GREYSTEIL.

IV. of Scotland in 1497, still exists, and can now be forthcoming. The piece of music we refer to is included, under the name Greysteil, in Ane Playing Booke for the Lute, noted and collected at Aberdeen by Robert Gordon in 1627,' a manuscript which some years ago was in the possession of George Chalmers, the historian. The airs in this book being in tablature, a form of notation long out of use, it was not till about 1840 that the tune of Greysteil was with some difficulty read off from it, and put into modern notation, and so communicated to the writer of this notice by his valued friend Mr William Dauney, advocate, editor of the ancient Scottish melodies just quoted. Mr Dauney, in sending it, said, 'I have no doubt that it is in substance the air referred to in the Lord Treasurer's accounts. The ballad or poem to which it had been chanted, was most probably the popular romance of that name, which you will find in Mr Laing's Early Metrical Tales, and of which he says in the preface that, "along with the poems of Sir David Lyndsey, and the histories of Robert Bruce and of Sir William Wallace, it

GREYSTEIL.

formed the standard production of the vernacular literature of the country.". . . . The tune,' Mr Dauney goes on to say, 'is not Scottish in its structure or character; but it bears a resemblance to the somewhat monotonous species of chant to which some of the old Spanish and even English historical ballads were sung. In this respect it is suitable to the subject of the old romance, which is not Scottish." There is a serviceable piece of evidence for the presumed antiquity of the air, in the fact that a satirical Scotch poem on the unfortunate Earl of Argyle, dated 1686, bears on it, appointed to be sung to the tune of old Greysteil.' We must, however, acknowledge that, but for this proof of poetry being actually sung to Old Greysteil,' we should have been disposed to think that the tune here printed was only presented by the luters as a sort of prelude or refrain to their chanting of the metrical romance in question. The abruptness of the end is very remarkable.

The tune of Greysteil, for certain as old as 1627, and presumed to be traditional from at least 1497, is as follows:

p ே

GREYSTEIL.

BRING THEM IN.

When on the subject of so early a piece of Scotch music, it may not be inappropriate to advert to another specimen, which we can set forth as originally printed in 1588, being the oldest piece in print as far as we know. It is only a simple little lilt, designed for a homely dance, but still, from its comparative certain antiquity, is well worthy of preservation. Mr Douce has transferred it into his Illustrations of Shakspeare, from the book in which it originally appeared, a volume styled Orchesographie, professedly by Thionot Arbeau (in reality by a monk named Jean Tabouret), printed at Lengres in the

year above mentioned. He calls it a branle or brawl, which was performed by several persons uniting hands in a circle and giving each other continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. It usually consisted of three pas and a pied-joint to the time of four strokes of the bow; which being repeated, was termed a double brawl. With this dance balls were usually opened.'

The copy given in the original work being in notation scarcely intelligible to a modern musician, we have had it read off and harmonised as follows:

BRING THEM IN AND KEEP THEM AWAKE.

On the 17th April 1725, John Rudge bequeathed to the parish of Trysull, in Staffordshire, twenty shillings a year, that a poor man might be employed to go about the church during sermon and keep the people awake; also to keep dogs out of church. A bequest by Richard Dovey, of Farmcote, dated in 1659, had in view the payment of eight shillings annually to a poor man, for the performance of the same duties in the church of Claverley, Shropshire. In the parishes of Chislet, Kent, and Peterchurch, Herefordshire, there are similar provisions for the exclusion of dogs from church, and at Wolverhampton there is one of five shillings for keeping boys quiet in time of service.*

We do not find any very early regulations made to secure the observance of festivals among Christians. A solicitude on the subject becomes apparent in the middle ages. Early in the thirteenth century, we meet with a document of a curious nature, the principal object of which is to awaken a reverence for the Lord's day. It professes to be a mandate which fell from heaven, and was found on the altar of *Edwards's Remarkable Charities, 220.

St Simon, on Mount Golgotha, in Jerusalem,' and humbly taken by the patriarch, and the Archbishop Akarias, after that for three days and three nights the people, with their pastors, had lain prostrate on the ground, imploring the mercy of God.' A copy of it was brought to England by Eustachius, abbot of Hay; who, on his return from the Holy Land, preached from city to city against the custom of buying and selling on the Sunday. If you do not obey this command,' says this celestial message, verily, I say unto you, that I will not send you any other commands by another letter, but I will open the heavens, and instead of rain I will pour down upon you stones and wood, and hot water by night; so that ye shall not be able to guard against it, but I will destroy all the wicked men. This I say unto you; ye shall die the death, on account of the holy day of the Lord; and of the other festivals of my saints which ye do not keep, I will send upon you wild beasts to devour you,' &c.

Yet the sacredness of the day had been attested by extraordinary interpositions of divine power. At Beverley, a carpenter who was making a peg, and a weaver who continued to work at his web after three o'clock on the

Saturday, were severally struck with palsy. In Nasurta, a village which belonged to one Roger Arundel, a man who had baked a cake in the ashes after the same hour, found it bleed when he tried to eat it on Sunday, and a miller who continued to work his mill was arrested by the blood which flowed from between the stones, in such quantity as to prevent their working; while in some places, not named, in Lincolnshire, bread put by a woman into a hot oven after the forbidden hour, remained unbaked on the Monday; when another piece, which by the advice of her husband she put away in a cloth, because the ninth hour was past, she found baked on the morrow. (Notes to Feasts and Fasts, by E. V. Neale.)

Leland presents evidence of the same kind of feeling in a story told of Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, by annalists, to this effect. In the year 1260, a Jew of Tewkesbury fell into a sink on the Sabbath, and out of reverence for the day, would not suffer himself to be drawn out; the earl, out of reverence for the Sunday, would not permit him to be drawn out the next day, and between the two he died.

By the 5th and 6th Edward VI., and by 1st Elizabeth, it was provided, that every inhabitant of the realm or dominion shall diligently and faithfully, having no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent, endeavour themselves to their parish church or chapel accustomed; or, upon reasonable let, to some usual place where common prayer shall be used,-on Sundays and holidays, -upon penalty of forfeiting for every nonattendance twelve pence, to be levied by the churchwardens to the use of the poor. But the application of these provisions to the attendance upon other holidays than Sundays, seems to have been soon dropped. The statute of James I., re-enacting the penalty of one shilling for default in attendance at church, is limited to Sundays; and the latter day alone is mentioned in the Acts of William and Mary, and George III., by which exceptions in favour of dissenters from the Church of England were introduced.

As the statute of James applied solely to Sundays, there was no civil punishment left for this neglect; though it remained punishable, under the 5th and 6th of Edward VI., by ecclesiastical censures. Mr Vansittart Neale, in his Feasts and Fasts, however, cites several cases which appear to settle that the ecclesiastical courts had not the power to compel any person to attend his parish church, because they have no right to decide the bounds of parishes.

There were, however, from time to time, suits commenced against individuals for this neglect of attendance at church; these actions being generally instigated by personal motives rather than with religious feeling. Professor Amos, in his Treatise on Sir Matthew Hale's History of the Pleas of the Crown, states the following cases: In the year 1817, at the Spring Assizes for Bedford, Sir Montague Burgoyne was prosecuted for having been absent from his parish church for several months; when the action was defeated by proof of the defendant having been indisposed. And in the Report of Prison Inspectors to the House of Lords, in 1841, it appeared, that in

LORD CHANCELLOR JEFFREYS.

A

1830, ten persons were in prison for recusancy in not attending their parish churches. mother was prosecuted by her own son.' These enactments remained in our Statute-book, until, in common with many other penal and disabling laws in regard to religious opinions, they were swept away by the statute 9th and 10th Vict., c. 59.

It also appears that in old times many individuals considered it their duty to set aside part of their worldly wealth for keeping the congregation awake. Some curious provisions were made for this purpose. At Acton church in Cheshire, about five and twenty years ago, one of the churchwardens or the apparitor used to go round the church during service, with a long wand in his hand; and if any of the congregation were asleep, they were instantly awoke by a tap on the head. At Dunchurch, a similar custom existed: a person bearing a stout wand, shaped liked a hay fork at the end, stepped stealthily up and down the nave and aisle, and, whenever he saw an individual asleep, he touched him so effectually that the spell was broken; this being sometimes done by fitting the fork to the nape of the neck.

We read of the beadle in another church, going round the edifice during service, carrying a long staff, at one end of which was a fox's brush, and at the other a knob; with the former he gently tickled the faces of the female sleepers, while on the heads of their male compeers he bestowed with the knob a sensible rap.

In some parishes, persons were regularly appointed to whip dogs out of church; and dogwhipping' is a charge in some sexton's accounts to the present day.

London; John Fox, author of The Acts and Monuments of Died.-John Leland, eminent English antiquary, 1552,

troversialist, 1610, Rome; Sir Symonds D'Ewes, collector the Church, 1587, London; Robert Parsons, Jesuit conof English historical records, 1650; George Lord Jeffreys, Chancellor of England, 1689, Tower of London; Alexandre Lainez, French poet, 1710; Charles Pratt, Earl Camden, Chancellor of England 1766-1770, statesman, 1794; Dr Erasmus Darwin, poet, 1802, Breadsall ; John Abernethy, eminent surgeon, 1831.

LORD CHANCELLOR JEFFREYS.

As even Nero had some one to strew flowers over his grave, so was there a bard who found the notorious Jeffreys worthy of a gratulatory ode on his acceding to the Chief Justiceship. It appears in a broadside, dated October 23, 1683, and is wholly composed of panegyric. The circumstance becomes the more remarkable as the effusion is in Latin verse, arguing that the author was a man of good education. It ends with—

ERASMUS DARWIN.

Erasmus Darwin, poet and physician, was born at Elton, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire. From his early youth, he was inclined to the easily enjoyed pleasures of the imagination, rather than to the hard-earned rewards of scientific studies. The following anecdote shews how open to vivid impressions his mind was in youth. Journeying from Newark, to enter upon his collegiate education at Cambridge, he rested for the night at the house of two old bachelor brothers. They were delighted with the vivacity of the young student, and were rendered by it so painfully sensible that they were childless and solitary, that he heard one say regretfully to the other, Why did not one of us marry!' The tone and the circumstances never allowed that sentence to fade from Darwin's memory, and it was the origin of that strong condemnation of an unmarried life, which for ever afterwards he was so ready to utter. In due course, Darwin graduated in medicine at Cambridge; but even there he distinguished himself more by poetic exercises than proficiency in science. Indeed, he never attained to any particular eminence as a physician, and would now be completely forgotten were it not for his principal poem, The Loves of the Plants. This work formed part only of a poem entitled The Botanic Garden, in which the physiology and classification of the vegetable world is related in high-sounding, but not unmelodious verse, and illustrated with many notes amusing, though not profound. The digressions are many, and the flights of imagination widely discursive. These flights are not always characterised by scientific accuracy, but reach the extreme limits of poetic frenzy. One, however, as a prognostication of steam-vessels and locomotive engines, has become among the most hackneyed quotations in our language

'Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car.' The Loves of the Plants had a great popularity in its day, but was at last snuffed out by the able but severe burlesque, The Loves of the Triangles.

Darwin had often expressed a hope that the termination of his life might come to him without pain, for he ever esteemed pain as a much greater evil than death. The hope was realized; complaining of cold, he seated himself by the fire, and died in a few minutes, without pain or emotion.

FOLK LORE OF NAIL-CUTTING. A man had better ne'er been born Than have his nails on a Sunday shorn. Cut them on Monday, cut them for health; Cut them on Tuesday, cut them for wealth; Cut them on Wednesday, cut them for news; Cut them on Thursday, for a pair of new shoes; *Luttrel Collection of Broadsides, Brit. Mus.

ST ELPHEGE.

Cut them on Friday, cut them for sorrow;
Cut them on Saturday, see your sweetheart to-

morrow.

Sir Thomas Browne remarks: To cut nails upon a Friday or a Sunday is accounted lucky amongst the common people in many places. The set and statutory times of paring nails and cutting hair is thought by many a point of consideration, which is perhaps but the continuation of an ancient superstition. To the Romans it was piacular to pare their nails upon the nundina, observed every ninth day,' &c.

APRIL 19.

St Ursmar, bishop and abbot, 713. St Elphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, martyr, 1012. St Leo IX., Pope, 1054.

THE MARTYRDOM OF ST ELPHEGE.

The Danes, emboldened by success, had determined at no distant time to conquer England; and, as a measure of precaution, to anticipate any league that might be formed against them, they resolved on the murder of the king and Witan. Their plan was disclosed, and Ethelred and his nobles, panic-struck and frenzied, took refuge in the last resource of cowards, assassination. Orders were secretly sent over the country to exterminate the Danes, who were billeted on the different Anglo-Saxon families, on the next St Brice's Day, Nov. 13, 1002. A massacre ensued which only finds a parallel in the Sicilian Vespers, the atrocities of St Bartholomew's Day, and the barbarism of the French Revolution. The Danes vowed revenge, and for years after kept their vow with desolating rigour.

Under these circumstances, Elphege became Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 1006. He was an enthusiastic Benedictine monk. It is told of him that, in winter, he would rise at midnight, and, issuing unseen from his house, kneel, exposed to the night air while praying, barefoot, and without his great coat. Flesh he never touched, except on extraordinary occasions; his body was so attenuated, that, it is said, when he held up his hand,

'It was so wan, and transparent of hue,

You might have seen the moon shine through.' the second time, before Canterbury, and prepared In 1011, the marauding Danes appeared, for for an assault. The nobles fled; but the good old archbishop buckled on his spiritual armour, in one who had hitherto displayed only the virtues and shewed a vigour of mind but little expected they, encouraged by his example, for twenty of the recluse. He exhorted the citizens; and day's successfully repelled the assaults of the enemy. How the contest would have ended it is impossible to say, had not the city been betrayed by one Elmar. While the plunder was going on with every circumstance of cruelty, the archbishop, trusting that his person would be respected, resolved to address the Danes, in the hope of moderating their excesses. arrived at a spot where the carnage and cruelty were beyond all description. Women were exposed to worse than death, because they could

He

not reveal the hiding-place of treasures which did not exist; and their children were tossed from spear-point to spear-point before their eyes, amid the laughter of incarnate fiends, or crushed beneath the waggon-wheels which bore away the plunder. Eloquent from very anguish of heart, Elphege called upon them not to make war upon infants, and offered himself for death if they would but respect the women and spare the children. Instead of yielding to his entreaties, the Danes seized him, bound him, and by a refinement of cruelty dragged him to witness the destruction of his cathedral by fire. He knew that the church was filled with defenceless clergy; monks, and women. As the falling timbers and streams of melted lead drove them from the

sanctuary, they were butchered amid shouts and merriment. Then to vary the sport, every tenth person was spared to become a slave. The archbishop himself was spared, his ransom being considered more profitable than his death. For seven months he was carried about with the army wherever they went, kept a close prisoner, and often in chains. On the day before Easter, he received notice that unless his ransom were paid within eight days-and it was fixed at 3,000 pieces of silver-his life would be forfeited. Paid it was not, and the anger of the Danes became excessive. At one of their feasts, when the men had gorged themselves, as was their fashion, and drunk themselves half mad with south-country wine, the archbishop was sent for to make them sport. Money, bishop, money!' was the cry which greeted him on all sides, as he was hurried into the hall. Breathless from fatigue, he sat down for a short time in silence. 'Money, money!' was still the cry. 'Your ransom, bishop, your ransom!' Having recovered his breath, the archbishop rose with dignity, and all were silent to hear if he would promise money for his ransom. 'Silver and gold,' he said, 'have I none; what is mine to give I freely offer, the knowledge of the one true God.' Here some one snatched up one of the ox-bones with which the floor was plentifully strewed, and threw it at the defenceless old man. Amid shouts of laughter, the cowardly example was followed, till he sank, severely bruised, but not dead. Some one standing near-it is said in pity for the sufferings of Elphege-raised his battle-axe, and with one blow ended his mortal agony. From a feeling of remorse, the body was given up to his friends, without ransom, for burial, and was first interred in London with great pomp; and then, only ten years after, conveyed in the barge of a Danish king, and attended by a Danish guard of honour, to Canterbury, and deposited by the side of the illustrious Dunstan.

Born.-Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth, naval commander, 1757.

Died.-King Robert II. of Scotland, 1390, Dundonald Castle, Ayrshire; Philip Melancthon, German Protestant scholar, 1560, Wittemburg; Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, poet, Lord Treasurer of England, 1608; Queen Christina, of Sweden, 1689, Rome; Jean Gallois, French scholar and critic, 1707; Nicolas Saunderson, blind scholar and mathematician, 1739, Boxworth; Dr Richard Price, calculator, 1791, Hackney; George, Lord Byron,

LORD BYRON.

poet, 1824, Missolonghi, Greece; John Carne, miscellaneous writer, 1844, Penzance; Professor Robert Jameson, naturalist, 1854, Edinburgh.

QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN.

Gustavus Adolphus, the heroic king of Sweden, was succeeded at his death in 1632 by his daughter Christina. This princess, having reigned as gloriously as her father had fought, having presided at the treaty of Westphalia, which gave peace to Germany, astonished Europe by abdiIt was cating at the age of twenty-seven. certainly a strange event, yet one that might not had the weakness to repent of it. have been discreditable to her, if she had not

The design of Queen Christina in quitting the Swedish throne was that she might have freedom eight languages; she had been the disciple of to gratify her taste for the fine arts. She knew Descartes, who died in her palace at Stockholm. She had cultivated all the arts in a climate where they were then unknown. She wished to live amongst them in Italy. With this view, she resolved also to accommodate her religion to her new country, and became a Roman Catholic.

Self-denying and self-repudiating acts do not always leave the character the sweeter. It is fully admitted that Christina was not improved by descending into private life. There remains one terrible stain upon her memory, the murder of her equerry, Monaldeschi, which she caused to be perpetrated in a barbarous manner in her France. During the thirty-five years of her own presence, during her second journey in ex-queenship, her conduct was marked by many eccentricities, the result of an almost insane vanity.

LORD BYRON.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, born in London, January 22nd, 1788, the chief of the English poets of his day-endowed with rank, fortune, brilliant intellect, fed full of literary fame, an object of intense interest to the mass of enlightened society, what more seemed necessary to make an enviable fate? and yet, as we all know, no man seemed in his time more unhappy -perhaps really was so. An explanation of all this is only to be found in some elements of his own nature. He was, we must remember, the son of a man of almost insane profligacy, by a woman whose violent temper often appeared to approach frenzy. The genius of Byron was as much distemper as ability.

He was unlucky in a congenital malformation of the limbs, which he could only conceal by careful padding; it was such a defect as a man of well-balanced mind would have been little affected by. With him, we may fear, it was a source of misanthropical bitterness, poisoning all led him into a marriage, which proved another the springs of happiness. Early extravagances source of misery, not from any demerit in his partner, for she was in reality an excellent woman, but from the want of congeniality between the pair. Twelve months after the union, one only after the birth of a daughter, Lady Byron formed the resolution of separating from him, his conduct being such that only on the supposition of his insanity (which her lawyers negatived), could