398 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 B.IX. NOV. 12,1921.
"The Crooken Billet" (12 S. ix. 328).—Noting a reference to "The Rising Sun" at the above reference, is it a propos to mention that in Prof. Muir head's 'Guide to London' the Rising Sun, as an emblem, is marked in connexion with Anne of Bohemia's tomb (d. 1394) in Westminster Abbey? William R. Power.
RICHARD CCEUR DE LION (12 S. ix. 353).
It was in the Castle of Durrenstein, accord-
ing to the legend, that the troubadour
Blondel discovered him. (December 1192.)
Surely the traditional account of the King's
interment is the correct one. " Richard,"
says Miss Norgate in her ' England under
the Angevin Kings ' (1887), ii. 386-7,
gave directions for the disposal of his body. It I
was to be embalmed ; the brain and some of the
internal organs were to be buried in the ancient
Poitevin abbey of Charroux ; the heart was to
be deposited in the Norman capital, where itj
had always found a loyal response ; the corpse
itself was to be laid, in token of penitence, at
his father's feet in the abbey church of Fon-
tevraud. Lastly, he received extreme unction
(6 April). His friends buried him as he had
wished. St. Hugh of Lincoln, now at Angers . .
came to seal his forgiveness by performing the
last rites of the Church over this second grave
at Fontevraud (Palm Sunday, 1199), where
another Angevin King was thus " shrouded
among the shrouded women " his own mother,
doubtless, in their midst. He was laid to sleep
in the robes which he had worn on his last crown-
ing-day in England, five years before. His
heart was enclosed in a gold and silver casket,
carried to Rouen, and solemnly deposited by the
clergy among the holy relics in their cathedral
church.
A. R. BAYLEY.
BOOK BORROWERS (12 S. viii. 208, 253, |
278, 296, 314, 334, 350, 377, 394, 417, 456, j
477 ; ix. 137). In ' N. & Q.'s ' latest series j
(I have no chance to look over the many '
previous ones), no mention is made of the j
" Judas' Curse." This was traditionally, in !
the West and in the Levant, employed j
against book " borrowers." and this con-
nexion is exhaustively treated in The
American Journal of Philology, 1921, xlii.
234-252, especially at 247-251. Of the many
quotations let the following suffice, it being
a short form of about the eighth century,
almost the standard in the Benedictine
monasteries of Eastern France, viz. : " Hie
est liber Sancti Benedicti abbatis Floriacensis
coenobii ; si quis eum aliquo ingenio non
redditurus abstraxerit, cum Juda proditore,
Anna et Caipaa atque Pilato damnationem
accipiat ! Amen." ROCKTNGHAM.
Boston, Mass.
" MAKING BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW" (12
S. ix. 331). In reply to the query of L. L. K.,
I spent my boyhood in South Africa, where
many sun-baked bricks were made, and do
not remember seeing straw chopped up and
used for the purpose of mechanically hold-
ing the clay of the bricks together. Nor
does it strike me, as an engineer, as a likely
reason for incorporating straw with the clay,
for the tensile strength of straw is small,
and would probably not much increase the
strength of the bricks. On the other hand,
it is known that the remarkable plastic
qualities of clay are largely due to colloids,
and that a small quantity of tannic acid
greatly increases the plastic properties of
clay. Consequently, it has been suggested
that the straw referred to by the Israelites
when they were in Egypt was not used so
much on account of its mechanical binding-
qualities (if in fact it was incorporated with the
actual bricks) as for its colloidal properties,
especially if it were allowed to rot in water
beforehand, and this water, with or without
the rotting straw, were added to the clay,
such use would increase its plastic proper-
ties, and enable it to be more readily
moulded, and probably result in stronger
and_better sun-dried bricks.
A. S. E. ACKERMANN.
on
The Chronicle of Muntaner. Translated from
the Catalan by Lady Goodenough. Vol. ii.
(The Hakluyt Society.)
WE are glad at length to have Muntaner in
English complete (see 12 S. yiii. 299). This second
half of the Chronicle, which closes with the
coronation of Alfonso IV. of Aragon at Saragossa,
is one of the principal sources for the history,
during its period, of the Eastern Mediterranean
and Greece. By the way, in the list of con-
temporary sovereigns given in an appendix no
mention is made of the Emperors at Con-
stantinople.
It is hardly necessary to stress the importance
of .this account of the expedition of the Catalan
Company, or to dwell on the careers of the famous
and chivalrous Roger de Luria and the redoubtable
Roger de Flor. Muntaner himself, as students
of the period are aware, bore no small part in the
Catalan enterprise, having been present at its
very inception and in command for a long period,
and during important operations, at Gallipoli.
One of the most interesting of his many adven-
tures was the capture of the alum-manufacturing
city of Fogliari or Phocaea, undertaken at the
instance and in the company of the Genoese
Ticino Zaccaria. An enormous booty fell into
the conqueror's hands, among which were three
