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ABERDEENSHIRE BENEFACTIONS.

Affixed to the kirk-yard wall of Foot Dee or Futtec, in Aberdeen, is the following record of the liberality of a descendant of the heroic Sir Robert Davidson, "provost of braif Aberdeen," who fell at the battle of Harlaw in

1411.

GEORGE DAVIDSONE ELDER BVRGES OF ABD.

BIGIT THIS DYK ON HIS OVIN EXPENSES, 1650. Below are the arms of Davidson, a fess, three peons in chief, a stag lodged in base, and the initials G. D.

In Monteith's Theater of Mortality, and in all subsequent works in which this inscription has been noticed, the reading is erroneously rendered thus:

George Davidsone elder civis aberdonensis,

biggit thir church-yard dyke upon his own expenses. George Davidson, proprietor of the lands of Pettens and Bogfairlie in Belhelvy, distinguished himself by other acts of munificence for the public good. Besides building the kirk-yard wall of Futtee, he erected and endowed the church of Newhills, built the bridge of Bruxburn, and endowed several schools, these benefactions being wholly in Aberdeenshire. bachelor in 1663.

Brechin, Sept. 3.

CROFT'S MUSICA SACRA,

He died a A. J.

SPES ET FORTUNA VALETE.

The following monumental inscriptions are based upon the sentiments embodied in the old Greek epigram, recently noticed in Current Notes. The first is in the chancel of Mickleham church, Surrey.

Here lyeth buried under this stone the Body of John Stydolf, Esq. which deceased the 8th day of May, in the Yere of our Lord, a thousand five hundred seventy-six. Inveni portum, spes et fortuna valete, Nil mihi vobiscum, ludite nunc alios. Quocumque ingrederitur, sequitur mors Corporis umbram. The other, is at Kingston-upon-Thames. Lata locus mihi porta necis sic porta valeto: Lata per angustam non placet ire viam. Intravi angustam (si fas sit dicere) portam, Porta vale, (fas sit dicere,) lata vale. Inveni portum letum, dum lata per orbem Non via nec firmum porta decere locum. The foregoing are copied literatim. Hawkshead, Sept. 5.

FREDERICK THE GREAT.

D. B. H.

IN Current Notes, 1854, p. 18, a former correspondent has forwarded some interesting particulars of the dispersion of Frederick the Great's scanty wardrobe, and as early Exhibition Bills, are generally deemed matters of curiosity, I enclose the following. Oxford, Sept. 8. J. M. B.

Lowndes in his Bibliographer's Manual, p. 511, to the notice of Dr. Croft's Musica Sacra, or Select An- THE Nobility, Gentry, and the Public in

thems in score, 1724, folio, appends this remark :

general, are hereby respectfully informed, that the THREE CELEBRATED FIGURES, (which are made in the original mould taken off the real face of the late Illustrious KING of PRUSSIA, Will be Sold by Auction,

A splendid edition published by subscription. The first work that was stamped on pewter plates, and in score. This work published anonymously, contains the words of Select Anthems used in the Chapel Royal, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, etc., with a Preface containing a short Account On SATURDAY, the 19th instant, at two o'clock, at No. 4, of our Church Music, and an Encomium on Tallis and Bird.

The bibliographer is here wholly in error. The work is engraved not stamped on pewter plates, the claim is only that of its being the first collection of Church music so produced-types having been previously used for that purpose. The Musica Sacra consists of Anthems, with the music in score, wholly composed by Dr. Croft; the reference therefore to the anonymously published words of Select Anthems, without the Music, attributed as editor to Dr. Croft, is wholly to a different work, thus entitled:

Divine Harmony; or a New Collection of Select Anthems used at Her Majesty's Chappels Royal, Westminster Abbey, St. Pauls, Windsor, both Universities, Eaton, and most Cathedrals in Her Majesty's Dominions. Designed for the use of such as attend Choir Service, etc. Printed and sold by S. Keble, at the Turk's Head in Fleet Street, 1712, 8vo.

The Preface noticed by Lowndes, and the Encomium on Tallis and Bird, are prefixed to this volume, not to the Musica Sacra, 1724. EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

By Mr. CHRISTIE,

Cockspur-street,

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[OCTOBER, 1855.

No. LVIII.]

"Takes note of what is done

By note, to give and to receive."-SHAKESPEARE.

NUREMBERG MASK FOR PUNISHMENT.

HAVING in previous numbers of Current Notes given several illustrations of the former uses of implements of punishment and torture, as applied to females under the appellation of Branks or Scold's-bridles; the following may possibly afford some interest, from its having been in the olden time chiefly employed for the correction of minor offences committed by men, by exciting ridicule against the wearer; and for such purpose was frequently placed on the heads of soldiers for breaches of discipline.

It is formed of bands of iron, which fold over the head and are fastened behind by a padlock. A pair of asses ears are placed on the sides, and spectacles attached to the face; a double plate closes over the mouth, and a whistle passes up the nostril, which, should the wearer attempt to speak, produces a loud sound. The mask is painted in flesh colour, the eyebrows and ears are shaded with dark grey, and a mouth is delineated upon the plate covering the lower part of the face.

During the last year it was obtained from the old castle at Nuremberg by Mr. Fairholt, and from him has passed to Lord Londesborough. It is engraved in the recently published sixth part of the Miscellanea Graphica, an admirably conducted work, devoted to the illustration of Lord Londesborough's Collection of Antiquities, and which the Editor would unequivocally yet respectfully commend to the reader's notice.

VOL. V.

SCHOLA SALERNITANA.

Current Notes on the question to whom the Schola Much interested with the various contributions to Salernitana was really dedicated, I have been greatly pleased to find the subject, though medical, has been for a mere trifle an old edition of the Aphorisms of one of general interest. Some years since, I purchased Hippocrates, with comments on Galen, Heurnius, and Fuchsius, having bound in the same volume, an early which, on examination are some verses, which do not manuscript translation of the Schola Salernitana, in appear in any printed copy to which I have had access. I have the translation by the famous Dr. Philemon Holland, 1617, and a similar one dated 1609. I have also referred to Sir Alexander Croke's and to other editions. At this moment, the most interesting portion are the introductory lines, which in my opinion settles the question as to the "England's King," noticed iminediately after, in the leading verse of the poem :

This worke yclept the flowre of Medicine,
Compilde at first in verses Leonine,

By Iohn of Millaine, Doctor of Salerne;

But by th' whole colledge as yr great concerne
Was dedicate to Robert heire o' the crowne

Of England, (thogh Henry helde it as his own ;)
On his return from conquerde Palestine,

Th' eleven hundredth yeare of Xt divine.

Dr. Friend, in his History of Medicine, states this work was compiled about the year 1100, and made so great a noise in that and succeeding ages as to be thought worthy the comments of Arnoldus de Villa Nova. After all, the ancients like the moderns worshipped the rising characters of the age, and it is therefore not at all improbable, that it was at first dedicated to EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, as he had the repute of admiring foreign in preference to native talent, and on every opportunity proved that partiality; but that after his death, when Robert the son of William the Conqueror, on his way from Palestine sought refuge in Salerno, it is natural to suppose that the eldest son of a powerful monarch, and one who had honoured their college by consulting the professors on the subject of his own ailments, would afford occasion for the dedicatory lines to him. This conjecture is further confirmed by the additional verses on Fistula, to which complaint it is said Duke Robert was then subject.

An imitation of this poem was written by Ægidius, archiater to Philip Augustus, at the close of the Twelfth century. This Ægidius was a Benedictine monk, and his subject, the Virtues of Medicines, and on Urines and Pulse, in hexameter verses without regard to syllables;

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he calls Galen and Constantine too prolix, and Philare- | Tenth Century, and frequented by patients from France tus too short.

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EDWARD THE FIRST, THE REX ANGLORUM." After the lapse of so many ages, it is extremely difficult, or rather impossible to determine who was the Rex Anglorum noticed in John of Milan's curious medical work entitled Schola Salernitana. History is totally silent on the subject; to name therefore any particular king, as the patron of that once celebrated school, can only be a matter of conjecture.

and Spain, although Tiraboschi doubts the fact; Bossi however in support of his assertion, refers to Vitalis, a writer of the Twelfth Century, who affirms that that school was established two centuries before his time. What follows will best appear in his own words, and will correct a former erroneous conjecture of mine.

Gratuita è pure l'asserzione del Tiraboschi, che quella scuola molto dovesse alle opere di Costantino Africano; come è assai dubbio il fatto, ammesso anche dal Giannone, che risvegliato fosse in quella città ed in que' popoli lo studio della medicina a cagione dei molti libri di quell' arte in quelle provincie recati dai Saraceni, etc. Della scuola Salernitana sono tuttora celebri i precetti per conservare la sanità, indi

rizzati al Re d Inghilterra, o forse a Roberto di Normandia, pretendente a quella corona; e come giù da me si accennò nel § 4. compilati furono que' precetti in versi da Maestro Giovanni da Milano, detto dottore egregio di medicina, come da un antico codice si raccoglie.

The circumstances mentioned in favour of Duke In a former numer of Current Notes, p. 60, I men- Salerno, are not supported by any recorded fact in History; Robert's claim as the patron of the medical school of tioned Edward the Confessor solely on the authority of on the contrary, they seem to point to King EDWARD two eminent and indefatigable antiquaries and historians, THE FIRST, as the "Rex Anglorum,' the intended Royal Muratori and Gibbon; but having now carefully considered the subject, I do not find any historical fact to May, 1270, and thence passed through France, Italy and personage. Prince Edward embarked at Portsmouth, in favour either Muratori's conjecture, or Tiraboschi's as-Sicily, on his way to Palestine. On June 17, in the folsertion. The latter cites a manuscript which he appears never to have seen, stating actually, as he says, that the work in question was addressed to Robert the Second, Duke of Normandy-di fatto al Re Roberto indiritta. He does not quote directly from the manuscript, but from the Catal. Cod. MSS., Bibl. Regiæ Paris., Vol. IV.

page 294, where he found the title

6941. Salernitana Scholæ Versus ad Regem Rober-in

tum.

The compiler of the Catalogue was doubtless led into error by the romancing preface of Zacharie Dubois, or, Zacharias Sylvius, as he designates himself in the Paris edition of 1627. The statement also, that Guaimar, prince of Salerno, invited the Normans into Italy, is a pure fiction, as this prince's eyes were put out in 896. I Normanni,' i e. the Danes and Norwegians had invaded Italy so early as the time of Charlemagne, about 812; but the descendants of Rollo and his followers, the Normans, properly so called, who with their swords made their way into Apulia and afterwards into Sicily, did not obtain any footing in Italy prior to 1008. Their history, and that of Tancred and his twelve sons, and especially of his third son, Robert Guiscard, is too long to be inserted here. Rollo himself was not settled in Normandy before the year 912.

Bossi, who in his elaborate and learned work, the Istoria d'Italia Antica e Moderna, printed in 19 volumes, 1819-23, 8vo., continually cites Muratori, Giannone, and Tiraboschi, and frequently notices the School of Salerno, makes no mention whatever of the words 'Versus ad

Regem Robertum,' said to be seen ipso facto in the Paris Manuscript, but in Vol. XIV. lib. 4, cap. 28, §6., says the School of Salerno was already celebrated in the

His

lowing year, he was wounded by an assassin, with a
poisoned dagger, the venom of which was extracted by
his wife, the Princess Eleanor, who, by sucking the wound
effected a cure, which medicine could not effect.
father, King Henry the Third, died Nov. 16, 1272, and Ed-
ward though absent was soon after proclaimed King. In
Sicily, where he was honourably received at the court of
the spring of 1273, Edward, on his way homeward, landed
Charles the First, Earl of Anjou and Provence, and King
of Naples and Sicily, and there first heard of his father,
King Henry's death. After a short stay here, he was
conducted by Charles to the Roman court, where, with
his familiar friend, Pope Gregory the Tenth, King
Edward the First spent some time, and thence passed into
Burgundy. We next find him at the French Court,
cousin King Philip the Third, to whom Edward did hom-
where he was received with distinguished honours by his
age for his hereditary lands, and received formal posses-
embarked for England, and landed at Dover, on August
sion of them. Having visited other parts of France, he
2, 1274, and was crowned at Westminster, on the Sun-
day after the feast of the Assumption, being the 19th of
that month in the same year.

In 1282, Pedro of Arragon, in right of his wife, havagreed, Charles and he should determine by single coming claimed the crown of Sicily, the dispute, it was bat, at Bordeaux, in the presence of King Edward the First, as Umpire; but on the day appointed,* and while

Easter-day, 1282, the first bell at Vespers being the signal for the massacre. The Papists in this, and in that of St. Bartholomew, 1572, appear to have had no hesitation in appropriating the hour of the observance of their religious

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Charles awaited his arrival, Pedro seized upon the kingdom of Sicily, and perpetrated that horrible massacre of the French, men, women, and children, eternised in history as the Sicilian Vespers. Shortly after, Charles Prince of Salerno, son of the King of Naples, was taken prisoner by Pedro, and closely confined till 1285, when he was ransomed by King Edward for the sum of thirty thousand silver marks; and became Charles the Second, King of Naples.

See Echard's History of England; Heylyn's Cosmography, Sicily and Naples; and Bossi, vol. XV. c. 11. Hawkshead, Oct. 8. D. B. H.

The library of the recently deceased Duke of Genoa, consisting chiefly of works on Military Science, and among them more than four hundred volumes of Manuscripts, in the Italian and other languages, is by order of the Duchess, being made available for the use of the public, to whom the library is to be opened on January 1, 1856.

JACOBITE MEMENTOES.

David Lord Ogilby, afterwards fourth Earl of Airly, joined the Stuart cause at Edinburgh, in October, 1745, at the head of a regiment of six hundred men, principally his own friends and retainers from the County of Forfar. Lord Ogilby's regiment took an active part at the battle of Culloden, which proved so disastrous to the interest of the Chevalier, and Lady Ogilby equally as loyal as her husband accompanied him to the battle field, where she was taken prisoner and conducted to Edinburgh Castle, from which in the course of a few months she escaped. The silver drinking cup, and the sword worn by Lord Ogilby at Culloden, commemorative spoils of that bloody conflict, are now in the possession of Mr. James Dickson, Distributor of Stamps, at Kirriemuir. The cup bears the arms of Ogilby of Airly, and the sword has the following inscriptions in French and German :

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HORNBOOK OF THE OLDEN DAY.

Most venerable Code!

Learning's first cradle and its last abode. Battledore, and the various forms of Reading made Hornbooks are now so completely superseded by the Easy, that they are rarely met with, and few perto teach the infantine ideas how to shoot. In manusons believe that such was formerly the means adopted scripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth Centuries, a nearly similar mode of disposition of the contents of the Horn-book occasionally but rarely be met with; may the alphabet being in all instances seen by the writer preceded by the +, hence the alphabet thus disposed was called "the Cris Cros," or Christ Cross Row.* Some writers state it was so designated because a cross was prefixed to the alphabet in the old primers; but as probably from a superstitious custom of writing the alphabet in the form of a +, by way of charm; a custom which has been solemnly practised by bishops in the consecration of churches.t

The Primer (Primarius, Lat.) was a small book of prayers in which children were taught to read, so named from the Romish book of Devotions, which King Henry VIII., in 1545, ordered to be printed in English, and "set furth by the Kinges Majestie and his Clergie, to be taught, lerned and red." This gave the name of

On the introduction of printing, other and imposing forms of inducing children to learn were adopted by monkish instructors, as in the instance of the block printed sheet, entitled Propugnacula, seu Turris Sapientiæ; the Bulwark, or Tower of Knowledge. Such broadsides were doubtless in the fifteenth century in common use in monasteries and schools. The so named Propugnacula, has its appellation on the left upper corner, printed in the form of a Tower; the alphabet in capitals, ascends by way of moral sentences, thus the following is the last line but one

on the foundation of the Tower

A. Fundamentum Turris Sapientiæ et Humilitas que est Mater Virtutum.

On the turrets are the words, Innocencia, Puritas, Timor Dei, Caritas, Continencia and Virginitas. These sheets subsequently obtained the name of a. b. c.'s, and more recently under that title, various admonitory publications addressed to children of a larger growth emanated from the press. Among them

An A. B. C. to the Christian congregation,
Or a patheway to the heavenly habitation;

a broadside to which the name of Thomas Knell is subscribed, with-Imprynted at London by Rycharde Kele. No date is attached, but Kele's last known dated production is of the year 1552.

Quite in accordance with the dictum of Dr. Watts,A verse may catch him who a sermon flies; admonitory rhymes, called ballads or ballates, were also similarly so named, and in 1557, John Wallye or Waley in Foster-lane, and Mistress Toye, had licence from the Stationers' Company to print a ballad of "the a. b. c. of a preste called Huegh Sturmey ;" and another entitled "the Aged Man's a. b. c."

+ Picart's Religious Ceremonies, vol. I. p. 131.

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the Primer to elementary guides of a similar purport with the Hornbook.

From Christ Cross Row, probably for shorter pronunciation, it became popularly the Cross Row.* Robert Wyer was the printer of a poetical production, in seven line stanzas, entitled-The Mayden's Crosse Rowe, ending with Finis qd. Robert Wyer; a termination which probably implied Wyer was not only the printer but also the author. In 1569, Thomas Colwell had lycense for the pryntinge of a Newe Yeres Gyfte, or a New Christe-crosse Roo, called Purge the old Lavyn that yt may be Newe doo.†

Heywood in his Six Hundred of Epigrammes, 1562, 4to., has one "of the letter H," in which he asserts

H is worst among letters in the Crosse-row.+ Shakespeare in his Richard the Third, 1597, Act 1, sc. 1, akes Clarence complain to Gloucester, because his name is George; the King

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Hearkens after prophecies and dreams,
And from the cross-row plucks the letter G ;
And says, a wizard told him that by G
His issue disinherited should be.

Florio defines the word "Centurubla, a childes horne-booke hanging at his girdle." This should be good authority, for Shakespeare in his Love's Labour Lost, 1598, has in Holofernes characterised Florio, and in Act V. sc. 1, makes Moth assert to Armado-" he teaches boys the horn-book." The French La Croix par Dieu, Cotgrave defines as "the Christs-crosserowe, or horne-booke wherein a child learnes it."

Ben Jonson in allusion to the horn-book, makes Corvino, in his Volpone, 1605, while referring to the alleged infidelities of Celia towards her husband, point to his head, and exclaim

Here

The letters may be read, through the horn,
That make the story perfect.

Act IV. sc. 2.

The wire, stick or straw, that served to point to the letters which the child learning the alphabet was required to name, was called "a fescue;" and on early marked dials the figure XII or noon, was supplied by a cross; to this there is a humourous allusion in the Puritan, 1607–

Fall to your business roundly; the fescue of the dial is upon the Christ-cross of noon.

Decker's Gull's Horn-book, 1609, was a satirical

guide or rather censure of the fashionable follies of the Peacham, in his Worth of a Penny, states—

Town.

For a penny you may buy the hardest book in the World, and which at some time or other hath posed the greatest Clerks in the World; viz., a Horn-book-the making up of which book employeth above thirty Trades.

A Mr. T. Playtes issued a prospectus of a Horn-book for the Remembrance of the Signs of Salvation, in Twelve volumes, Svo., with Three hundred and SixtyFive thousand references, or one thousand for every day in the year!

Locke in his Thoughts upon Education, printed in 1693, speaks of the ordinary road of the hornbook and primer; and in most of the shop-lists of the chap-book publishers at this period, they are enumerated for the hawkers, or flying-stationers, with Bibles, Testaments, Concordances, spelling books, primers, horn-books; writing-paper, paper books, and marriage certificates on parchment stamped.

Shenstone, born in 1714, in his delightfully quaint poem entitled The Schoolmistress,' commemorates the venerable preceptress of the dame school, near Hales Owen in Shropshire, in which as a child he was taught

the rudiments of the horn-book

Lo! now with state, she utters her command, Eftsoons the urchins to their tasks repair; Their books of stature small they take in hand Which with pellucid horn secured are, To save from finger wet the letters fair. The alphabet on a square piece of gingerbread, for• Johnson in explanation says, the first line is the cross-merly among the articles sold at Fun's Saturnalia,

row, so named because a cross is placed at the beginning,

to show that the end of learning is piety. Grose, who fattened on the jocoseries of antiquarianism, has recorded a somewhat similar definition. An Irishman explaining the reason why the alphabet is called the Criss-cross Row, said it was because Christ's cross was prefixed at the beginning and end of it. Olio, 1798, p. 195.

Kemble might have adduced this among his authorities for the pronouncing ache, a pain, as the letter H.

The Horn-book is depicted in paintings by continental artists in the sixteenth Century. In one, painted by Bartolommeo Schidoni born in 1560, and who died in 1616; known as the Horn-book, and formerly in the Ashburnham Gallery, the girl holds the horn-book with the handle upwards, possibly her task was ended. In another painted by Crespi, and known as the School-mistress, the matron has the horn-book placed before the child, resting on her knee, and with her finger points to the letter she requires to be named.

Bartholomew Fair, appears to have been commonly in
use more than a century and a half since. Prior, in
his Alma, notices

To Master John the English maid,
A horn-book gives, of gingerbread;
And that the child may learn the better,
As he can name, he eats the letter.*

The Catalogue of the British Museum Library describes a "Horn-book the Alphabet, Syllabarum, Lord's Prayer, etc., written in black letter of the type and orthography employed in the first half of the sixteenth century. Press mark 828 a 55." This description is very questionable. In Halliwell's Notices of Fugitive Tracts, printed for the Percy Society, he describes a

* Canto II. Works, Edit. 1721, vol. ii. p. 64.

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