Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 | Page 6

lib. iv., in a paper which I contributed to the British Arch?ological Association.
FRAS. CROSSLEY.
[We will add two further illustrations of this passage of Chaucer, and the popular rhyme on which it is founded. The first is from Mr. Akerman's Glossary of Provincial Words and Phrases in Use in Wiltshire, where we read--
"When a child is stung, he plucks a dock-leaf, and laying it on the part affected, sings--
'Out 'ettle In dock Dock shall ha a new smock; 'Ettle zhant Ha' narrun.'"
Then follows a reference by Mr. Akerman to the passage in Troilus and Creseide.--Our second illustration is from Chaucer himself, who, in his Testament of Love (p. 482 ed. Urry), has the following passage:
"Ye wete well Ladie eke (quoth I), that I have not plaid raket, Nettle in, Docke out, and with the weathercocke waved."
Mr. Akerman's work was, we believe, published in {206} 1846; and, at all events, attention was called to these passages in the Athen?um of the l2th September in that year, No. 985.]
Soul separates from the Body.--In Vol. ii., p. 506., is an allusion to an ancient superstition, that the human soul sometimes leaves the body of a sleeping person and takes another form; allow me to mention that I remember, some forty years ago, hearing a servant from Lincolnshire relate a story of two travellers who laid down by the road-side to rest, and one fell asleep. The other, seeing a bee settle on a neighbouring wall and go into a little hole, put the end of his staff in the hole, and so imprisoned the bee. Wishing to pursue his journey, he endeavoured to awaken his companion, but was unable to do so, till, resuming his stick, the bee flew to the sleeping man and went into his ear. His companion then awoke him, remarking how soundly he had been sleeping, and asked what had he been dreaming of? "Oh!" said he, "I dreamt that you shut me up in a dark cave and I could not awake till you let me out." The person who told me the story firmly believed that the man's soul was in the bee.
F. S.
Lady's Trees.--In some parts of Cornwall, small branches of sea-weed, dried and fastened in turned wooden stands, are set up as ornaments on the chimney-piece, &c. The poor people suppose that they preserve the house from fire, and they are known by the name of "Lady's trees," in honour, I presume, of the Virgin Mary.
H. G. T.
Launceston.
Norfolk Folk Lore Rhymes.--I have met with the rhymes following, which may not be uninteresting to some of your readers as Folk Lore, Norfolk:--
"Rising was, Lynn is, and Downham shall be, The greatest seaport of the three."
Another version of the same runs thus:
"Risin was a seaport town, And Lynn it was a wash, But now Lynn is a seaport Lynn, And Rising fares the worst."
Also another satirical tradition in rhyme:
"That nasty stinking sink-hole of sin, Which the map of the county denominates Lynn."
Also:
"Caistor was a city ere Norwich was none, And Norwich was built of Caistor stone."
JOHN NURSE CHADWICK.
King's Lynn.
* * * * *
Minor Notes.
Note for the Topographers of Ancient London, and for the Monasticon.--
"Walter Grendon, Prior of the hospital of St John of Jerusalem, acknowledges to have received, by the hands of Robert Upgate and Ralph Halstede,--from Margaret, widow of S^r John Philippott K^t,--Thomas Goodlak and their partners,--4 pounds in full payment of arrears of all the rent due to us from their tenement called Jesoreshall in the city of London.
"Dated 1. December, 1406."
From the original in the Surrenden collection.
L. B. L.
Gray and Burns.--
"Authors, before they write, should read."
So thought Matthew Prior; and if that rule had been attended to, neither would Lord Byron have deemed it worth notice that "the knell of parting day," in Gray's Elegy, "was adopted from Dante;" nor would Mr. Cary have remarked upon "this plagiarism," if indeed he used the term. (I refer to "NOTES AND QUERIES," Vol. iii., p. 35.) The truth is, that in every good edition of Gray's Works, there is a note to the line in question, by the poet himself, expressly stating that the passage is "an imitation of the quotation from Dante" thus brought forward.
I could furnish you with various notes on Gray, pointing out remarkable coincidences of sentiment and expression between himself and other writers; but I cannot allow Gray to be a plagiary, any more than I can allow Burns to be so designated, in the following instances:--
At the end of the poem called The Vision, we find--
"And like a passing thought she fled."
In Hesiod we have--
"[Greek: ho d' eptato h?ste noêma.]"--Scut. Herc. 222.
Again, few persons are unacquainted with Burns's lines--
"Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, An' then she made," &c.
In an old play, Cupid's Whirligig (4to. 1607), we read--
"Man was made when