I should like to know whether they are Beplies. (9th S. iv. 431, 504.) I BEG to offer some additional notes on this subject. But first let me thank PLANTAGENET for his very useful reference to the fact that in Wiltshire a bay of a barn is known as a skilling. objects in the form of animals and triangles, thick and very plainly designed; but the character of each is quite clear, though only the upper part of the animals is developed, the lower being a solid mass; and thus each can stand upright like chessmen. The animals are:-1. Bull, with the horns lying flat on the head. This, therefore, I conclude cannot be Apis, for his horns are upright, so as to receive the disc, moon, or world between them. I identify this with Taurus. See drawings of Apis and Serapis (or Osiris) in Sharpe (Egyptian Mythology,' 1863, pp. 15, 12). Length 1 in. 2. Sheep, or Aries. 3. Goat, or Capricornus. 4. Lion, or Leo. 5. A thick triangle, like a well-stuffed cushion; from its two top corners proceed two infant THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH COINAGE. heads. The lower angle is surrounded by a cord-like mark as of a string or ribbon, the two ends being shown. This would be Gemini-two infants made one by being wrapped together in one case, swathed as infants used to be, and still are by some in France, probably in honour and imitation of Prof. Maitland has made calculations which Artemis of Ephesus (see engravings of this show that " some force, conscious or unconArtemis on medals of Antoninus and Com-scious, has made for 'one pound, one hide.'"* modus in 'De la Religion des Anciens Romains,' pp. 85, 86). The string below would be to tie the swathings. 6. Two more bulls. 7. Another sheep. 8. Three triangles larger than the former, and without heads. These have concentric rings round them numbering four and five. Would these refer to planetary orbits, the numbers denoting to the initiated what planets they referred to, and to be used in magical rites and incantations? As to the animals, it seems the Egyptians played for money at chess (see an engraving of this game in the Art Journal, 1863, vol. ii. p. 6) and at draughts. The immense antiquity of chess is undoubted. See its connexion with the zodiac and planets in a sheet entitled 'The Zodiacal Chess-Board,' by J. H. S. (Taunton, Barnicott, 1899). The owner of the objects, after consideration, inclined to the view of their being zodiacal, and remarked that they showed signs of having been kept in a bag. A set of Indian chessmen I possess came to me in their native silk bag instead of-as with us-in a box. Is this a correct conclusion; and are similar objects in any public museum ? A. M. DE BENSTEDE OR BENSTED FAMILY.-I am collecting all the information I can regarding this family, and shall be very grateful for any particulars your readers may have. The name Bensted frequently occurs in the registers of All Saints', Maidstone, Kent, and It will hardly be doubted that the force was conscious, or that the correlation of houses, acres, and monetary units was the result of design. It has been seen that in my table the pound corresponds to the hide of 120 acres. In the Domesday of St. Paul's,' compiled in the year 1222, the sums paid by the various tenants exactly correspond, in many cases, to the sums given in the table. Thus on p. 4 a list of the libere tenentes and the sums paid by each is given : The first tenant holds half a hide, and pays and pays ... ... 8. d. 10 0 3 4 7 6 1 3 The fourth and fifth tenants hold a quarter of For fiscal or other purposes land with its appurtenances is regarded as worth so much a year. Thus we find such expressions as solidata terræ,t a shillingsworth of land, or deneriata terræ, a penny worth of land. "There seems no room for doubt," says Prof. Maitland, "that hiwisc and the more abstract híwscipe mean a household, and very little room for doubt that hid springs from 240 square ft., like the Roman and English a root that is common to it and them and bay. has the same primary meaning."* Again, It will have been noticed that the building relying on Mr. Stevenson, he says, The described by Saxo Grammaticus is 240 ft. little evidence that we have seems to point long, and also that it is divided into to the greater antiquity in England of a 12 bays, each of which is 20 ft. square.* reckoning which takes the house land' Each of these bays may accordingly be rather than the 'plough land' as its unit."+ divided into 20 rectangular divisions, each The hide is sometimes described as terra measuring 4 ft. by 5 ft., and corresponding to unius casati," a casatus being a person to the 20 penny weights which make the ounce, whom a casa, or house of some kind, has and the whole building may be divided into been allotted. 240 such divisions. It is obvious, then, that the whole building corresponds to a pound, and that the 12 bays represent the 12 ounces into which the pound was divided. 66 Let me now refer to evidence which helps to fix the normal size of the bay. The size of the Roman bay is given by Palladius, whose work on husbandry is The Frisians had a land measure,or ascribed to about A.D. 210. This author, in measure of surface, which they called giving directions about the building of ox-pundemeta,+ literally a pound measure. They houses, says: "Octo pedes ad spatium standi singulis boum paribus abundant, et in porrectione xv."+ Each pair of oxen should have a length of 8 ft. for standing room; that is, the bay should be 16 ft. long, and the breadth should be 15 ft. Here, therefore, we have a bay with a superficies of 240 (Roman) ft. The English bay may now be compared to the Roman. The size of the English bay in the twelfth century is given in 'Boldon Buke' (Surtees Soc.), p. 33: "In Quykham sunt XXXV. villani, quorum unusquisque tenet j bovatam de xv. acris, et solebant......in operatione sua facere unam domum longitudinis xl. pedum et latitudinis xv. pedum." As English bays were 16 ft. long, this house contained 2 bays, and accordingly each complete bay was 16 ft. long and 15 ft. broad. Each bay, therefore, contained 240 square ft. In France, as in England, buildings were estimated by the bay. Thus in a document of the year 1548 we have 66 une grange-contenant trois Espasses." The usual French word was travée, which Cotgrave defines as "A Bay of building; the space, and length, betweene two beames, or the two walls thereof; in breadth about twelue foot, in length betweene nineteene and twentie."|| A bay 20 ft. long by 12 broad would contain had also a measure of land called enze, an ounce, which was the twelfth part of the pundemeta, and they spoke of so many ounces of land." In Friesland therefore, as in England, the monetary system flowed from the measures or values of houses and land. The Gallic and the Welsh pound of silver, as well as the Frisian pound of silver, was divided into 12 ounces each of a score pence, and there were 12 pence in the shilling. An ancient writer has the following defini tion : "Juxta Gallos vigesima pars unciæ denarius est et duodecim denarii solidum reddunt......Duodecim unciæ libram xx. solidos continentem efficiunt. Sed veteres solidum qui nunc aureus dicitur nuncupabant."+ definite area from the fact that hay and corn We may infer that the bay had a fixed or hay has been commonly sold by the bay in were estimated by the bay. In Derbyshire to be sold in that way. Palsgrave, in his the present century, and may yet continue 'English-French Dictionary,' 1530, mentions a "goulfe of corne, so moche as may lye bytwene two postes, otherwyse a bay," but gives no French equivalent. The "two postes are the pillars or "forks" which separate Forby, every division of a barn is called a "goafeone bay from another. In Norfolk, according to Du Cange renders the medieval dispendium by detour, and it seems impossible to interpret Saxo's words in any other way. Richthofen, Altfriesisches Wörterbuch,' s.v. In Pauca de Mensuris' (Lachmann and Rudorf, Gromatici Veteres,' p. 373), quoted by Mr. Seebohm in the English Village Community,' p. 292. Mr. Seebohm, on the same page, says, “The division of the pound into 240 pence was very conveniently arranged for the division of a tax imposed upon holdings of 240 acres, or 120 acres, or 60 acres, or the 10 acres in each field." stede." If the bay or "goulfe" had been of uncertain area, or even if the cubic contents of bays had varied materially, it would have been impossible to sell or appraise hay or corn in this manner. But if the bay had an ascertained area, such as 240 square ft., it would only have been necessary in such cases to take the height. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there are so many instances, both in literature and unpublished documents, of the estimation or valuation of buildings by the bay, that one can hardly doubt the wide prevalence of a standard and well-understood size of bay during those periods. A solicitor interested in antiquarian matters tells me that bequests of bays are common in old wills. It appears from the 'Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales' that houses were estimated by the "fork," in Anglo-Saxon called gafol. Thus in the Dimetian Code we are told that "the worth of a winter-house, for every fork which supports the ridge-beam, [is] twenty pence. ""* And again, in the 'Leges Wallice the following statements occur in the section 66 De fractione domus et combustione": "I. Precium hyemalis domus est xxti denarii de unaquaque furca que sustinet laquear, et de laqueari xla denarii. “II. Si denudetur, tertia pars totius precii red datur. It appears that the Anglo-Saxon gafol, fork, or "crutch," as it is sometimes called in Yorkshire, and gafol, tribute, are identical. It further appears that the word gavelkind implies a division of the house and its appur tenances among the heirs by the " gavel," which was equivalent to division by the bay. It implies the actual or physical partition of houses and land. "Gavelage ment or estimation of tribute by the "gavel." is the pay, If we compare the Frisian house, as described by Saxo Grammaticus, and its twelve bays, containing 4,800 square ft., to the Eng Op. cit., p. 579. + Ibid., ii. 802. A shieling is a summer house or temporary summer hut, usually of one bay. Does a Scotsman ever call a shilling a shieling? lish house of twenty bays, we shall see that, whilst the pound was the highest unit of value in both cases, the Frisian bay, or seg ment of a house, represents twenty pence and not a shilling. If the Frisian pundemeta of land had been equivalent to the English hide of 120 acres, the Frisian bay of 400 square ft. would have corresponded to ten acres, that is, to the "ounce of land." The relationship of the house-room to the holding in arable land would have remained unaffected. The quantity of house-room attached to the pundemeta would have been the same as the quantity attached to the hide, and so on through the various divisions of these two land measures. In other words, the arithmetical relationship of acres to house-room would have been the same. The substitution of the shilling for the ounce appears to me to point to a change in architecture. There were two main kinds of houses-the winter house and the summer house-the winter house being the ordinary village house, and the summer house being the more slightly built summer residence on the hills, where the cattle went to pasture in summer. The winter house, like the summer house, was supported by forks or "gavels," each pair of forks supporting a room containing 240 square ft. But the winter house 16 ft. by 15, and put an aisle measuring 16 ft. had an aisle. If we take the English bay of by 10 on the long side, we shall have made heads of the oxen would, of course, be turned an excellent oxhouse for four oxen. The inwards, and they would be fed from the main floor. Or if we take the French bay of 20 ft. by 12, and put an aisle measuring 20 ft. by 8 on the long side, we shall get a similar oxhouse for five oxen. have added 160 square ft. to one of the In both cases we shall sides, and thus made up the total area of 400 square ft. stall annexed to a house or other building It is true that the aisle or lateral cattlecontinued to be built down to a late period.* But it is also true that the introduction of separate cattle-stalls and other outbuildings units followed the divisions of houses and began at an early date. As the monetary land, the shilling took the place of the ounce to represent the typical bay. The quantity of twenty pence when the ounce had ceased of house-room remained unaffected, at all events for fiscal purposes. This is, of course, only a conjecture, but at present I can think of nothing so likely to be right. Since the Frisian house described by Saxo Grammaticus was divided into 12 bays, representing the 12 ounces into which a pound of silver, or in older times a pound of copper, was divided, we may be led to suspect that the word " ounce" means "bay." The Latin uncia, Old Frisian enze, may be related to άykáv, a bend, bay, and to aykos, a bend or hollow, a word which, according to Liddell and Scott, is akin to the Latin uncus. We have seen that the English bay, used as an architectural term, was otherwise known as a "goulfe." In Old Norse, too, this division of a building is called gólf.* Evidently the comparison of this section of a building to a gulf, bay, or recess was widely spread, and had taken deep root in the mind. There must have been some reason for the division of the as, libra, or pound into 12 ounces; and if a certain number of bays, such as 12 or 20, were taken as the principal unit of value, the name of this regular and well-defined architectural division would naturally become the name of a lower unit of value. This equation of ounce and bay is supported in another quarter. According to the 'H.E.D.' the A.-S. gafol means interest on money, as well as tribute. The 'Epinal Glossary of A.D. 700 has "ære alieno, gæbuli." And then we have gaveller, a usurer, and gavelling, usury. Amongst the Romans the law of the Twelve Tables in B.C. 451 established unciarum fenus, i.e., a twelfth part of the principal or 8 per cent., pay. able yearly, as the normal rate of interest.t If the Roman bay had a fixed size, and if the Romans, like ourselves, sold hay or corn by the bay, it would be easy to pay interest in hay, and by the "gavel," or by the bay. And we know that they often paid interest It is remarkable that fenum means hay, and fenus interest. Cotgrave gives a French proverb, "De mauvais payeurs foin, ou paille "-from a bad payer take hay or straw, i.e., get what you can. So English lawyers speak of a poor inan as a man of straw. These sayings are reminiscences of a time when debts were paid in cattle and the produce of the field. I hope to deal with the penny in a subsequent article. in corn. S. O. ADDY. The word is usually rendered as floor," 99 66 room,' apartment." But it clearly means a bay of building. Thor's hall in the Edda is said to have consisted of 540 golfa and to have been the biggest house that had ever been made. Compare "In My Father's house are many mansions" (povai), John xiv. 2. One ounce in twenty, or one bay of hay in twenty, would have been 5 per cent. "Up, GUARDS, AND AT THEM!" (9th S. iv. 497, 543.)—There are not many people alive still who heard what passed from a witness of the scene. I am one who questioned General Alava himself, now more than fifty years ago, as to what ground there was for the story. The general told me that he never knew the Duke show excitement but twice. The first time was at Vittoria, when he drew his sword and waved on the line; the second time was at Waterloo, on the occasion in question, when he took off his cocked hat and signalled to the line to stand up and advance, saying to Alava, Now or H. R. GRENfell. never. 66 WALTER W. SKEAT. ARTISTS' MISTAKES (9th S. iv. 164, 237, 293). The admirable Border Edition" of the Waverley novels is disfigured by some remarkable instances of the failure of artists to make sure that their drawings are not merely pretty, but illustrative of the text. We read : There was among the ranks of the Disinherited Knight a champion in black armour, mounted on a black horse." The illustration, 'The Knight at the Hermitage' (Ivanhoe'), represents the horse as being white; besides, the knight had dismounted when he "assailed the door of the hermitage with the butt of his lance." A few pages further on Cruikshank, in his interior view of the hermitage, gives us the black horse of the story. In the illustration Edie ('Antiquary') is barefooted, notwithstanding that he tells us a moment before he appears at the window of Knockwinnock Castle that he wears hobnailed shoes; also see Edie in prison. In Roland and Catherine' ('Abbot') Roland should be seated on a chair, which he tries to move closer to Catherine's. Roland Dismissed' is dramatic, but incorrect. When the lady became angry Roland fell at her feet, and when he finally took his leave she was in an almost fainting condition. In the frontispiece of vol. i. (Woodstock') the lady is without a veil, although we are told on p. 264 there should be represented a lady completely veiled; the story tells why this is necessary. Also in describing the Burial of Tomkins' (Woodstock') mention is made of the body of a man wrapped in a deer's hide. In The Monastery' the Sub-Prior should be shown with a beard. The Cruikshank illustrations are correct in this respect, but in the other illustrations the beard is omitted. In Count Robert of Paris' the Countess Brenhilda appears to be a knight brilliantly equipped when she and her husband meet Agelastes in their stroll to the city; the artist gives us the costume probably worn later on at court. The combat between the Crusader and the Saracen (Talisman') shows Kenneth not with the barred, flat-topped helmet of the tale. An artist cannot hope to meet the conception of each reader, but he should at least follow his text in matters of detail. E. M. DEY. Apropos of authors', or rather artists', mistakes, permit me to call attention to a print which was reproduced in the Sunday at Home for 1888, p. 665, entitled 'The Entry of the Prince of Orange into London,' where Old St. Paul's, destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, figures conspicuously in the background. It is described as a "reduced facsimile of a portion of a print, bearing date 1689, by Romein de Hooge." It would look as if the artist inserted the structure for purposes of effect, notwithstanding that it had been non-existent for twenty-three years. Barnsley. ALEXANDER PATERSON, F.J.I. drawing a crocodile with a tongue. But this must not be deemed an artist's, but a correspondent's mistake, according to the following extract from a work on natural history: "Crocodile......the tongue fleshy, flat, and so much attached to the sides of the under jaw, that the ancients supposed it to be wanting.' May I recommend MR. HEMS to purchase a modern work on the subject? T. N. BRUSHFIELD, M.D., F.S.A. Salterton, Devon. WORCESTERSHIRE DIALECT (9th S. iv. 476).— Your correspondent W. C. B. may be interested in a Yorkshire example of tombstone verse which scarcely corresponds with the teachings of those who when we were young professed to instruct us in the arts of speaking elegance, and propriety." I saw and copied it and writing our own tongue with " ease, some years ago in the churchyard of Wath, near Rotherham. It was on an upright stone standing, if my memory be not at fault, near the south-east corner of the burial-ground: Tayler, of Wath, who died Nov. 29, 1820, aged 20 "To the memory of Betty, wife of Christopher years. Here lies she who has his wife, A tender mother and a virtuous wife; BLACK JEWS (9th S. iv. 68, 174, 234, 312).—My father, who was the son of a Portuguese of the Malabar coast, used to tell me that the Portuguese of India were blacker than the natives. V. Heber's 'Journal,' i. 67-9. THOMAS J. JEAKES. THE POET PARNELL (9th S. iv. 495).—In the Cheshire Notes and Queries for September, 1896, is a pedigree of the Parnell family by an amateur hand. It is obviously tentative as no doubt its compiler, Mr. Thomas Cooper, would be the first to allow; neither does it settle the exact date of the poet's death; the A picture entitled 'Eve Tempted' in the editorial foot-note appears to do that if any permanent collection of the Manchester Cor-reliance at all is to be given to parish register poration Art Gallery encloses the garden of Eden with a brick wall that would do credit to any suburban back garden. CASHIER. Several mistakes of neglecting to reverse lettering appear in the engravings by the author appended to Lockinge's Historical Gleanings on the Memorable Field of Naseby' (London, 1830). JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire. Under this heading your correspondent MR. HEMS accuses Tenniel of making a blunder in one of the Punch cartoons, for The extracts. Mr. Cooper gives the year as 1718, but no month or day is mentioned. object of this note is attained in calling the attention of any interested in Parnell to the attempt at a pedigree which some might make conclusive. R. L. Urmston. . ST. MILDRED'S, POULTRY (9th S. iv. 478, 528). -Your correspondent G. S. P. will find copies of the monumental inscriptions and notes from the registers of the above church in Mr. Milburns 'History of St. Mildred the Virgin, Poultry.' If, however, G. S. P. is |