10 s. x. NOV. 21, i908.j NOTES AND QUERIES.
409
Apparently traceable to this Chinese
legend is a portion of the following Japanes
story, current in the province of Noto :
"Primarily the owl was a very refractory scamp who went to a hill whenever his mother woulc have him go to a rill, and vice versa. Therefore in her last moments, she concealed her real intention and asked him to bury her body at the riverside, a request he fulfilled with pangs of remorse after tht mother's death. [Here, perhaps, the original storj relates that the son was eventually turned in tic an owl in consequence of his former disaffection towards his mother.] Thenceforward the ow screeches every time oefore rain, thus expressing his intense concern lest a flood should ensue anc carry away his mother's corpse." Osaka Mainich Shimbun, 23 July, 1908.
Now it behoves me to note that another portion of this Japanese tale has evidently been derived from an ancient Chinese belie: that the owl is so abnormally impious bird as not to scruple to eat its own mother its only parallel being found in the " king,' a tigrish nondescript of very doubtfu existence, which is reputed to feed on its own father.
Do any such stories of a disobedient son occur in the literature and folk-lore of the West or of the Near East ?
KuMAGtrsu MESTAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan. [See "Crows crying against the rain," post, p. 415.]
REYNARDSON FAMILY. I shall be gratefu] to any of the readers of ' N. & Q.' who can assist me to identify the following bearers of the above name.
In Clode's ' London during the Great Rebellion,' ed. 1892, p. 67, we find that, under date of 24 March, 1681, Mary Vaux was made a pensioner of the Merchant Taylors' Company " in consideration of her poverty, and her last husband being brother to the said Sir Abraham Reynardson."
Sir Abraham Reynardson, the celebrated Lord Mayor of London in 1648, and Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1640, had, so far as I have been able to ascertain, two brothers only, Alan and William. The latter married Anne, daughter of William Strode of Kent (query the poet, 1600-45), and on her husband's decease she remarried Sir Robert Bedingfeld (Burke' s ' Commoners,' iii. 510), Lord Mayor of London 1706-7, fifth son of John Bedingfeld of Halesworth ('Landed Gentry,' ed. 1846, p. 79). 'Pre- sumably, therefore, Mary Vaux was widow of Alan Reynardson, and had married
secondly Vaux ; or had Sir Abraham
a third brother who was first husband of Mary Vaux ? If so, what was his name ? Whose daughter was Mary Vaux ?
Jacob Reynardson of Bristol, son of Sir
Abraham, married in 1680 Frances, only
daughter of Francis Farnaby (incorrectly
called Joseph in ' Landed Gentry,' ed. 1906)
of Kippington, Sevenoaks, and, dying 1719,
left issue.
In Bell's 'Fugitive Poetry,' ed. 1789, vol. iii. p. 86, appears a nineteen-page poem (Epistle VIII. ), written in 1712, entitled ' The Stage,' addressed to Joseph Addison, and said to be by a Mr. Webster of Christ's College, Oxford. There is, however, a note at p. 170 which says that Jacob (one of the authors of "Jacob's Poets," otherwise " The Poetical Register ")
" ascribes this production to a Mr. Reynardson of Baliol College, son of a Turkey Merchant, Collector of the Customs at Bristol, and author of an excellent Ode on Divine Vengeance."
Thomas Reynardson of Plymouth, grand- father of Jacob Reynardson, was an eminent Turkey merchant. Jacob resided at Bristol, and may have followed in his grandfather's footsteps. May not the writer of the above poem therefore be the Francis Reynardson, poet and M.D., recorded in ' Musgrave's Obituaries' as dying 17 Oct., 1725, and a son of Jacob Reynardson, being named Francis after his maternal grandfather Francis Farnaby ?
Who was James Reynardson, Gentleman Pensioner, who (vide ' Mus. Obit.') died 30 Jan., 1732 ?
Clode in his ' London,' p. 67, states : ' As to the family of Reynardson, some of them lingered in the parish [St. Martin Outwich] tor many years, Francis and Sarah Reynardson being buried in the chancel of the church 29 January, 1739."
It seems unlikely that the Francis who died in 1725 was reinterred in 1739, and un- .ess this was the case, it would be strange that two members of the family should have happened to die so as to be buried on the same day. Who then was the Francis who died in 1739 ? Who also was the Sarah Reynardson mentioned by Clode ?
Sir Abraham's " Country Mansion " was at Tottenham High Cross. In ' Mus. Obit. s recorded the death, on 28 June, 1789, aged 79, of Thomas Rennaldson of Totten- ham High Cross. The spelling is a variant of Reynardson. We find even Sir Abraham's name spelt in sundry ways; see, for example, his funeral certificate, Whitelock's ' Memo- ials,' Guizot's 'Oliver Cromwell,' 'The Historian's Guide,' 1688, p. 34, &c.
What connexion, if any, existed between ?homas Rennaldson and the Reynardson amily ?
