280 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[24 S. Noid, Aprim 5. °56. 
“ Veni Creator Spiritus” (2°° S. i. 148.) — Mr. 
Cowrer is under a mistake about the authorship 
of this beautiful hymn, which could not, by any 
possibility, have come, as he imagines, from the 
pen of our distinguished countryman Stephen 
Langton, as it was well known in the ninth cen- 
tury, and often sung in the offices of the church, 
long before that abp. mounted the primatial throne 
of Canterbury. Whabanus Maurus, one of the 
celebrated scholars of our own still more cele- 
brated Alcuin, wrote the ‘ Veni Creator Spiritus,” 
and it is to be found, with an Anglo-Saxon inter- 
linear translation, in the ‘“ Hymn-Book of the 
Anglo-Saxon Church,” printed by the Surtees 
Society, which is doing such good service to our 
national literature and records by its publications. 
What our patriotic Langton wrote was quite 
another hymn to The Holy Ghost —the “ Veni 
Sancte Spiritus,” the sequence which is now given 
in the Roman Missal to be said or sung at mass 
on Whitsunday, &c. If Mr. Cowrerr will look 
again into the Spicilegium Solesmense, he will find 
that the anonymous English Cistercian speaks not 
a word about the “Veni Creator Spiritus,” but 
merely says: 
“ Magister Stephanus de Langetuun, gratia Dei Can- 
tuariensis archiepiscopus, ait in quadam egregia sequentia 
quam de Spiritu Sancto composuit, ita ; 
*Consolator optime, 
Dulcis hospis animae, 
Dulce refrigerium.’” 
This and the three other stfophes which the old 
English monk cites, are not however from the 
“ Veni Creator Spiritus,” but from the ‘ Veni 
Sancte Spiritus.” Both hymns begin with words 
so much alike that the mistake was very easily 
made by Mr. Cowrrr, to whom, nevertheless, 
every lover of liturgical studies ought to be 
thankful for having pointed out this valuable 
contemporaneous testimony to the authorship of 
so devotional an effusion, furnished by the Des- 
tinctiones Monasticae, now published for the first 
time by Dom Pitra. D. Rock. 
Newick, Uckfield. 
The Order of St. John of Jerusalem (2° 8. 
i. 197.) —In reference to the existence of the 
Order in England I would observe, that a gentle- 
man writing to me within the last fortnight says, 
that he has lately been created a Grand Cross of 
Malta, and appointed Seneschial of the Anglian 
Langue. H.H. A. 
Irish Language in the West Indies (1* Si. v.. 
537.; vi. 256.) It has struck me on perusing 
all the Volumes of “ N. & Q,,” from i. to xi. last 
Christmas, that Mr. Brenn must have read 
‘* Paddy’s Metamorphosis ” in Tom Moore’s Satiri- 
cal and Humorous Poems. He will find in that 
poem, which was written in 1833, that about fifty 
years prior to that date a plan was commenced for 
shipping off Irishmen for settlers abroad, and that 
a West India island was chosen for the scheme. 
Such was the success of the first colony, that a 
second soon followed. These, in sight of the long- 
look’d for shore were — 
“Thinking of friends whom, but two years before, 
They had sorrow’d to lose, but would soon again meet. - 
“When hark! from the shore a glad welcome there 
came — 
‘Arrah, Paddy from Cork, is it you, my sweet boy ?’ 
While Pat stood astounded to hear his own name 
Thus hail’d by black devils, who caper’d for joy ! 
“Can it possibly be ? —half amazement — half doubt, 
Pat listens again — rubs his eyes and looks steady } 
Then heavens a deep sigh, and in horror yells out, 
‘Good Lord! only think, black and curly already!’ ” 
See Moore, vol. ix. p. 148. J.C. G. 
Liverpool. 
Crediton Church, co. Devon (2°° 8. i. 211.) — 
Your correspondent will find in Jenkins’s History 
of Exeter, 1806, p. 247., the following mention of 
Eadulph : 
“5rd Eadulphus, on the death of Putta, was conse- 
crated Bishop of Devon at Crediton, to which place he 
removed his see, and built a magnificent church. He con- 
tinued bishop twenty-two years, and dying, was buried 
in his own church.” 
J. SANsom. 
Superstition regarding Banns of Marriage 
(2"* S. i. 202.) — Whatever may be the true rea- 
son for it, the same custom prevails in Scotland as 
in Worcestershire for a young woman to abstain 
from attending church the Sundays on which the 
* proclamation” or publication of her banns takes 
place. Perhaps modesty may be assigned as the 
chief cause ; nothing, certainly, of what may pro- 
perly speaking be termed the superstitious feeling 
being involved. 
According to the law of the church of Scotland, 
.“the proclamation is to be made before divine 
service begin for three several sabbaths” (Steuart 
of Purdivan’s Collections, 1802, p.98.). Itis how- 
ever common amongst the more wealthy, by the 
payment of an additional fee at the registry or 
“booking,” for the parties to be what is called 
“cried” three times at once on the same Sunday, 
and which may be considered only in the light of 
a convenient arrangement of the. law, seemingly 
winked at by the authorities, that the intended 
couple may be made one generally on the follow- 
ing Monday. ; 
T recollect once asking Mr. Combe, who super- 
intended the establishment which was at Mo- 
therwell, near Hamilton (named by the country 
people “ Babylon”) formed on Mr. Robert Owen's 
social system, how the women, his adherents, felt 
He 
on the subject of marriages effected there. 
confessed that, however valid such marriages might — 
be in the eye of the Scotch law, yet the women 
never appeared to be satisfied that they had been _ 
a in 
> Pet 
