Notes and Queries, Number 39, July 27, 1850. Various
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.
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 together in one grave."
The tradition here recorded may be correct. At any rate, it carries with it more plausibility than that recorded by Mr. Cunningham.
[Some additional and curious allusions to this probably mythic virago are recorded in Mr. Halliwell's Descriptive Notices of Popular English Histories, printed for the Percy Society.]
A NOTE ON SPELLING.—"SANATORY," "CONNECTION."
I trust that "NOTES AND QUERIES" may, among many other benefits, improve spelling by example as well as precept. Let me make a note on two words that I find in No. 37.: sanatory, p. 99., and connection, p. 98.
Why "sanatory laws?" Sanare is to cure, and a curing-place is, if you like, properly called sanatorium. But the Latin for health is sanitas, and the laws which relate to health should be called sanitary.
Analogy leads us to connexion, not connection; plecto, plexus, complexion; flecto, flexus, inflexion; necto, nexus, connexion, &c.; while the termination ction belongs to words derived from Latin verbs whose passive participles end in ctus as lego, lectus, collection; injecio, injectus, injection; seco, sectus, section, &c.
Minor Notes
Pasquinade on Leo XII.—The Query put to a Pope (Vol. ii., p. 104.), which it is difficult to believe could be put orally, reminds me of Pope Leo XII., who was reported, whether truly or not, to have been the reverse of scrupulous in the earlier part of his life, but was remarkably strict after he became Pope, and was much disliked at Rome, perhaps because, by his maintenance of strict discipline, he abridged the amusements and questionable indulgences of the people. On account of his death, which took place just before the time of the carnival in 1829, the usual festivities were omitted, which gave occasion to the following pasquinade, which was much, though privately, circulated—
"Tre cose mat fecesti, O Padre santo:
Accettar il papato,
Viver tanto,
Morir di Carnivale
Per destar pianto."
Shakspeare a Brass-rubber.—I am desirous to notice, if no commentator has forestalled me, that Shakspeare, among his many accomplishments, was sufficiently beyond his age to be a brass-rubber:
"What's on this tomb
I cannot read; the character I'll take with wax."
Timon of Athens, v. 4.
From the "soft impression," however, alluded to in the next scene, his "wax" appears rather to have been the forerunner of gutta percha than of heel-ball.
California.—In the Voyage round the World, by Captain George Shelvocke, begun Feb. 1719, he says of California (Harris's Collection, vol. i. p. 233.):—
"The soil about Puerto, Seguro, and very likely in most of the valleys, is a rich black mould, which, as you turn it fresh up to the sun, appears as if intermingled with gold dust; some of which we endeavoured to purify and wash from the dirt; but though we were a little prejudiced against the thoughts that it could be possible that this metal should be so promiscuously and universally mingled with common earth, yet we endeavoured to cleanse and wash the earth from some of it; and the more we did the more it appeared like gold. In order to be further satisfied I brought away some of it, which we lost in our confusion in China."
How an accident prevented the discovery, more than a century back, of the golden harvest now gathering in California!
Southwark.
Mayor of Misrule and Masters of the Pastimes.—the word Maior of Misrule appears in the Harl. MSS. 2129. as having been on glass in the year 1591, in Denbigh Church.
"5 Edw. VI., a gentleman (Geo. Ferrars), lawyer, poet, and historian, appointed by the Council, and being of better calling than commonly his predecessors, received his commission by the name of 'Master of the King's Pastimes.'"—Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, 340.
"1578. Edward Baygine, cursitor, clerk for writing and passing the Queen's leases, 'Comptroller of the Queen's pastimes and revels,' clerk comptroller of her tents and pavilions, commissioner of sewers, burgess in Parliament."—Gwillim, Heraldry, 1724 edit.
Roland