Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851

He died suddenly in the night of 13th Nov., 1650, his death being attributed by Marvell to a little too much indulgence in wine.

"As one pot drunk into the packet-boat,
Tom May was hurry'd hence, and did not know't."

    W. Durrant Cooper.
81. Guilford Street.

[We are also indebted to Balliolensis and other correspondents for general replies to this Query; and to W. S. (Richmond) for a reference to Baron Maseres' account of him prefixed to his edition of May's History of the Long Parliament.]

DUCHESS OF BUCKINGHAM

(Vol iii., pp. 224, 249.)

P. C. S. S. believes that a reference to almost any Peerage or work on British genealogy, would have saved Mr. F. B. Relton the trouble of addressing the inquiry at Vol. iii., p. 224. Katherine Sedley, daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, commemorated in Johnson's line—

"And Sedley cursed the form that pleased a king"—

was created Countess of Dorchester by James II., and subsequently married David Collyer, first Earl of Pontmore in Scotland. She died in 1692, having had by King James a natural daughter, to whom, by royal warrant, that monarch gave the rank and precedence of a duke's daughter; she was styled Lady Catherine Darnley, and married first, in October 1699, James, third Earl of Anglesey, from whom, on account of alleged cruelty on his part, she was separated by act of parliament in the following year. The earl died in 1701, and his widow married, secondly, in 1705, John Sheffield, first Duke of Normanby and Buckingham. She died on the 13th of March, 1743, and was interred with almost regal pomp in Westminster Abbey. By her first husband (the Earl of Anglesey) she had an only daughter, the Lady Catherine Annesley, married to Mr. William Phipps, father of the first Lord Mulgrave, and, consequently, great-grandfather of the present Marquis of Normanby, who on his recent elevation to that dignity, has, it appears, preferred to take one of the ducal titles of a nobleman from whom he does not descend, and of whose blood there does not flow a single drop in his veins, to the just assumption of the title of one from whom he does descend, and whose sole representative he undoubtedly is.

Of the Duchess of Buckingham's inordinate pride, there are some curious stories in Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann (sub anno 1743). But perhaps the most remarkable instance of it is to be found in a periodical paper called the British Champion, which was published at that time, and which is now not commonly to be met. In the No. for April 7, 1743, there is the following anecdote:—

"I have been informed that a lady of high rank, finding her end approaching, and feeling very uneasy apprehensions of this sort, came at length to a resolution of sending for a clergyman, of whom she had heard a very good character, in order to be satisfied as to some doubts. The first question she asked was whether in heaven (for she made no doubt of going thither) some respect would not be had to a woman of such birth and breeding? The good man, for such he really was, endeavoured to show her the weakness of this notion, and to convince her that there was, where she was going, no acceptance of persons, and much more to the same purpose. This the poor lady heard with much attention, and then said with a sigh, 'Well, if it be so, this heaven must be, after all, a strange sort of a place!'"

P. C. S. S. is unwilling to believe this painful story—the more so, as it must be recollected that the author of the paper was an inveterate Whig, and the Duchess (jure paterno) as inveterate a Jacobite.

    P. C. S. S.

SAN GRAIL

Sir Walter Scott, in his Marmion (Introduction to Canto First), writes of Sir Lancelot of the Lake, that—

"A sinful man and unconfessed,
He took the Sangreal's holy quest,
And slumbering saw the vision high
He might not view with waking eye."

In his note on this passage, he refers to the romance of the Morte Arthur, and says:

"One day when Arthur was holding a high feast with his Knights of the Round Table, the Sangreal, a vessel out of which the last Passover was eaten (a precious relic, which had long remained concealed from human eyes, because of the sins of the land), suddenly appeared to him and all his chivalry. The consequence of this vision was that all the knights took on them a solemn vow to seek the Sangreal."

The orthography of the word in the romance itself is Sancgreall, which affords us a clue to what I believe to be its true etymology, Sang réel (Sanguis realis), a name it derived from the tradition of its having been employed, not only to hold the paschal lamb at the Last Supper, but also by Joseph of Arimathea to catch the blood and water which flowed from the wounds of our Blessed Lord.

Archdeacon Nares, in his Glossary, pp. 209. 445., enters largely into the legendary history of the Sangreal, as well as the question of its orthography. He takes some pains to refute the etymology given above, and quotes Roquefort (Dict. de la Langue Romane) to prove that graal or greal signifies a broad open dish. Will any one who has the means of consulting Roquefort inform us, whether he brings forward any instance of the existence of such a word in this sense? or, if so employed, whether such use may not have arisen from the ordinary erroneous orthography? It is a question well worth investigation, which I hope may call some abler pens than mine into exercise.

This holy relic, the object of so much fruitless search to Arthur and his knights, is now safely deposited in the cathedral of Genoa, where all, holy or unholy, may behold it, on making the accustomed offering to its sanctity. Of old, it concealed itself from the eyes of all but those free from mortal sin; but now, the ability to pay five francs puts one in possession of every Christian virtue, and the Sacro Catino (as it is called) is exhibited on the payment of that sum. In addition to the authorities quoted by Nares, I would refer to Sir F. Palgrave, in Murray's Handbook to Northern Italy, 1st edition, p. 105.

    Sa. Ca.

The St. Graal (Vol. iii. p. 224.).—Your correspondent W. M. K. will find the subject of "the Sangreal's holy quest" treated in the late Mr. Price's elaborate preface to Warton's History of English Poetry (ed. 1840), p. 53; also an account of the MS. at C. C. C., Cambridge, in the same work, vol. i. p. 149.; and a reference to Walter Map's translation of the Latin romance of St. Graal into French, vol. ii. p. 416. See also Sismondi, Lit. of the South of Europe (Bohn, 1846), vol. i. p. 197., and note.

    H. G. T.

THE FROZEN HORN

(Vol. ii., p. 262. Vol. iii., p. 25.)

Your correspondent J. M. G. quotes Hudibras, p. i. c. i. l. 147.:

"Where truth in person does appear,
Like words congeal'd in northern air."

Zachary Grey does not, in his note, refer to Mandeville, but he says:

"See an explication of this passage, and a merry account of words freezing in Nova Zembla, Tatler, No. 254.; and Rabelais' account of the bloody fight of the Arimasphians and Nephelebites upon the confines of the Frozen Sea (vol. iv. c. 56. p. 229., Ozell's edit. 1737). To which Mr. John Done probably refers, in his panegyric upon T. Coryat, and his Crudities:

'It's not that French which made his giants see,
Those uncouth islands, where words frozen be,
Till by the thaw next year they've voice again."

    W. B. H.

Manchester.

J. M. G. quotes Sir John Mandeville for the story of the congealed words falling like hail from the rigging of his ship in the Arctic regions. I do not remember the passage, but there is one almost identical in Rabelais' Pantagruel, lib. iv. ch. lv., headed—

"Comment en haulte mer Pantagruel ouït diverses parolles desgelées."

In the notes to Bohn's translation it is said:

"Rabelais has borrowed these from the Courtisan of Balthasar de Castillon, of which a French translation was printed in 1539, and from the Apologues of Cælius Caleagnnius of Ferrara, published in 1544."

    W. J. Bernhard Smith.

Temple.

BAB AT THE BOWSTER

(Vol. ii., p. 517.)

Your correspondent Mac is mistaken when he says that no words are used in the Scottish dance of "Bab at the Bowster:" I have myself "babbed at the Bowster" within the last few years. Upon that occasion the words sung by the company while dancing round the individual bearing the "bowster" were—

"Wha learn'd you to dance,
You to dance, you to dance,
Wha learn'd you to dance
Bab at the bowster brawly?"

To which the "bowster-bearer" replies—

"My mither learned me to dance,