204 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[July 2, 1888. 



a little man with a red cap, who disappeared as he came 

 up." * 



The fairies also steal little babies, leaving ugl}', deformed 

 changelings in their place. This practice is referred to by 

 Chaucer, Drayton, Shakespeare, and Hogg. The latter 

 wrote the ballad of Kilmey, about a little girl who was 

 spirited away to Fairyland, and never seen again. The 

 fairies in Scotland have the same uncanny trick. The 

 ballad of Tamlane relates the adventures of a little bov 

 who had been stolen by the fairies, but was 

 The capture took place in Selkirk in the II .. ..,_y. 



It was Hallowe'en, a time when all fair maidens are afraid 

 to venture out lest the fairies should capture them. A 

 lassie named Janet, the fairest of all her kin, was braver 

 than the rest. When night came slie walked to a well in 

 Cauterhaugh, where the fairies held their revels. Her 

 little sweetheart, Tamlane, had been stolen by the queen of 

 the fairies when Janet was a little girl, and she always hoped 

 to meet him again. When she arrived at the well she saw 

 a milk-white steed which she recognised as Tamlane's. She 

 waited patiently, plucking roses meanwhile : — 



She haclna pu'd a reel, red rose, 

 A rose but barely three, 

 When up and starts a wee, wee man 

 At Lady Janet's knee. 



This was Tamlane, who assured her of his constancy to her 

 during his long absence, and made a solemn vow to wed her, 

 but on certain conditions. She had to wait for him till 

 midnight at Miles Cross, for at that tiuie all the fairies 

 would pass by. She would know her sweetheart by his 

 milk-white steed and the gold star on his forehead. As he 

 passed by she had to clutch hold of him and hold him fast, 

 for he would be changed into a snake, a dove, and a swan, 

 though finally resuming his own shape. 



Gloomy, gloomy, was the night, and eerie was the way. 

 As fair Janet in her green mantle, to Miles Cross did gae, 



There's haly water in lier hand, slie cast a compass round ; 

 And straight she sees a fairy band, come riding o'er the mound. 



All happened as Tamlane predicted, and Janet won him 

 for her own, to the great grief of the fairy queen and her 

 band, with whom he had become a great favourite. 



The Scottish elves have the .same traits as the Irish, and 

 are divided into Cluricanes, Kelpies, Spunkies, Brownies, 

 and others. A great resort of the more fiendish among 

 these beings was Mucklestane Muir,t and rings are still 

 ])ointed out " on which neither grass nor heath ever grow, 

 the turf being as it were calcined by the scorching hoofs of 

 the diabolical partners." The Brownie is a domestic sprite, 

 somewhat like the being mentioned in the charming ballad 

 of the Count of Kildare : — 



lirown dwarf that o'er the moorland strays, 



Thy name to Kildare tell 7 

 The brown man of the muirs who stays 



Beneath the heather bell. 



Gigantic Fossil Turtle.— The remains of a gigantic fossil 

 turtle have been discovered in the middle pliocene strata of Per- 

 pignan, and the creature has just been described by the di6tinj;uished 

 pal;eontologist, M. Gaudry, before the Paris Academy of Sciences. 

 The shield or carapace of the reptile was over four feet long, so 

 that it was equal in size to the Madagascar fossil turtles. M. Gaudry 

 considers that the survival of this great turtle down to the mid- 

 pliocene period (sliortly before the glacial epoch commenced in the 

 Northern Hemispliere) shows that the south of France must have 

 enjoyed a warm climate even then. 



* FolJi Lure Journal, vol. v., part i., p. 68. 

 t Sir Walter Scott, " The Black Hwarf." 



BACON'S OWN CIPHER. 



HE Fall Mall GaxMe has done good service 

 in calling attention, in an article entitled 

 " The Mammoth Mare's Nest," to the way 

 in which Mr. Ignatius Donnelly has blun- 

 dered over Bacon's real cipher, while pre- 

 tending to have discovered, through his 

 exceptional profundity, a cipher which has 

 never had any existence. In the following passage that 

 paper gives a correct account of Bacon's well-known five- 

 letter cipher (which anticipated in principle the Moi-se 

 alphabet), and of Mr. Donnelly's foolish blundering over 

 it — which would discredit an intelligent ton-year-old school- 

 boy. It is to be noticed, however, that the examples of the use 

 of the cipher .are not really taken from the " De Augmentis," 

 but from one of the translations — Bacon's Latin Alphabet 

 being altered into English (with W), and his direct quota- 

 tion from Cicero {Eyo omni officio ac potius pietate erga te, 

 kc.) being translated. But this, while indicating the quality 

 of Bacon's cipher in being able, as he said, to indicate 

 omnia per omnia, brings out in a very striking way Mr. 

 Donnelly's ignorance of Bacon's real work, and the stupidity 

 of his feelile attempt to puzzle out a perfectly plain problem 

 already fully and most lucidly solved by the writer whom 

 he pretends to expound. Nothing funnier, perhaps, has 

 ever been heard of in paradoxical literature than Mr. 

 Donnelly's shorn return from his wool-gathering expedition, 

 unless it be the splendidly big bull he has perpetrated in 

 striving to prove that Bacon most laboriously concealed 

 what he was most anxious to disclose. [Not even Bacon's 

 acumen could have foreseen the appearance in the world 

 of such a genius as Detractor Donnelly.] 

 Says the Pall Mall Gazette : — 



In order to illustrate Bacon's familiarity with the principles of 

 secret writing, Mr. Donnelly gives an .account of the famous five- 

 letter cipher, quoting from the English translation of the " De 

 Augmentis." The key he gives quite correctly, and to make clear 

 his error we must reprint it : — 



A — a a a a a ... B — a a a a b ... C — a a a b a 



D— a a a b b ... K^a a b a a ... F — a a b a b 



G— a a b b a ... H— a a b b b ... I & J--a b a a a 



K— a b a a b ... L— a b a b a ... M— a b a b b 



N— a b b a a ... O— a b b a b ... P— a b b b a 



Q— a b b b b ... R— b a a a a ... S— b a a a b 



T -b a a b a U & V— b a a b b ... W— b a b a a 



X— b a b a b ... Y— b abba ... Z— b a b b b 



The method (jf applying this is to choose two different alpliabets 



(for example, Roman and italic) and then to construct [or rather to 



employ, for no construction is needed] a sentence containing five 



times as many letters as the message you wish to convey, writing 



those wliich represent a in one alphabet and those which represent h 



in the other. To quote the example given 'oy Bacon (convertetl into 



English), suppose that tlio message to be conveyed consists of the 



single word FLY. This is represented by the sentence, " Do not go 



till I come," written thus : 



'• D » o f I g t )" 1 I I \ c o x& I e." 

 a a 1) a b. | a b a b a. | b a b b a. I 

 F L Y 



(The final c is superfluous.) All this Mr. Donnelly quotes from 

 IJacon, evidently without understanding it, for he fails to note that 

 the whole secrit of the thing lies in the tivo alphabets, distinguishing 

 the letters which represent a from those which represent b. He 

 piints the whole cipher-sentence in small capitals, and continues his 

 quotation thus : — " I add [says Bacon] another e.xample of the 

 same cipher — of the writing of anything by anything. The interior 

 epistle for which I have selected the Spartan despatch, formerly sent 

 in t\\G Seijtale : ' All is lost. Mindarus is killed. The soldiers want 

 food. We can neither get hence nor stay longer here.' (Perditre 

 res. Jlfindariis eeeidit. Mildcs esuriunt, netjne hinc nos cxtrieare, 

 neqne hie diutins manerc possiimus.) The exterior epistle taken 

 from Cicero's first letter, and containing the Spartan despatch 

 within it : — 



•' In all duty, or rather piety, towards you I satisfy everybody 



