"But if hosen nor shoon thou never gave nean
Every night and awle;

The whinnes shall prick thee to the bare beane
And Christ receive thy sawle."

The above is, I have no doubt, the passage which your correspondent inquires after. It occurs in the remarkable Yorkshire soul dirge preserved by John Aubrey in his Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme (Folk-lore Society), p. 31. It has been printed many times, e. g., Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, ed. 1861, ii. 135-42; Archæologia, xxxvi. 152; J. C. Atkinson's Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect, 595; John Brand's Popular Antiquities, ed. 1813, ii. 180; W. J. Thoms's Anecdotes and Traditions (Camd. Soc.), 89; Myrc's Instructions for Parish Priests, edited by E. Peacock (E. E.T.S.), 90. EDWARD PEACOCK.

(6th S. iv. 90.)

"Totus componitur orbis," &c.

rents of the smaller county of Dorset amounted to 3,3601. a year; so that land in Dorset was nearly seven times more valuable than in Staffordshire. The survey distributed counties in hides for the purpose of taxation, and the average hide of Dorset contained 210 acres, but the Staffordshire hide contained nearly 1,437 acres, which shows how small a weight of taxation the Midland county was capable of bearing. One-third of Staffordshire was moorland, which was omitted altogether from the survey as not being worth valuation; and more than one-half of the surveyed lands were woodlands, which were exclusively used for purposes of chase and warren. The single oak wood was in Earl Rogers's manor at Shipley, and was only ten acres in extent. Burton Abbey was the only monastic house in the county, but there were four collegiate churches besides the cathedral at Lichfield, and more than onefifth of the county belonged to the church. The king's revenues amounted to 1521. 9s., and the rental of the church was 70l. 28. The remaining 2861. 5s. was distributed as follows:- The fief of Robert de Stafford, the great landowner of the county and the constable of Stafford Castle, was valued at 123l. 6s. 8d. per annum. Earl Roger and his son Hugh had 84. 15s., and William Fitz Ansculf had 331. 198. per annum. other barons had 127. 17s. per annum between them, and the twenty manors which some fourteen English thanes had managed to save from the wreck were worth 31. 14s. per annum. Mr. Eyton has proved by internal evidence from the record itself that Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Northamptonshire were surveyed by the same set of commissioners, and that in each county some of the original returns were misplaced by the clerks of the exchequer who were employed in codifying them. Drayton, in Oxfordshire, the fief of Turchil de Arden, was, by a

Five

"Tunc observantior æqui

Fit populus, nec ferre negat quum viderit ipsum
Auctorem parere sibi. Componitur orbis
Regis ad exemplum: nec sic inflectere sensus
Humanos edicta valent, ut vita regentis."

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. Domesday Studies: an Analysis and Digest of the Staffordshire Survey. By Rev. Robert W. Eyton. (Stafford, Joseph Halden.)

THE historian of Shropshire is specially qualified by his previous researches to interpret and illustrate the Domesday survey of the adjoining county of Stafford, and his Digest brings to light a mass of new information. The chief interest of these Domesday Studies to the general reader consists in their enabling us to compare the England which was conquered by the Normans with the country in which we are living. Staffordshire, which is now a hive of industry and mine of wealth, was in 1086 one of the poorest of English counties-sparsely populated and partially cultivated. Its abject condition at that period can best be estimated by comparing it with Dorset-which is a smaller county, as it only contains 633,000 acres, whilst Staffordshire includes 740,000 acres. The collective revenues of Staffordshire were only 508. 16s. a year, whilst the

misled Dugdale into supposing that the place intended was Drayton Bassett, and in consequence the baronial house of Bassett has been hitherto deduced from an ancestor who never existed in the flesh.

Les Littératures Populaires de toutes les Nations. -Tome I. Littérature Orale de la Haute-Bretagne. Par Paul Sébillot. (Paris, Maisonneuve & Co.) INSTRUCTION is a very valuable thing, we grant; railways are elements of happiness which we could not easily dispense with; macadamized roads strike us as incomparably better than the most picturesque lanes, which, despite all their beauty, are perfectly impassable in winter; but since the progress of civilization has brought along with it excursion trains, easy and cheap locomotion, and board schools, there is no doubt that the characteristic features of the various races of men have disappeared, that historical and poetical traditions are fast vanishing, and that at no distant period few monuments indeed will be left of primitive literary curiosities. We question very much whether Sir Walter Scott would have been able to collect in the year of. grace 1881 the ballads and songs which seventy years ago made up the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; we doubt if a tolerably complete series of German märchen would be possible now; and it is quite evident to us that if M. Sébillot had waited much longer his delightful little volume might never have appeared. It is a most interesting anthology of tales, legends, and proverbs of Breton origin, illustrated with notes and preceded by an introduction or avant-propos full of curious details, completed by special prefaces for the several parts of the book. In Upper Brittany, as in most other localities, the inhabitants of rural districts and villages used in days gone by to meet under different pretexts for the purpose

of hearing anecdotes, singing ballads, and proposing to each other puzzles of a facetious or moral character. There were the filouas or filanderies, consisting of sometimes as many as forty or fifty persons, assembled together ostensibly in order to spin; the veillouas or evening réunions, devoted to amusements in the way of singing or dancing; the érusseries, where "young men and maidens" helped each other in preparing flax; the cuiseries de pommé, for the making of a kind of apple marmalade. All these gatherings afforded opportunities for the narrating of wonderful stories, and almost universally concluded with the regular old type of country dances. As M. Sébillot very well remarks, it is not always easy for an archaeologist to collect local traditions and to make himself acquainted with the treasures of what may be called oral literature. He requires both perseverance and tact. He must possess the art of ingratiating himself with the peasantry, of appealing to their vanity, and humouring them as much as he can. But once at home amongst these primitive sons of Adam, the harvest is ready for him, and he has nothing to do but to make up his sheaves. Thus in the preface to his Contes Lorrains M. Cosquin tells us that one village alone supplied him with no less than eighty narratives. During a stay of four months M. Sébillot collected one hundred tales in a single locality; and in another he wrote from dictation two hundred and ten. These do not represent by any means the whole popular legends of the district. The volume we are now noticing is divided into two parts, the former of which comprises in its turn five sections, corresponding to the following subjects: (a) Fairy tales and wonderful adventures; (b) facetiæ and anecdotes founded on display of cunning; (c) ghost stories, devilry, and witchcraft; (d) miscellaneous legends; (e) tales connected with seafaring men. Part ii. also is subdivided into five sections as follows: (a) Songs with the varieties of childish ditties, dancing or marching songs, love songs, and satirical songs; (b) puzzles; (c) formula; (d) proverbs; (e) jokes, witty answers, specimens of rustic wit, &c. M. Sébillot has taken care to give in his notes references to works on folk-lore in various languages. He has also scrupulously recorded the chief parallel legends, stories, and traditions which have been for many ages enriching the literature of India, Scotland, the southern and eastern provinces of France, Germany, &c. Finally, the volume for which we are indebted to his learning inaugurates in the happiest manner M. Maisonneuve's collection "Les Littératures Populaires."

The Poems of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Edited, with an Introduction, by John Churton Collins. (Chatto & Windus.)

COLERIDGE said of George Herbert that he was a true poet, but one whose poetic gifts will never be appreciated except by those who have sympathy with the mind and character of the man. This is, with due limitation, true of all poets except the highest, but especially so of those like the Herberts, who write not for all men and all time, but for those only, or at least mainly, who are on the same spiritual level. George's poems have been many times reprinted and devoutly read by thousands. The first modern edition of Lord Herbert's poems is the one before us. There is a striking likeness between them. The Herberts were, as Margaret Fuller Ossoli remarked, "a race whose spirit had never been broken or bartered," and each wrote with the fullest independence, the priest with the lamp of revelation always before him, the peer with the fertile ideas of his new philosophy-new at least here in England-influencing the turn of every sentence. It is difficult to estimate the relative value of the two poets,

so much depends on individual conviction as to things unseen and the relation of the human soul to God and the universe. We know that Lord Herbert was a true poet, though his style is almost always quaint and sometimes absolutely barbarous, but we do not think any fair judging person would put him as a poet on a pedestal equally high with his brother. The echoes of other writers, themselves not of the highest, are too frequent, and the fancies, especially in the love poems, too far fetched for a great part of the volume to have anything beyond an historical interest. When, however, he writes his own thoughts naturally, without having before him the work of some dead or contemporary master, he at times rises to a high degree of beauty. There are few passages in the minor poetry of the seventeenth century more charming than the sonnet "made upon the groves near Merlon Castle"; and some of the lines in verses on platonic love show that if Lord Herbert had not wished to teach philosophy he might have risen to a much higher level than he ever attained. Mr. Collins has done his duty as editor with great judgment, and the book is most beautifully printed on thick paper, and issued in a parchment cover which will delight the eyes of all who are fond of books.

THE BRITISH ARCHEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION will hold its thirty-eighth annual meeting at Great Malvern, commencing Monday, Aug. 22. Visits are to be made to Worcester and Cheltenham, and the MS. treasures of the late Sir Thomas Phillipps will be described by Mr. E. M. Thompson, F.S.A., Keeper of the MSS., British Museum. Birtsmorton, Pickersleigh, Eastnor Castle, Ledbury, Tewkesbury, the Herefordshire Beacon, &c., are among the places of interest to be examined by the Congress. The Dean of Worcester, Lord Alwyne Compton, is to be President.

THE INTERNATIONAL LITERARY CONGRESS will hold its

fourth session in Vienna, Sept. 20 to 29, under the presidency of his Excellency J. M. Torres Caïcedo, Minister of the Republic of San Salvador in Paris. The subjects to be discussed include the progress made artists in recent international conventions; the existing towards the more effectual protection of authors and condition of German and Russian legislation on copyright; conventions between nations speaking the same language, e.g., Great Britain and the United States, Portugal and Brazil, &c. The first International Literary Congress, held in Paris, 1878, was described in the pages of "N. & Q." in an article by NOMAD (5th S. ix. 501).

THE Rev. Kenelm H. Smith, of Ely, has been appointed by the Society of Antiquaries of London Local Secretary and Correspondent for Cambridgeshire, by diploma.