Notes and Comments

Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle.

THE Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle, in issuing Volume IV. of the third series of Archaeologia Aeliana, sufficiently attests its possession of an effective working membership. Special and local contributions consist of Exchequer memoranda on Northumbrian estates and litigations, a pedigree memoir on the Marrs of Morpeth, a topographical paper on Holystone, a chapter of Newcastle typography, and a full and important report of the excavations of Corstopitum (Corbridge) in 1907. Besides there are a sketch of the decline of serfdom in Durham county, a continuation study of Flails, by Dr. Allison (see S.H.R. v. 258), a legend of St. Julian, and a heraldic note on the Rayme family of Bolam, with three admirable reproductions from a fourteenth century illuminated manuscript. Serfdom lingered in the Palatinate through the sixteenth century, although the last mention of an episcopal serf was in 1481. Along with his innumerable threshing flails Dr. Allison briefly comments on war flails and on the kind attributed to Galloway. A medieval type of the war flail (the Kriegsflegel of German warfare) is shown in an illustration which we are permitted to reproduce. The Julian story deals with the well-known invocation of the saint. It tells how William of Perci, one of the Conqueror's followers, on setting out to war with his king against the Scots, left orders with his chaplains for invocations to be made every morning. The instructions were obeyed and Percy prospered beyond the measure of any of his comrades. But on returning he made light of the saint, and refused to pray any more for his countenance and hospitality. Naturally everything went wrong with the recalcitrant afterwards till the succession of misfortunes brought him to his knees, with the happy effect to be anticipated from his repentance. Mr. Julius P. Gibson prints the story from a British Museum manuscript. He does not allude to Chaucer's reference to the habit of invocation of Julian nor to the earlier examples in Gawayne and the Green Knight, 1. 774, and in (Barbour's) Legends of the Saints. The assigned date of the text edited by Mr. Gibson being the twelfth century, its testimony is of high value for the custom of prudent men in England' when setting out on a journey to commend themselves and their horses to God's grace by the intercession of the blessed Julian.' Barbour's observation (which is part of an introductory excursus to the legend of St. Julian forming an original

addition to the text translated) is a peculiarly apt illustration of the practice.

The trawalouris thane custume had
That al day zed ore rad
And for trawale ware wery
Quhene thai come til thar herbry
And namely fra thai mycht it se
Quhethyr that it ware scho ore he
Hat or hud tak of ore clath
The rycht fut of the sterape rath

And to Sancte Julyane dewotly

A paternoster say in hy

In hope that al gud herbry suld haf
That in sik wyse it suld crafe
Sic hope into Sancte Julyane
The trawalouris than had tane
As mony men zet are

That sammyne oysis here and thare.
Legends, xxv. 11. 9-21.

Archaeologically the most important contribution to this volume of Archaeologia Aeliana is the report on the excavation of Corbridge (noticed in S.H.R. v. 261), edited by Mr. R. H. Forster, whom some of our readers may know as author of The Amateur Antiquary, a picturesque itinerary-sketch of the Roman Wall. Full descriptions are given of the various sites opened, and the details of buildings and objects discovered are recorded in excellent plans and photographs. Prof. Haverfield contributes to these descriptions a fine account of the inscribed stones, chief of which is a magnificent slab to Antoninus Pius, set up by Quintus Lollius Urbicus. It is true that only the Q of the name is actually preserved, but Prof. Haverfield completely establishes his reading by reference to a corresponding stone from Bremenium (High Rochester). The general sense is:

To (or In the reign of) the Emperor Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius in the third year of his tribunician power (A.D. 140) and in his third consulship Father of his country this (slab or building) was set up under the care of Q. Lollius Urbicus governor of Britain by Legion II. Augusta.

'In A.D. 140, as we know otherwise,' says Prof. Haverfield, Urbicus was taking steps to advance beyond the Wall of Hadrian and erect the Vallum of Pius along the isthmus between Forth and Clyde, an isthmus previously fortified by Agricola but soon abandoned. Many inscribed slabs witness to his work and all closely resemble the new find in style and character of decoration.' Beside this Urbicus stone was an ornate slab showing a pilastered façade in which stands an ensign inscribed VEXILLUS LEG. II. AVG. interpreted as (= vexillum) the flag of the second legion. The architecture is examined by Mr. W. H. Knowles, who emphasises the unusually massive character of some of the masonry,

Mr. H. H. E. Craster analyses the coins, nearly 700 in number, most of them forming a hoard discovered in a solid mass of metal, as if a box containing the coins had been in a burning house. They date chiefly from 330 to 340 A.D., but (not reckoning one legionary silver coin of Mark Antony) the series found in the diggings of 1907 begins with A.D. 92 and ends circa A.D. 375. A piece of sculpture of greater historical interest than of artistic achievement is that of a

group representing a lion in the act of killing a stag. There is vigour, and even ferocity in the lion, whose mouth, the explorers think, may have served for a fountain.

THAT Protestant study in Irish history is being actively pursued is evident from the first annual Report of the Presbyterian Historical Irish Society, adopted in February last and since published by the Presbyterian Society, which has its headquarters, as might be expected, in Historical Belfast. Its object is to collect and preserve the materials for, Society. and promote the knowledge of, the history of Presbyterianism in Ireland; and it purposes to register all records, session books, baptismal and marriage registers, manuscripts, and relics, as well as to form a collection, already instituted, to be kept in the Church House, Belfast, as a sort of ecclesiastical museum. The Report shows lines of good work undertaken. One contributor has drawn up a preliminary list of Presbyterian MSS. Another describes the Adair Narrative, the work of Patrick Adair, a Scots preacher settled at Larne and Belfast from 1646 until his death in 1694. He was himself,' says the note about his manuscript, an eminent actor in far the larger part of the events, worthy of the title romantic, which he records in homely and attractive English. We have it on his own authority that he was in Edinburgh on that famous day when the Dean's attempt to introduce the Service Book received such a rude reception'-in 1637. A third describes the Campbell MS., the work of a Newry man, William Campbell, D.D., educated at Glasgow University. Settled in Antrim and Armagh (1759-1805) he wrote, amongst other works yet unprinted, sketches of Irish presbyterian history last heard of in the possession of Mr. John Gordon, of Belfast, and now being searched for by the Society, which would welcome any information. A portrait of the Rev. John Kinnear, D.D., is given. A great collector, this venerable booklover has made gifts of between 5000 and 6000 volumes to the Magee College and the library of the Society. It is a pleasure to recognise the spirit of history thus variously manifesting itself in the North of Ireland.

THE late Mrs. Gavin Tait, who died in Inverness in February, 1908, had a distinct recollection of her grandmother, from whom A in her childhood she used to hear tales of Culloden. In 1746 Reminiscence Mrs. Tait's grandmother was a young girl, living with her of Culloden. grandfather (Mrs. Tait's great-great-grandfather) in the vicinity of the battlefield. One reminiscence in particular remained with Mrs. Tait. It was that of hearing her grandmother tell how the English soldiers came into her grandfather's house after the battle and took him prisoner. Nothing more was ever heard of this ancestor of Mrs. Tait's, the presumption being that he paid the penalty of his Jacobite sympathies. It thus appears that as late as a few months ago there was living, in the person of Mrs. Tait, one who in her childhood had listened to the story of Culloden from a relative who, if not an actual eye-witness of the battle, was living so near the scene as to be involved in its immediate sequel.