 

 has justly remarked, the imperatives preceding 

 and following show that we should rather under- 

 stand tcTTw than ia-rl. See also Hammond and 

 Macknight ; and observe that the Alexandrian 

 and two other MSS., for Se in the following sen- 

 tence read ydp, and the Vulgate translates by 

 eniin, " for." 



I cannot but think that the makers of the 

 authorized version .advisedly inserted is instead of 

 let, to forward their own new doctrines, as this 

 iheir rendering would seem to countenance the 

 marriage of priests. Curiously enough, when they 

 had no interest in putting in the indicative instead 

 of the imjjcrative mood, those same translators 

 have of themselves inserted, in the verse following, 

 the latter, thus: "Zei your conversation be with- 

 out covetousness," &c. Moreover, in translating 

 eV ttSo-i, in another passage of St. Paul, 2 Cor. xi. 6., 

 they render it, "in all things;" in which same 

 sense it is to be understood in the above place, 

 Heb. xi. 4. Cephas. 



In lately reading that very curious book, 

 AVhiston's Autohiography, I met with some re- 

 marks on this subject, which I made a note of, 

 and which are at the service of A. B. C. Whiston 

 quotes the well-known Dr. Wall as follows : — 



" The Greuk Cluirch still observe tlie rule of allow- 

 ing tlieir clergy <o many but once, and before the 

 Council of Nice made a further rule that none after 

 liis orders should marry ; and I believe it is hard to 

 find in church history an instance of any one who 

 married after he was in priest's orders for a thousand 

 (in reality for above a thousand four hundred) years 

 before IMartin Luther." 



The interpolation marked by a parenthesis is 



AVhiston's, who proceeds : — 



