Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/546

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588


NOTES AND QUERIES. [9- s. n. D EC . 31,


parish church, an older and much less elaborate building, is in the centre of the town, and the chancel contains the Black Virgin, famous in this part of France. In the spring of 1894 I was present at the festival held in honour of the Virgin, and saw the figure carried with great ceremony in procession through the town. High Mass was subsequently held by the bishop in the church, and the whole country - side was en fete throughout the day. The legend connected with the figure relates that it was found in the fourth century A.D. by a shepherd under a willow tree, on the site of the present parish church. A chapel was built on the spot, which some hundreds of years later gave place to the present building. So- called Druidical stones are found in the neighbourhood, and some are still to be seen built into a portion of the old Roman wall on one side of the town. The Chatres figure is also, I understand, said to have been found in a "Druids' cave." It thus seems not improbable that both these figures may, in their day, have served in pagan worship, and have been adopted and adapted by a later faith. In India local aboriginal deities have been accepted and admitted by the Hindus. Rightly or wrongly, it is said that a some- what similar process was not unknown in Southern India among the early converts of the Jesuit Fathers. J. H. RIVETT-CARNAC. Schloss Wildeck, Aargau.

NAMELESS GRAVES (8 th S. i. 47, 135, 213). The initials R. G. G. probably stand for the Rev. Rawdon Griffiths Greene, incumbent of Sand gate from 1839 to 1848. I should like to know the name of his wife represented by the initials M. I. G., as a Rev. Rawdon Griffiths Greene, rector of Stillorgan, married Anne Charlotte, daughter of Sir Ross Mahon, Bart. R. J. FYNMORE.

Sandgate.

CHAUSSEY (9 th S. ii. 467). Strictly speaking, there is no one islet called Chaussey. The Chausseys are a small archipelago or group of islets and rocks, described in Ansteds ' Channel Islands,' when seen from the Corbiere, in Jersey, as forming, with the Minquiers, a fringing reef on the horizon. There is only one that is permanently inhabited, and it is called, by way of distinction, the Grande He, and is over a mile in length by a third broad. I have always understood that they simply mean "the banks," from the French word chaussee, a bank, presenting, as a group, that appearance from the French coast. In Berry's ' History of Guernsey,' 1815, the word


is spelt Choz^. In Falle's ' Account of Jersey,' 1837 edition (first published in 1694), there is an appendix which quotes the bull of Pope Alexander VI., 1499, transferring the Channel Islands from the diocese of Coutance, in Normandy, to that of Winchester, and there the word is spelt Chausey. Falle himself, in the body of his work, spells it Chauzey.

J. L. A. Edinburgh.

THE SUN -GOD AND THE MOON -GODDESS (9 th S. ii. 405). I observe that, in the notes to Hamlet's " Hyperion to a satyr," Warburton, Steevens, and Malone all say that Apollo is meant by Hyperion. They must have forgotten Homer, and remembered only Pope's translation, in which Apollo is con- founded with the sun-god. I dare say that Shakspeare thought Hyperion to be Apollo ; but it is clear that the commentators thought so too. E. YARDLEY.

TYPE ERRORS (9 th S. ii. 445). In the 'Historical English Dictionary,' vol. ii. p. 164, col. 2, may be seen an instance of this sort of unobvious type error. Mrs. Montagu is there quoted as saying, "Like a slate-bed running on castors," which looks like some kind of sense: but the lady originally wrote " Like a state-bed," &c.

EDWARD H. MARSHALL M.A.

Hastings.

BARCLAY'S 'ARGENTS' (9 th S. ii. 428). I should say MR. AULD is very likely to be able to obtain a copy of the book he wants from Mr. Quaritch, of 15, Piccadilly, London, W., as I see in his 1868 catalogue he had two editions for sale with price, and very likely he has them still. ALFRED J. KING.

101, Sandmere Road, Claphatn, S.W.

SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN (9 th S. ii. 367, 417). I was not aware that he originated the pulling of old buildings into shape by the contraction of iron rods, as I have seen, in English books, the credit claimed for the Frenchman who operated thus on the Museum of Arts et Metiers at Paris about a century ago. The building is a thirteenth- century monastic one. We have in London one of similar age, greatly needing this treatment, namely, the choir of the Temple Church. The vaulting of its middle aisle has pushed the pillars some inches apart. When- ever they are pulled together, the vaults of the side aisles will have to be loaded to make them balance the wider central vaulting.

E. L. GARBETT.