by the genial flow of the Gulf Stream, present, on a near approach, an agreeable contrast with the deep blue of the surrounding sea. Their irregular outlines of shore and of fell are also striking and in some cases fantastic. Precipitous headlands, with summits looking out like sentinels through mist and cloud, over the broad expanse of the Atlantic, and with bases which receive the full swing of the billows that roll and break against them, present a bare, rugged, and defiant appearance; while grassy slopes that rise from the water's edge around many of the inland bays Wood tells us that he left 2001. to St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, to rebuild "its front next the street," and that " as a testimony of the benefaction" his arms were engraved over the gateway and on the plate belonging to the "house." He married Alice, the daughter of Humphrey Smith, Queen Elizabeth's silkman, stated to be of an ancient Leicestershire family. By her he had four daughters, of whom Elizabeth, the eldest, married Mervin, Lord Audley and Earl of Castlehaven, of infamous memory, and Alice, the second daughter, became in 1606 the wife of Sir Francis Bacon (Spedding's Life, iii. 290). Sir Francis Barnham-in many cases so surrounded by land as to was thus related by marriage to one of the two most eminent men of the age. Of Sir Francis's early career I know nothing. He was knighted on July 23, 1603, at Whitehall, on James I.'s accession, at the same time as his father (Nichols, ut supra). He inherited in 1613, from Belknap Rudston, the brother of his father's first wife, the estate of Boughton Monchelsea with which genealogists identify him. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sampson Lennard, of Chevening, co. Kent, who was an antiquary of some eminence in his day. In 1624 he was one of the commissioners empowered to enforce martial law against disorderly soldiery at Dover (Rymer's Foedera, xvii. 647). Sir Francis was apparently long-lived. He represented Maidstone in the Long Parliament, was an intimate friend of Sir Roger Twysden, who describes him as a right honest gentleman," mildly supported the Parliamentarians during the war, and urged the release of his eldest son, Robert, imprisoned by the Kentish committee in 1649 (Archeologia Cantiana, ii. 181, 195; iv. 185). He was the father of fifteen children, of whom a younger son, William, was Mayor of Norwich in 1652. His eldest son, Robert, who seems to have been a Royalist, and probably took part in the Kentish rising of 1648, received a baronetcy from Charles II. on August 14, 1663, resided at Boughton, and died in 1685. He was succeeded in the title by a grandson, with whose death, in 1728, the baronetcy became extinct. My authorities for the statements not otherwise supported are Hasted's Kent, the Remembrancia of London, and Burke's Ectinct Baronetage. Of the dates of Sir Francis's birth and death, or of any clue to his history between 1624 and 1642, I am wholly ignorant. S. L. LEE. THE ORKNEYS. Much attention has been given of late, by holiday travellers and others, to the Orkneys, and deservedly so; for few places offer a greater variety of objects to attract and interest. Their position, dotted around the northern extremity of our island, is extremely picturesque. During the summer months their bright green shores, watered resemble lakes - seem quite pastoral. Lovers of the picturesque may find much of the attrac tion of southern lake scenery, combined with the sterner beauties of the ocean. Some of the smaller islands, or holms as they are called have low indented shore lines, on the brigh sand of which the waves lap and curl; whil often on some inland part of their surface the seem gathered up into heaps, resembling i their contorted forms so many marine monster crouching in the water, or making ready fo a spring. The entire absence of trees enable one at a glance to seize on these natural in equalities of outline. Many of the islands hav received names of animals, from some fancie resemblance of this sort. There is at lea one horse, the Horse of Copinshay. Sever small islands are called calves; there is a He and Chickens; and one rock bears the commor place name of the Barrel of Butter. The Norsemen, who gave names to most the islands, were close observers of nature, an quick to seize any peculiar characteristic men or things. Any oddity of personal appea ance never failed to give rise to a nickname which, however, conveyed no opprobriu but was applied to the most illustrious amo them. From the want of family names, the use such sobriquets as Fair Haired, Blue Tooth, B Legs, and countless others to be found in t sagas, seems to have been the only means th remained to identify one another with precisio This faculty of observation was developed in t poetry of their scalds. Through a sort of ru rhetoric, devoid of imagination, things are there called by names coined from some other attribu than that indicated by the ordinary name. spade is no longer called a spade, but it may ! an earth-opener. Had the Norsemen then bee a little more imaginative-in which case no doul they would not have come up to our modern idea them, nor played the important part that has bee assigned them in the world's history-or bee possessed of a little more knowledge of natur history we should have had less homely an more appropriate names to enumerate. One ( two of the islands are flat-one, Sanday or th dy Ser 3 じえる the Sandy Isle, is uniformly so. It consists of a nucleus of sand banks, surrounded by narrow outlying ridges, and looks like a large octopus floating on the surface of the water, with its arms distended, waiting for its prey. When the north wind howls around the storm-swept islands, the prey, unfortunately, does not fail to arrive. Once caught between these low spurs of land, that remain unperceived until too near to be avoided, a ship seldom escapes. These are nature's sterner aspects, as seen during the winter months. During the months of June, July, and August the scene is different. The long northern twilight prevails from the end of May till the beginning of August. The sun then just dips below the horizon, as if his setting was a mere form; the daylight remains uninterrupted. This is the proper season to visit the islands. The charm of these long evenings must be seen and felt to be appreciated. Some persuasion is necessary to induce natives of a southern country to visit the north. There has existed, since the time of Hebrew prophets and the earliest historians and poets, something like a prejudice against the north. It has been regarded as the land of darkness and Resolation, while the south has been described as the region of luxuriant vegetation and of romance. The sun has always attracted the wonder and the spirations of our race, who have followed its course in their migrations from east to west; and to its fancied home both the Grecian sage and the untutored savage have looked, in the hope of there njoying another state of existence. An old Commentator on Horace places the Fortunate sles beyond the Orkneys. He was no doubt adly informed as to the position of the latter. It Could only be owing to their supposedly western osition that they could be imagined to be near he fabled Islands of the Blest. obri euse b, re d of The name Orcades, from which has been derived Orkney, was, no doubt, given to the islands by the Romans, from their proximity to Cape Orcas, Dunnet Head. That the name was not of native origin, any more than that of Pomona, is attested by a document drawn up by Thomas, Bishop of Orkney, with the aid of his clergy, in the year 1446, wherein it is stated that on the arrival of the Northmen, A.D. 872, the land was not called "Orchadie," but the land of Pets-the northern manner of writing Picts-in proof of which is adduced the name of Petland Firth, the strait that separates the islands from Scotland. This name is still generally pronounced in Orkney Petland, and not Pentland, Firth. Saxo, the historian, terms the islands Petia. The document referred to goes on to state that, on the invasion of the Northmen, the islands were occupied by two peoples, called Peti, or Picts, and Papæ. These latter have been proved to be Irish monks, who appear to have obtained a footing on the islands at a very early period. They had also preceded the Northmen in Iceland. Ari, the historian of Iceland, states that before the arrival of the Northmen there were men settled there called Papa, and that they were Christian and holy men who had come from the west; for there were found after them Irish books and other articles, from which it was easily understood that they were Westmen. They were found settled in West Papey and in Papyli. It may be seen from the Irish books, adds Ari, that at this time there was much intercourse between the countries. reader who may wish to pursue this matter further will find it treated in the work of the Irish monk, Dicuil, De Mensura Orbis Terrarum, of which there is a good recent edition (Berlin, G. Parthey, 1870). Any The early residence of these monks in Orkney is indicated by many names of islands and places yet remaining. We find Papa Stronsay, Papa The Orkneys are frequently mentioned by Westray, Papdale, Papley-the latter often a Bassical authors in connexion with Thule and family name-Egilsey, i. e., the Church - isle; he ends of the earth. Pomponius Mela states Enhallow, i. e., Egin - Helga; the Holy Isle, hem to be thirty in number; Solinus, a later Daminsey, i. e., St. Adamnan's Isle. There riter, gives the number as three, which is sup- are also remains of chapels dedicated to St. osed to be an error for thirty-three. This latter Columba, St. Ninian, St. Bridget, and St. Tredriter says, in describing the islands, "Thule well. The town of Kirkwall-Kirkuivag, i, e., the arga et ditissima et ferax pomarum est." Thule Bay of the Kirk-took its name from a church large, and very rich and fertile in fruits. A that has now disappeared. The Northmen are lundering copyist, paying no attention to the said to have destroyed, on their arrival, all the preEual contracted form of writing the gen. pl. by vious inhabitants of the islands; hence the knowstroke across the letter preceding the termina-ledge of the Christian religion thus early introduced hion, copied the text, "Thule larga et ditissima was obliterated by the pagan superstitions of the 3 ferax pomona est." A succeeding copyist wrote newcomers. mona with a capital letter, and thereby gave a me to the principal island in the Orkney group, hich has been received by geographers, but has fever been accepted by the inhabitants, who call the Mainland. By the saga writers it is called Meginland, or Hrossey, i. e., the Horse Island. Numerous prehistoric monuments are to be found on the islands, the most striking of which are the Stones of Stennis, a circle of monoliths only second in importance to that of Stonehenge. Their erection dates from a remote antiquity, many centuries before the arrival of the Northmen There are also very numerous remains of buildings termed Peights (Picts) Houses. This name has been given too indiscriminately to buildings of various sorts, intended evidently for defence, for sepulture, and for the performance of superstitious rites. The fact of certain of them having sub- | terraneous chambers devoid of air and light, and of such dimensions as not to allow a person within them to stand upright, has probably given rise to the notion that the Peight was a dwarf. The two words in Orkney have become synonymous, and seem to be still further confused with the names of the dvergs and trolls of northern superstition. These latter were the Titans of the Norse mythology. It is an old saying in Orkney that the cathedral of St. Magnus, at Kirkwall, was "a' biggit in a night by the Peights." J. G. FOTHERINGHAM. (To be continued.) CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION IN ITALY. (Continued from 6th S. viii. 442.) With regard to the association of St. Paul in all traditions of this episode, it might suffice to observe that in the early traditions concerning St. Peter's pontificate in Rome the "twin apostles" are never separated, and a painter of the thirteenth century would never think, probably, of introducing one without the other. That St. Paul, already confined in the neighbouring Tullian dungeon, united his prayers with those of St. Peter is, however, according to P. Franco, mentioned by several early writers." Another item of the tradition was that in St. Peter's prayer for the discomfiture of the impostor was a distinct petition that he might not be killed on the spot, but survive long enough to repent of his errors.b Instead of thus employing the respite obtained for him, he made another attempt at showing his power of flying, from a villa called Brunda at L'Ariccia, whither his disciples carried him to cure him of his wounds. Again he fell; and, not yet convicted of his follies, he ordered that he should be buried alive, promising that he would in that case rise again whole the third day-an order executed by his disciples Marcellus and Apuleius. His miserable He quotes to this effect Sulpic. Sev., Stor. Sac., ii. 28; St. Cirill Geros., Catech, vi. 15; St. Mass. Torin., Omel., Ixxii.; and most distinctly of all St. Isid. Ispal., in his Chron., "Adjurante eos [dæmones] Petro, per Deum, Paulo vero orante [Simon] dimissus crepuit." Similar testimony may be found in Cuccagni, Vita di S. Pietro, iii. cap. ix. Eccid. Gerus., ii. 2; Costit. Apost., vi, 9 (in P. Franco's note 150) Eccid. Gerus., .c.; Arnob., Contro i Gent, ii. 12; Lucidi, Mem. Stor, dell' Aric., ii. i. 317 (note 151). Arnobius, quoted by Moroni, lxvi. 160, who also refers to Golt., Dissertation on the Flight and Fall of fate does not appear, however, to have put an end to his sect, which lingered on, perhaps as late as the tenth century. Of his writings some frag. ments are preserved in Grabe, Spicilegium SS. Patrum, and they are frequently cited in the Philosophumena. The demonographers of the sixteenth to the eighteenth century continually allude to the flight across the Forum as effected by the aid of demons; and, only to cite one, Menghi, cap. xiv. lib. ii., treats it as such an accepted fact that he brings it forward among his proofs that demons do actually and bodily transport persons through the air at the bidding of magicians.h Strega and lamia, the two most common appellations for a witch, have both remained in use, the one in the mouth of the people, and the other in the writings of the learned in such matters, almost unaltered from old Roman times. Strega is the strix, the screech-owl, of which it was fabled on the authority of Ovid and Pliny that it sucked the blood of young children, or strangled them in the cradle; and the word has remained in Italian only in this figurative sense, for a screech-owl i now civetta.i Simon Magus, and De Simonis Volatu, &c., Naples, 1755. Moses Barcephas, quoted by Moroni, lxvi. 160. That he had a great following at one time is found in Orig. Contro Celso; Justin Martyr; St. Clement, &c. (P. Franco). Contradictions or Great Negation, dropatic μeyan His chief work seems to have been the Book of th (Moroni and P. Franco). Of his doctrines and followers speaks St. Irenæus, Contr. Hæres., i. 23 (P. France, note 95). So bad the painters of the preceding centuries. Among the obscure early paintings in the collections at may be seen thus treated-quaint demons carrying the the Vatican, Siena, Turin, and other places, the subject magician through the air. I have a copy of one ascribed to Giotto in the private collection of a friend, which i should be happy to show any one interested in the subject. I have thought it admissible to treat the subject tion to my subject, but also because I have so often thus at length not only on account of its intrinsic relafound that the two altarpieces in St. Peter's representing the subject, as well as the stone whereon St. Peter is said to have knelt that day, preserved in Sta. Francesca Romana in the Foro Romano, excite the curiosity of which I think has not before been provided completely visitors to Rome to make acquaintance with the legend, and handily in English. In the list of Italian words derived from Latin appended to Dr. Andrews's English rendering of Freund's Lexicon, striscia is noted as derived from strix. I can find no meaning to striscia, however, in any Italian dictionary to which I have had access, connecting it with a screech-owl; striscia means "a strip" of anything, and sometimes in poetry a serpent. Since writing the above I have met in the Compendio dell' Arte Essoreisty a misderivation of the word lamia, which coincides with this fortuitously in a very odd way. In lib. iv. p. 236, Girolomo Menghi, the author, derives lamia from laniare, "to destroy," "to rend in strips," as denoting "one so cruel as to tear in strips her own children Concerning the word lamia, which remains unaltered from the use of both Greeks and Latins, Tartarotti has collected some curious particulars. Among these he quotes from Diodorus Siculus (lib. xx.) "that Lamia was a beautiful queen of a country of Africa, who, having lost all her own children, decreed that the children of other women should be destroyed as soon as born; that her bereavement had driven her to find solace in wine-drinking; and that when the affairs of the kingdom went to the bad through her neglect, she said it was not her fault, for she had no eyes to see how things went on; but the fact was, she kept her eyes all the time in her pocket." He gives another version of the story from Aristophanes the grammarian, making her the daughter of Belus and Lybia. Jupiter fell in love with her and carried her to Lybia in Italy, and Juno, in jealousy, had all her children destroyed as soon as born. Lamia then, in desperation, wandered over the earth, slaying the children of other women. Juno further deprived her of the power of sleeping, and Jupiter, in compassion for her weariness, gave her the faculty of removing her eyes and replacing them at pleasure; he also endowed her with the power of assuming whatever form she pleased. Duri, commenting on the story, observes that nurses in Greece at his day quieted children by threatening to call Lamia to them. Tartarotti further quotes from Pausanias that her father was not Belus, but Neptune, and that of her union with Jupiter was born the first Sibyl, though how this daughter escaped Juno's persecution is not stated. Among the later Greeks, he says, the same superstition is current under the name of Gello, adducing some curious instances too long to quote; nt but he does not give the derivation of the new Etappellation. BECT whic France Among the Hebrews Tartarotti finds "in the Rabbi Ben Sira "k a counterpart legend, in which Adam takes the place of Jupiter. Lilith, as the Sub lamia is here called, was the first wife of Adam before the formation of Eve. As they could never live together in peace she decided to abandon him, and, pronouncing the sacred name of Jehovah, Puddenly disappeared. Adam, vexed at finding (tanto crudele che straccia o lania gli proprii figli). Even he, however, does not connect it in any way with the synonym strega, which he derives exclusively from the night-bird strix. His derivation, though undoubtedly erroneous, is not exclusively his, as Gianfrancesco Pico de la Mirandola had mentioned it long before his time among derivations that had been ad vanced ("Libro della Strega, ovvero delle Illusioni del Demonio, del Sig. Giovan Francesco Pico de la Mirandola. ......In Venetia nella contrada di Sta. Maria Formosa al segno de la Speranza, 1556." Gianfrancesco was nephew of Giovanni Pico, surnamed la fenice del suo secolo, and died 1494). Frecc Just as we find one doing under the character of an orchessa in the story called La Sposa del Mercante di Campagna," and others in my Folk-lor of Rome. I., in the Talmud. himself left alone, laid his complaint before the Lord. The Lord had compassion on him, and sent three angels, Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Sammangalaph, to seek for Lilith. These, after a long search, discovered her by the banks of the Red Sea. The three angels required that she should instantly return to her husband, threatening that if she would not they would drown her in the depths of the sea, or else put to death a hundred of her children, that is evil demons, for all the children of Lilith were demons. Lilith refused absolutely to return to Adam, and chose the latter of the two penalties of her disobedience, for she assured the angels she had been made for nothing else but to infest nurseries and destroy new-born children; she made the promise, however, that whensoever she met with Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Sammangalaph, she would spare the children of that house. In consequence of this tradition, Hebrew fathers were wont to make a circle round the door of the room in which their children were born, and write in it the names of Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Sammangalaph. In the Bible the word lilith only occurs at Isaiah xxxiv. 14, and the Vulgate renders it by lamia. The mediæval rabbi David Kimchi explains it to be an animal crying by night or a bird flying by night. Buxtorf renders it "Strix, avis nocturna querula et horrenda," and the English Bible has "screech-owl," with the marginal reading of "night monster." Tartarotti has collected the testimony of Plautus, Strabo, Horace, and other writers of antiquity to the fact that the thirst of the strix for children's blood was a tradition current in Rome in their time, and it is doubtless owing to a popular belief, recorded by Serenus Samonicus (cap. 59), ascribing to garlic the property of acting as a counter charm to the fascination of the strix, that its use has become painfully prevalent among the lower orders (quoted also by Cantù, Storia Universale, ed. Turin, 1815, vol. xv. p. 451, note 3). If strix, striga, and lamia were the bugbears of naughty children of the Augustan age, Tartarotti brings also the evidence of Ausonius and Festus that they had not lost their hold on popular credulity under the later empire. So far from this, the transition of personality from a bird to an old woman would appear to have been completed in the interval; though Propertius is, perhaps, one of the first to make allusion to the idea. He goes on to quote a statute of Charlemagne, lamenting the vices and follies which had been handed on to his age from these pagan practices, and registering sentence of death against those who, I find Del Rio (Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex, quibus continetur Accurata Curiosarum Artium et Vanarum Superstitionum Confutatio, Lugduni, 1602), lib. ii. p. i. q ii., gives a similar version of this legend. believing in magic arts, ate human flesh or gave it to be eaten by others. He further traces the handing down of these superstitions to the Middle Ages, and shows how the belief in one malevolent destroyer of children expanded till it fabled of whole crowds of witches | pervading every country, no longer confining their depredations to cradles,m but working evil to the whole human race; flying by night through the air," astride of all manner of beasts, on distaffs and flaming brooms (also, according to Gianfrancesco Pico, on a stick called a gramita, commonly serving for hanging out flax and hemp), for midnight congresses always attended by banquets and dancing, and accompanied by all kinds of depravity, the origin of which he endeavours to trace to the diversions attendant on many pagan mysteries. Diana is continually spoken of by name as the presiding genius of these weird festivals, and her mysteries were celebrated with dancing. Callimachus, in a hymn to her, says Jupiter gave sixty dancers, daughters of Ocean, to attend her, and the Italian word carolare, to dance in a circle, the witches' dance, may come from the dance invented in her honour by Castor and Pollux at Carya. That this was a circular dance Tartarotti decides on the strength of a passage from the Achilleis of Statius in the first century of our era, and in the Deipnosophista of Athenæus a century later. Selden (De Diis Syris), too, establishes the identity of Lilith and Diana. The use of the word volatica as applied to a witch, first established by Festus in the fourth century, constitutes another link in the chain of traditionary ideas on this subject. (To be continued.) R. H. BUSK. GERSUMA.-Prof. James E. Thorold Rogers's History of Agriculture and Prices in England is a work so valuable to all those who are interested in the history of English rural life, that it becomes a duty to make it as correct as possible. I think there is an error-a misprint only, it may well be-in vol. ii. p. 609. We there read: "1276. Stillington, Gersinna, pro terra John Utting, 8s." Is not this gersuma, which Spelman defines " sumptus, præmium"? The word occurs in Domesday, and is explained by Kelham in his Domesday Book Illustrated as '6 reward, riches, treasure, or Del Rio (lib. iii. p. i. q. ii.) quotes briefly from Pedro Chieza (Descript. India, p. ii. c. 196) that in "Panama Peruvia" were many witches who sucked the blood of infants, but he does not say whether the idea was found there or introduced by his own countrymen. "See a tradition of one in the story in Folk-lore of Rome called "La Principessa colla Testa di Capra." Also note 7 to "Pietro Bailliardo," in the same work. It is curious to remark that the singing which accompanied dancing in a circle has given us carol, just Villare, ordinary dancing, has given us ballad. money paid beforehand; sometimes fine or income. Mr. Macray, in his Notes from the Muniments of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford, p. 139, gives instances of this word in the forms gersona and gersua. Mr. Seebohm, in his English Village Community, p. 56, quoting the chartulary of Worcester as to the customs of the villains of Newenham, says that they had to pay gersuma for their daughters. In later times the word became gressom. In this form it lingers in our speech to the present hour. The Westmorland Gazette, July 9, 1881, is quoted in "N. & Q," 6th S. iv. 251, as advertising an estate at Mallerstang subject to the payment of gressam. One of the customs of the manor of Skipton was that the tenant paid every tenth year a year's rent by way of gressome (Dawson's History of Skipton, p. 58). Pilkington, Bishop of Durham, in his "Exposition upon Nehemiah" (Works, Parker Society edit., p. 462), in dwelling on the evil deeds of the landlords of his day, speaks of them as raising their rents "and taking unreasonable fines and gressans." EDWARD PEACOCK. Bottesford Manor, Brigg. OCCAM = OAKUM.-As an illustration of the old spelling of oakum, it may not be amiss to cite the following passage from "John Eldred's Narrative" (Hakluyt's Voyages, ii. 1599), Arber, English Garner, iii. 164: "These ships are usually from forty to sixty tons, having their planks sown together with cord made of the bark of date trees, and instead of occam, they use the shiverings of the bark of the said trees; and of the same also they make their tackling." Of this word Prof. Skeat, in his Dict., says: "Spelt ockam in Skinner, ed. 1671," but gives no earlier example. PARLIAMENT IN GUILDHALL.-Could not our friends of the Corporation put up a tablet to com memorate the Parliament of 1326, referred to by PROF. THOROLD ROGERS (6th S. viii. 405)? There is this incitement that their predecessors did not neglect the opportunity of having words in the oath for the franchises of the city, "Et les fran chises de la cite de Loundres maintendrez.' In deed, in these days, when traditions are not known as they were half a century ago, and when there is such a large floating population, a few memorials of the historical events that have taken place in that building would greatly raise the interest |