Notes and Queries, Number 39, July 27, 1850 | Page 3

moss growing on the skull of a dead man (pulled
as small as you can with the fingers)."
Another enlarges on the virtue of
"A little bag containing some powder of toads calcined, so that the bag
lay always upon the pit of the stomach next the skin, and presently it
took away all pain as long as it hung there but if you left off the bag the
pain returned. A bag continueth in force but a month after so long time
you must wear a fresh one."
This, he says, a "person of credit" told him.
HENRY CAMPKIN.
Reform Club, June 21. 1850.
_Cure for Ague._--One of my parishioners, suffering from ague, was
advised to catch a large spider and shut him up in a box. As he pines
away, the disease is supposed to wear itself out.
B.
L---- Rectory, Somerset, July 8. 1850.
_Eating Snakes a Charm for growing young._--I send you the
following illustrations of this curious receipt for growing young.
Perhaps some of your correspondents will furnish me with some others,
and some additional light on the subject. Fuller says,--
"A gentlewoman told an ancient batchelour, who looked _very young_,
that she thought _he had eaten a snake_: 'No, mistris,' (said he), 'it is
because I never {131} meddled with any snakes which maketh me look
so young.'"--_Holy State_, 1642, p. 36.
He hath left off o' late to _feed on snakes_; His beard's turned white
again.
_Massinger, Old Law_, Act v. Sc. 1.
"He is your loving brother, sir, and will tell nobody But all he meets,
that you have eat a _snake_, And are grown young, gamesome, and
rampant."
_Ibid, Elder Brother_, Act iv. Sc. 4.
JARLTZBERG.
* * * * *
LONG MEG OF WESTMINSTER.

Mr. Cunningham, in his Handbook of London (2nd edition, p. 540.),
has the following passage, under the head of "Westminster Abbey:"
"_Observe._--Effigies in south cloister of several of the early abbots;
large blue stone, uninscribed, (south cloister), marking the grave of
Long Meg of Westminster, a noted virago of the reign of Henry VIII."
This amazon is often alluded to by our old writers. Her life was printed
in 1582; and she was the heroine of a play noticed in Henslowe's
_Diary_, under the date February 14, 1594. She also figured in a ballad
entered on the Stationers' books in that year. In _Holland's Leaguer_,
1632, mention is made of a house kept by Long Meg in Southwark:--
"It was out of the citie, yet in the view of the citie, only divided by a
delicate river: there was many handsome buildings, and many hearty
neighbours, yet at the first foundation it was renowned for nothing so
much as for the memory of that famous amazon _Longa Margarita_,
who had there for many yeeres kept a famous infamous house of open
hospitality."
According to Vaughan's _Golden Grove_, 1608,--
"Long Meg of Westminster kept alwaies twenty courtizans in her house,
whom, by their pictures, she sold to all commers."
From these extracts the occupation of Long Meg may be readily
guessed at. Is it then likely that such a detestable character would have
been buried amongst "goodly friars" and "holy abbots" in the cloisters
of our venerable abbey? I think not: but I leave considerable doubts as
to whether Meg was a real personage.--Query. Is she not akin to Tom
Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Doctor Rat, and a host of others of the
same type?
The stone in question is, I know, on account of its great size, jokingly
called "Long Meg, of Westminster" by the vulgar; but no one, surely,
before Mr. Cunningham, ever seriously supposed it to be her
burying-place. Henry Keefe, in his _Monumenta Westmonasteriensa_,
1682, gives the following account of this monument:--
"That large and stately plain black marble stone (which is vulgarly
known by the name of _Long Meg of Westminster_) on the north side
of Laurentius the abbot, was placed there for _Gervasius de Blois_,
another abbot of this monastery, who was base son to King Stephen,
and by him placed as a monk here, and afterwards made abbot, who
died anno 1160, and was buried under this stone, having this distich

formerly thereon:
"_De regnum genere pater hic Gervasius ecce Monstrat defunctus, mors
rapit omne genus_."
Felix Summerly, in his _Handbook for Westminster Abbey_, p. 29.,
noticing the cloisters and the effigies of the abbots, says,--
"Towards this end there lies a large slab of blue marble, which is called
'Long Meg' of Westminster. Though it is inscribed to Gervasius de
Blois, abbot, 1160 natural son of King Stephen, he is said to have been
buried under a small stone, and tradition assigns 'Long Meg' as the
gravestone of twenty-six monks, who were carried off by the plague in
1349, and buried