[Ancient Arms of the Flemings.] WHEN the Flemings assembled under the Duke of Burgundy to besiege the town of Ham, (1410), "they had twelve thousand carriages, as well carts as cars, to convey their armour, baggage and artillery; and a number of very large crossbows, called ribaudequins, placed on two wheels, each having a horse to draw it. They had also machines for the attack of towns, behind which were long iron spits, to be used towards the close of a battle, and on each of them was mounted one or two pieces of artillery."-JOHNES's Monstrellet, vol. 2, p. 288.

[Change of Arms in Spain.]

WHEN Trastamara brought his White Company from France, "estava toda la tierra llena de Franceses, Gascones, Normandos, Bretones, y Ingleses, con differentes armas y trages; y entonces se affirma, que començaron a usar en España las armas que llamavan de bacinetes, y cotas, y arneses de pieças de piernas y braços, y los que dezian glavios, y dagas y estoques; porque en lo antiguo usaron perpuntes y capellinas y lanças, y como antes dezian hom

[Martin de Clocestra's Translation of L'Histoire de Bretaigne from the Latin into the Romaunt.]

"L'HISTOIRE de Bretaigne 'quon nommi Brutus, que Maistre Martin de Clocestre translata de Latin en rommant."-MERLIN, 1, ff. 13.

[Ancient Care of Sheep in Wales.] "SHEEP ought to be housed in the beginning of spring, when they are bringing forth lambs, and in winter they should be turned to places under the influence of the sun; and thou art not to fold them too much on fallow land. Shear them at Michaelmas, so that the marks of the shears may disappear upon them against the winter, and do not milk them later than August."-Ancient Welsh Husbandry. Commercial and Agricultural Magazine, vol. 2, p. 181.

[A Faith to Die in.]

"IT is a faith

That we will die in, since from the Black-
Guard

To the grim Sir in office, there are few
Hold other tenets."

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.
The Elder Brother.

[Lent-Lard.]

LENT-LARD was sold in Paris and other

parts of France, as being the fat of the porpoise. LERY says, "it is far too thick for this, and supposes it therefore to be the fat of the whale."-C. 3.

[Women Amanuenses.]

WOMEN were brought up to the trade of copying books. See EUSEBIUS, lib. 6, cap. 16.—or rather of amanuensing.

[Irish Insecurity.]

"THEY particularly protect themselves with a castle watch, lest a nightly attack should be made upon them whilst they slept. Wherefore lest any such evil should by night befall them, they have watchmen on the tops of their castles, who often shout out, and wake the greater part of the night, frequently crying aloud. And they repeat these shouts, that thieves and night travellers may understand that the master of the family sleeps not so heavily that he is not ready and prepared, for as often as they suspect the approach of an enemy, the watchmen awake him, to play the man, and repel the enemy from his door, and if need be, to meet them hand to hand in the field, and contend with the

[Custom of Boiling Water with Cedar and Coriander.]

"THE Turks," says PIETRO DELLA VALLE, "who as all the world knows are professed water drinkers, do not like us use water boiled with cedar or coriander, avec du cédre ou de la coriandre."

360

[Story of K. Ramiro and Ortiga.]

THAT odd story of K. Ramiro and Ortiga is so far true that he did leave children by Alboazar's sister, but as the one was called Cid Alboazar Ramirez, the name surely disproves the circumstance of that kinglings death. This Cide was one of the great recoverers of Portugal, and from him the Amayas, the Cunhas, the Tavoras and the Teyves were descended. One branch of the Amayas took this last name, because they were persecuted by Braganza and Affonso V. for their adherence to D. Pedro. -M. LUSITANA, 2. c. 7, p. 26.

[Gothic Skill in the use of Arms.] "Porro in armorum artibus spectabiles satis sunt, et non solum hastis, sed et jaculis

un Diablo, y dixo

Mas penado, y mas perdido

y menos arrepentido.

laudem. España Sagrada, c. 6, p. 506.

[Origin of the Benshi.]

"ON the decease of an hero, it was said, the harps of his bards emitted mournful sounds. This is very probable; for the bards, while sorrowing for their patron, usually suspended to trees their neglected harps, from whose loosened strings the passing gales might brush soft plaintive tones. Here we have the origin of the Benshi, an invisible being, which is alledged to be still heard in this country and in the Highlands of Scotland, crying most piteously, on the

death of the descendant of an ancient house." -WALKER's Irish Bards.

[Hapless Land of Ireland. Bardish Strains.]

361

"OH the condition of our dear countrymen! how languid their joys! how pressing their sorrows! the wrecks of a party ruined!

Song in Ireland.]

"NEAR Ballyshannon were, not many years ago, dug up two pieces of gold, discovered by a method very remarkable. The Bishop of Derry happening to be at dinner, there came in an Irish harper, and sung an old song to his harp; his lordship not understanding Irish, was at a loss to know the meaning of the song. But upon inquiry he found the substance of it to be this, that in such a place, naming the very spot, a man of a gigantic stature lay buried; and that over his breast and back were plates of pure gold, and on his fingers rings of gold, so large, that an ordinary man might creep through them. The place was so exactly described, that two persons there present were tempted to go in quest of the golden prize, which the harper's song had pointed out to them. After they had dug for some time, they found two thin plates of gold."GIBSON.

"THERE was a recent instance (in 1785) of the grave of an Irish hero being discovered in a manner somewhat similar, it is related in the poem of Cath Gabhra, that Canan, while sacrificing to the sun on one of the mountains of Clare, was treacherously murdered; and that his body was interred near a Druid's altar, under a stone, inscribed with an epitaph in Ogham characters. So minutely is the spot described in the poem, that Mr. Theophilus O'Flannagan was tempted on reading the passage to propose to the Royal Irish Academy to seek for the monumental stone under their auspices; his proposal was acceded to, he went and succeeded."-WALKER's Irish Bards. Grave of Arthur.

crew of a vessel tossed long about, finally cast away. Are we not the prisoners of the Saxon nation? the captives of remorseless tyranny? Is not our sentence therefore pronounced, and our destruction inevitable? frightful, grinding thought! Power exchanged for servitude; beauty for deformity; the exultations of liberty for the pangs of slavery—a great and brave people for a servile desponding race. How came this transformation shrouded in a mist which bursts down on you like a deluge; which covers you with successive inundations of evil; ye are not the same people! Need I appeal to your senses? but what sensations have you left? In most parts of the island how hath every kind of illegal and extrajudicial proceeding taken the pay of law and equity? and what must that situation be, wherein our only security (the suspension of our excision) must depend upon an intolerable subservience to lawless law? In truth, our miseries were predicted a long time, in the change these strangers wrought in the face of our country. They have hemmed in our sporting lawns, the former theatres of glory and virtue. They have wounded the earth, and they have disfigured with towers and ramparts those fair fields which Nature bestowed for the support of God's animal creation, that Nature which we see defrauded, and whose laws are so wantonly counteracted, that this late free Ireland is metamorphosed into a second Saxony. The slaves of Ireland no longer recognise their common mother, she equally disowns us for her children-we both have lost our forms, and what do we see, but insulting Saxon natives, and native Irish aliens! Hapless land! thou art a bark through which the sea hath burst its way: we hardly discover any part of you in the

362

hands of the plunderer. Yes! the plunderer hath refitted you for his own habitation, and we are new-moulded for his purposes. Ye Israelites of Egypt! ye wretched inhabitants of this foreign land! is there no relief for you? Is there no Hector left for the defence, or rather for the recovery of Troy? It is thine, O my God, to send us a second Moses. Thy dispensations are just! and unless the children of the Scythian Eber Scot return to thee, old Ireland is not doomed to arise out of the ashes of modern Saxony."-Fear flatha O'Gnive. WALKER'S Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards.

[Fostering.]

6

"As to the particular of fostering, whatever mischiefs might have flowed from the abuse of the custom, yet it cannot be denied but that it antiently proved a strong link to bind affections and interests together for laudable purposes, not only of the fosterers and fostered, but of the friends and relations on each side. An antient writer of the Life of St. Cadroc has this passage, It is the custom of Ireland, that they who nurse the children of noblemen, think themselves ever after intitled to the aid and protection of such children in as high a degree as if they had been their parents.' Stanihurst carries the point very far in regard to the fidelity between foster brethren. 'You cannot,' says he, find one instance of perfidy, deceit, or treachery among them; nay, they are ready to expose themselves to all manner of dangers for the safety of those who sucked their mother's milk; you may beat them to a mummy, you may put them upon the rack, you may burn them on a gridiron, you may expose them to the most exquisite tortures that the cruellest tyrant can invent, yet you will never remove them from that innate fidelity which is grafted in them, you will never induce them to betray their duty.' Even Cambrensis, who upon other occasions could not afford a good word to

1 Colgan. Act. Sanct. p. 496, ch. 10.

[Elves and Gibelynes.]

"THE opinion of faeries and elfes is very olde, and yet sticketh very religiously in the mindes of some. But to roote that rancke opinion of elfes out of mens' harts, the truth is, that there be no such thing, nor yet the shadowes of the things, but only by a sort of balde fryers and knavish shavelings so faigned, which as in other things, so in that, sought to nousel the common people in ignorance, least, being once acquainted with the truth of things, they would in time smell out the untruth of their pelfe and massepeny religion. But the soothe is, that when all Italy was distract into the factions of the Guelfes and the Gibelyns, being two famous houses in Florance, the name began through their great mischiefes and many outrages, to be so odious or rather dreadful in the peoples eares, that if their children at any time were froward and wanton, they would say to them that the Guelfe or the Gibelyne came: which words now from them, as many things else, be come into our usage, and for Guelfes and Gibelynes, we say Elfes and Gibelynes."—E. K. Comment on Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar.

[Airghtheach, or, of Silver: Origin of the Term.]

"THE epithet Airghtheach, or of silver, was bestowed on Eadhna, as being the first