by the guillotine, with a legend to this effect—"it is said that his head was chopped off by a falling-axe (falbiel), after the manner of the Romans."
We find in a journal of the late Mr. J. G. Children, F.R.S., dated in 1840, that he found "on one of the walls of the Rathhaus of Nuremberg, a painting of a man being beheaded by a guillotine—the painting is 319 years old." Mr. Children unluckily does not mention the subject of the fresco, but, as the Rathhaus was painted by Albert Durer, it may have been that of the German . prints of Titus Manlius, which are much in his style.
The representation of the martyrdom of St. Matr thew may have been Handle Holme's authority for saying that it was a "Jewish and Roman" practice, though the usual symbol of that Evangelist is a hatchet or halbert, such as the attendants carry in the preceding cut, with one of which it is generally said he was beheaded.
But it has surprised us still more to find that Ireland is represented as having had her guillotine as early as 1307.
The following cut is an illustration of a passage in Hollinshed's 'Chronicles of Ireland,' (Edition 1577):—
"In the yeere 1307, the first of April, Murcod Ballagh was beheaded near to Merton by Sir David Caunton, Knight."
