Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/377

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g* s. xii. NOV. 7, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


369


the trunnions carry shields with the won "Victoria." Below them are the arms (pre sumably of Henry VIII.), 1 and 4, Eng land ; 2 and 3, France, surmounted wit! the crown imperial, and surrounded with the Garter and motto " Honi soit qui ma y pense"; on a label beneath, " Dieu e mon droit." Below comes the famous Low Dutch inscription, which I translate :

Men call me Sure Breaker of rampart and wall ; Right through Hill and Dale can I hurl my spec

ball.

The lowest shield is surrounded with th collar of the Golden Fleece, and surmountec with a many-balled crown topped with a pearl. The motto beneath is " Sans aultre.' Whose is it 1 One would imagine the piece had been cast for some territorial lord on the Scheldt. H.

WAGNER'S ' ART AND THE REVOLUTION.' Is there any English translation of Wilhelm Richard Wagner's 'Die Kunst und die Revolu- tion,' Leipzig, 1849 ('Art and the Revolution ')? I am acquainted with the French translation by Jacques Mesnil in the " Bibliptheque des Temps Nouveaux"(1896), but this is imperfect, the translator candidly acknowledging that he has only followed the text as nearly as possible, and remarking that it must not be overlooked that the true language of Wagner was music. JOHN HEBB.

WALTER FITZ-OTHO : DE DOUAI. Was Walter Fitz - Otho, baron of Care we Castle, Pembroke, of the same descent as Walter de Douai (Doue), the Norman seigneur of the Castle de Cary in Somerset ; and were the Fitz- Walters, Walter, or Walters family of Essex and Wales descended from Walter de Douai, baron of Kary 1 T. W. C.


IMAGINARY OR INVENTED SAINTS. (9 th S. xii. 127, 215.)

SOME little time back, in reply to one of your correspondents, I was just about to acquaint him with the true form and mean- ing of the corrupted name "St. Enoch," when I was forestalled by another correspondent, who supplied the desired explanation. But I should like now to supplement the infor- mation of this latter correspondent by bringing to notice the curious fact that the ancient city of St. Kentigern Glasgow to wit boasts of yet another heteroclite saint, who rejoices in the title of St. Rollox, a name which has puzzled many people of my


acquaintance, inasmuch as it is certainly not to be found in the calendar.

St. Rollox is the name of a locality in Glasgow famous for the colossal chimney- stalk of Tennant's Chemical Works, which at that point towers over the city. The name is a corruption of St. Roque or St. Roch, a thirteenth - century saint who came to be regarded as the patron saint and protector of persons afflicted by the plague. If that saint still flourishes, and still possesses any healing virtue in such cases, it is a pity that he does not now pay a visit to some parts of India and China.

Very curious is the fiction which has grown up about St. Ursula and the alleged eleven thousand virgins at Cologne. Now eleven thousand is a large order, but, in point of fact, instead of being accompanied by so great a bevy of young ladies, St. Ursula was attended by one only. That one bore the name of "Onesima," formed from the^ Greek adjective ovrjarifjLos (ovivry/u), and meaning the useful or profitable one, a very appropriate name for a handmaiden. But "Onesima" soon assumed the endearing Latin diminutive form of " Onesimilla," and then it was an easy task for marvel-mongers to corrupt that into "undecim mille," or eleven thousand, and fools readily swallowed the fiction which in course of time wove itself around the subject. The whole story is quaintly told by Charles Reade in the eleventh chapter of the third volume of his wise and witty work 'The Cloister and the Hearth,' where also the reader can see sundry admirable samples of fabricated names of saints.

Before leaving the subject, I may mention the following. In a certain French descrip- tion of a certain Roman Catholic solemnity

here occurred the expression " Sainte

Ampoule," which meant, of course, the holy ampulla, or vessel which contains the con- secrating oil in the ceremonies of the Church )f Rome. In an English translation of this descriptive passage these words were ren- dered "St. Ampull," another new and pre- iously unknown saint.

PATRICK MAXWELL.

Bath.

R. B. B. says that Martin Luther is com- nemorated in the Swedish calendar, a curious act hitherto unknown to us. It may not be iut of place in connexion with this to men- ion that Luther is one of those persons rhose character and career have induced some >f his admirers as well as his enemies to act without discretion. He has attracted the xtremes of ill-ordered praise as well as of ituperation, which, for our own sakes as well