Notes and Queries, Number 30, May 25, 1850 | Page 2

Noble Essex gave Great Spenser's learned
reliques, such his grave: Howe'er ill-treated in his life he were, His
sacred bones rest honourably here."
How are these two epitaphs, with their differing dates, to be reconciled?
Can he have been born in 1510, as the first one says "obiit _immaturâ_
morte?" Now eighty-five is not very immature; and I believe he entered
at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1569, at which time he would be
fifty-nine, and that at a period when college education commenced at
an earlier age than now. Vertue's portrait, engraved 1727, takes as a
motto the last two lines of the first epitaph--"Anglica te vivo," &c.
E.N.W
Southwark, April 29 1850.
* * * * *
BORROWED THOUGHTS.
Crenius wrote a dissertation _De Furibus Librariis_, and J. Conrad
Schwarz another _De Plagio Literario_, in which some curious
appropriations are pointed out; your pages have already contained some
additional recent instances. The writers thus pillaged might exclaim,
"Pereant iste qui post nos nostra dixerunt." Two or three instances have
occurred to me which, I think, have not been noticed. Goldsmith's
Madame Blaize is known to be a free version of La fameuse La Galisse.
His well-known epigram,--
"Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed,"
is borrowed from the following by the Chevalier de Cailly (or d'Aceilly,
as he writes himself) entitled,--
"La Mort du Sieur Etienne.
"Il est au bout de ses travaux, Il a passé le Sieur Etienne; En ce monde
il eut tant des maux, Qu'on ne croit pas qu'il revienne."
Another well-know epigram,--
"I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,"
is merely a version of the 33d epigram of the first books of those by the

witty Roger de Bussy, Comte de Rabutin:--
"Je ne vous aime pas, Hylas, Je n'en saurois dire la cause, Je sais
seulement une chose; C'est que je ne vous aime pas."
Lastly, Prior's epitaph on himself has its prototype in one long
previously written by or for one John Carnegie:--
"Johnnie Carnegie lais heer, Descendit of Adam and Eve, Gif ony con
gang hieher, I'se willing gie him leve."
S.W. SINGER
* * * * *
FOLK LORE.
Easter Eggs (No. 25. p. 397.).--The custom recorded by Brande as
being in use in the North of England in his time, still continues in
Richmondshire.
A Cure for Warts is practised with the utmost faith in East Sussex. The
nails are cut, the cuttings carefully wrapped in paper, and placed in the
hollow of a pollard ash, concealed from the birds; when the paper
decays, the warts disappear. For this I can vouch: in my own case the
paper did decay, and the warts did all disappear, and, of course, the
effect was produced by the cause. Does the practice exist elsewhere?
_Charm for Wounds._--Boys, in his _History of Sandwich_, gives, (p.
690.) the following from the Corporation Records, 1568: a woman
examined touching her power to charm wounds who--
"Sayesth that she can charme for fyer and skalding in forme as oulde
women do, sayeng 'Owt fyer in frost, in the name of the Father, the
Sonne, and the Holly Ghost;' and she hath used when the skyn of
children do cleve fast, to advise the mother to annoynt them with the
mother's milk and oyle olyfe; and for skalding to take oyle olyfe only."
W. DURRANT COOPER.
_Fifth Son._--What is the superstition relating to a fifth son? I should
be glad of any illustrations of it. There certainly are instances in which
the fifth son has been the most distinguished scion of the family.
W.S.G.

_Cwn Wybir, or Cwn Annwn_--Curlews (No. 19. p. 294).--The late
ingenious and well-informed Mr. William Weston Young, then residing
in Glamorgan, gave me the following exposition of these mysterious
_Dogs of the Sky_, or _Dogs of the Abyss_, whose aërial cries at first
perplexed as well as startled him. He was in the habit of traversing wild
tracts of country, in his profession of land surveyor and often rode by
night. One intensely dark night he was crossing a desolate range of hills,
when he heard a most diabolical yelping and shrieking in the air,
horrible enough in such a region and at black midnight. He was not,
however, a superstitious man, and, being an observant naturalist, had
paid great attention to the notes of birds, and the remarkable variations
between the day and night notes of the same species. He suspected
these strange unearthly sounds to be made by some gregarious birds on
the wing; but {483} the darkness was impenetrable, and he gazed
upwards in vain. The noises, meanwhile, were precisely those which he
had heard ascribed to the _Cwn Wybir_, and would have been truly
appalling to a superstitious imagination. His quick ear at length caught
the rush of pinions, and, in