10 s. xii. DEC. 11, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
478:
LORD MAYOR'S SHOW : CHANGE IN DATE
(10 S. xii. 306, 356). I venture to suggest
that MR. LYNN in his reply is in error about
" the curious consequence n which " would
have followed," had it been sought to keep
Lord Mayor's Day to the exact season it
had occupied.
The change from the Old Style to the New Style made the calendar exactly, or all but exactly, correct. It is believed to be so nearly exact that a few thousands of years must pass by before the calendar is wrong by one day. Arithmeticians have differed a little as to the length of time required.
Benjamin Donn in ' A New Introduction to the Mathematicks, 1 1758, p. 77, note, says :
" In a Word our Calendar is now so accurately adjusted, that it will not anticipate a Day in less than 5760 Years, supposing the World to continue in the same State so long."
John Hind in ' The Principles and Practice of Arithmetic,' 6th ed., 1849, p. 226, says :
" The Calendar thus corrected, though not absolutely accurate, is well adapted to every prac- tical purpose, as the error in 5,000 years will not amount to much more than twenty-eight hours."
In my reply s.v. ' The Birthday of George III. : Old v. New Style J (10 S. iv. 173), I find that I wrote that the Gregorian style will go wrong by only one day in 3,546 years. My authority for the statement was ' Crosby's Walkingame's Arithmetic ' (see 10 S. iv. 174 and Corrigendum, p. 200).
MR. LYNN refers to his reply s.v. ' Old and New Style of Chronology ? (9 S. v. 344). Therein is a slip of the pen which I do not find rectified in the Corrigenda, viz. :
" Now Lord Mayor's Day. . . .was ' on the morrow of the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude,' and therefore kept on 29 September, as that feast is on 28 September."
The feast of St. Simon and St. Jude was, and is, on 28 October. Before the change of style the Lord Mayor was sworn in on the next day. 29 October. Now the ceremony takes place on 9 November, and if there is a Lord Mayor to be sworn in in the year 3000, and the law is not altered, he will be sworn in on 9 November, when the year will be wrong by (say) six to seven hours.
ROBERT PIERPOINT.
At the latter reference MR. LYNN states that,
" had it been sought to keep the day at the exact season it had occupied, the curious consequence would have followed that Lord Mayor's Day would have undergone several changes : from 1752 (when the style was altered) to 1800 would have been on 9 November ; from 1800 to 1900 on 10 November, and from 1900 to 2100 on 11 November."
Is it not rather that the Show would have
been kept on these last -mentioned days,
viz. 10 November and 11 November, only
if it had been sought to perpetuate the
observance of the day at a season varying
from century to century in accordance with
the erroneous Julian style ?
By observing the day continually on 9 November it is kept at the exact season of its observance at the time of the change of style, viz. 1752. THOS. C. MYDDELTON.
Woodhall Spa.
LAMBPARK : " ONE LAMPTE " (10 S. xii. 388). I shall venture upon a guess. Lampte may mean a lamp or lantern. The spelling with mpt suggests confusion with the Gk. Aa/uTTT^p, from which lantern is ulti- mately derived ; this would account for adding te to lamp.
Morte may be "a wax candle " ; see ' Mort, 1 sb. (2), in ' N.E.D. 1 ; the kind of stumpy wax candle that was used in a mortar. So perhaps the profit from the moarte parke was used for maintaining (or keeping alight) a lamp with a mort in it r before a shrine. WALTER W. SKEAT.
I am glad that the extract I printed should have contained the germ of so interesting an etymological suggestion as that offered by J. P. B.
The rents for the land in question were, I take it, to be applied to the maintenance of a lamp or light before the high altar, or before the rood or some image, and in return for this benefaction periodical masses or chants were to commemorate the testator. E. LEGA-WEEKES.
'THE GOLDEN LYRE l (10 S. xii. 407). Although the date mentioned by your Cuban correspondent does not tally, I may perhaps be allowed to inform him that my father, Mr. William Page, published
- The Golden Lyre,' containing 130 Original
Psalm and Hymn Tunes, 5 in 1856. It was brought out for the author by J. Hart, 109, Hatton Garden, at the price of six shillings. If this is really the book concerning which inquiry is made, I shall be happy to corre- spond with the querist, or to place him in communication with my father.
JOHN T. PAGE.
Long Itchington, Warwickshire.
The book inquired for must be one pub- lished under the title * The Golden Lyre ' by my father, John Macray, in two series, in the years 1829 and 1830. The first con- tained ' Specimens of the Poets of England,
