Notes and Queries, Number 46, September 14, 1850 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 53 pages of information about Notes and Queries, Number 46, September 14, 1850.

Notes and Queries, Number 46, September 14, 1850 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 53 pages of information about Notes and Queries, Number 46, September 14, 1850.

ST. JOHNS.

[Will our correspondent favour us by communicating the Aston Legend of the Holt Family to which he refers?]

Langley, Kent, Prophetic Spring at.—­The following “note” upon a passage in Warkworth’s Chronicle (pp. 23, 24.) may perhaps possess sufficient interest to warrant its insertion in your valuable little publication.  The passage is curious, not only as showing the superstitious dread with which a simple natural phenomenon was regarded by educated and intelligent men four centuries ago, but also as affording evidence of the accurate observation of a writer, whose labours have shed considerable light upon “one of the darkest periods in our annals.”  The chronicler is recording the occurrence, in the thirteenth year of Edward the Fourth, of a “gret hote somere,” which caused much mortality, and “unyversalle fevers, axes, and the blody flyx in dyverse places of Englonde,” and also occasioned great dearth and famine “in the southe partyes of the worlde.”

He then remarks that “dyverse tokenes have be schewede in Englonde this year for amendynge of mannys lyvynge,” and proceeds to enumerate several springs or waters in various places, which only ran at intervals, and by their running always portended “derthe, pestylence, or grete batayle.”  After mentioning several of these, he adds—­

“Also ther is a pytte in Kent in Langley Parke:  ayens any batayle he wille be drye, and it rayne neveyre so myche; and if ther be no batayle toward, he wille be fulle of watere, be it neveyre so drye a wethyre; and this yere he is drye.”

Langley Park, situated in a parish of the same {245} name, about four miles to the south-east of Maidstone, and once the residence of the Leybournes and other families, well-known in Kentish history, has long existed only in name, having been disparked prior to 1570; but the “pytte,” or stream, whose wondrous qualities are so quaintly described by Warkworth, still flows at intervals.  It is scarcely necessary to add, that it belongs to the class known as intermitting springs, the phenomena displayed by which are easily explained by the syphon-like construction of the natural reservoirs whence they are supplied.

I have never heard that any remnant of this curious superstition can now be traced in the neighbourhood, but persons long acquainted with the spot have told me that the state of the stream was formerly looked upon as a good index of the probable future price of corn.  The same causes, which regulated the supply or deficiency of water, would doubtless also affect the fertility of the soil.

EDWARD R.J.  HOWE.

Chancery Lane, Aug. 1850.

* * * * *

MINOR NOTES.

Poem by Malherbe (Vol. ii., p. 104.).—­Possibly your correspondent MR. SINGER may not be aware of the fact that the beauty of the fourth stanza of Malherbe’s Ode on the Death of Rosette Duperrier is owing to a typographical error.  The poet had written in his MS.—­

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Notes and Queries, Number 46, September 14, 1850 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.