Notes and Queries, Number 05, December 1, 1849

    JOHN BRITTON.

[Our modesty has compelled us to omit from this letter a warm eulogium on our undertaking, well as we know the value of Mr. Britton's testimony to our usefulness, and much as we esteem it.]

INEDITED SONG BY SIR JOHN SUCKLING

I do not remember to have seen the following verses in print or even in MS. before I accidentally met with them in a small quarto MS. Collection of English Poetry, in the hand-writing of the time of Charles I. They are much in Suckling's manner; and in the MS. are described as–

Sir John Suckling's Verses.

I am confirm'd a woman can
Love this, or that, or any other man:
This day she's melting hot,
To-morrow swears she knows you not;
If she but a new object find,
Then straight she's of another mind;
Then hang me, Ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.

Yet still I'll love the fairsome (why?–
For nothing but to please my eye);
And so the fat and soft-skinned dame
I'll flatter to appease my flame;
For she that's musical I'll long,
When I am sad, to sing a song;
Then hang me, Ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.

I'll give my fancy leave to range
Through every where to find out change;
The black, the brown, the fair shall be
But objects of variety.
I'll court you all to serve my turn,
But with such flames as shall not burn;
Then hang me, Ladies, at your door,
If e'er I doat upon you more.

    A.D.

WHITE GLOVES AT A MAIDEN ASSIZE

The practice of giving white gloves to judges at maiden assizes is one of the few relics of that symbolism so observable in the early laws of this as of all other countries; and its origin is doubtless to be found in the fact of the hand being, in the early Germanic law, a symbol of power. By the hand property was delivered over or reclaimed, hand joined in hand to strike a bargain and to celebrate espousals, etc. That this symbolism should sometimes be transferred from the hand to the glove (the hand-schuh of the Germans) is but natural, and it is in this transfer that we shall find the origin of the white gloves in question. At a maiden assize no criminal has been called upon to plead, or to use the words of Blackstone, "called upon by name to hold up his hand;" in short, no guilty hand has been held up, and, therefore, after the rising of the court our judges (instead of receiving, as they did in Germany, an entertainment at which the bread, the glasses, the food, the linen–every thing, in short–was white) have been accustomed to receive a pair of white gloves. The Spaniards have a proverb, "white hands never offend;" but in their gallantry they use it only in reference to the softer sex; the Teutonic races, however, would seem to have embodied the idea, and to have extended its application.

    WILLIAM J. THOMS.

A LIMB OF THE LAW, to a portion of whose Query, in No. 2. (p. 29.), the above is intended as a reply, may consult, on the symbolism of the Hand and Glove, Grimm Deutsches Rechtsaltherthümer, pp. 137. and 152, and on the symbolical use of white in judicial proceedings, and the after feastings consequent thereon, pp. 137. 381. and 869. of the same learned work.

[On this subject we have received a communication from F.G.S., referring to Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 79, ed. 1841, for a passage from Fuller's Mixed Contemplations, London, 1660, which proves the existence of the practice at the time; and to another in Clavell's Recantation of an Ill-led Life, London, 1634, to show that prisoners, who received pardon after condemnation, were accustomed to present gloves to the judges:–

"Those pardoned men who taste their prince's loves, (As married to new life) do give you gloves."]

Mr. Editor,–"Anciently it was prohibited the Judges to wear gloves on the bench; and at present in the stables of most princes it is not safe going in without pulling off the gloves."–Chambers' Cyclopaedia, A.D. MDCCXLI.

Was the presentation of the gloves a sign that the Judge was not required to sit upon the Bench–their colour significant that there would would be no occasion for capital punishment? Embroidered gloves were introduced about the year 1580 into England.

Or were gloves proscribed as the remembrances of the gauntlet cast down as a challenge? "This is the form of a trial by battle; a trial which the tenant or defendant in a writ of right has it in his election at this day to demand, and which was the only decision of such writ of right after the Conquest, till Henry II, by consent of Parliament, introduced the Grand Assise, a peculiar species of trial by jury."–Blackstone, Commentaries, vol. iii. p. 340. Perhaps after all it was only an allusion to the white hand of Justice, as seems probably from the expression Maiden-Assize.

Yours, etc.

    M.W.

Nov. 17. 1849.

P.S. Perhaps the "Lady-bird" in Suffolk derives its episcopal title, alluded to by LEGOUR, from appearing in June, in which month falls the Festival of St. Barnabas.

ADVERSARIA

Don Quixote.

Sir,–Have the following contradictions in Cervantes' account of Sancho's ass "Dapple" ever been noticed or accounted for?

In Don Quixote, Part. I. chap. 23, we find Dapple's abduction at night by Gines de Passamonte; only a few lines afterwards, lo! Sancho is seated on her back, sideways, like a woman, eating his breakfast. In spite of which, chap. 25. proves that she is still missing. Sancho tacitly admits the fact, by invoking "blessings on the head of the man who had saved him the trouble of unharnessing her." Chap. 30. contains her rescue from Passamonte.

    MELANION.

Doctor Dove, of Doncaster.

The names of "Doctor Dove, of Doncaster," and his steed "Nobbs," must be familiar to all the admirers, in another word, to all the readers, of Southey's Doctor.

Many years ago there was published at Canterbury a periodical work called The Kentish Register. In the No. for September, 1793, there is a ludicrous letter, signed "Agricola," addressed to Sir John Sinclair, then President of the Royal Agricultural Society; and in that letter there is frequent mention made of "Doctor Dobbs, of Doncaster, and his horse Nobbs." This coincidence appears to be too remarkable to have been merely accidental; and it seems probably that, in the course of his multifarious reading, Southey had met with the work in question, had been struck with the comical absurdity of these names, and had unconsciously retained them in his memory.

    P.C.S.S.

INSCRIPTION ON ANCIENT CHURCH PLATE

Mr. Editor,–Herewith I have the pleasure of sending you a tracing of the legend round a representation of St. Christopher, in a latten dish belonging to a friend of mine, and apparently very similar to the alms-basins described by CLERICUS in No. 3.

The upper line–"In Frid gichwart der," written from right to left, is no doubt to be read thus: Derin Frid gichwart. The lower line contains the same words transposed, with the variation of "gehwart" for "gichwart." The words "gehwart" and "gichwart" being no doubt blunders of an illiterate artist.

In Modern German the lines would be:–

Darin Frieden gewarte–Therein peace await, or look for. Gewarte darin Frieden–Await, or look for, therein peace.

In allusion, perhaps, to the eucharist of alms, to hold one or the other of which the dish seems to have been intended.

    þ.

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