weight of taxation. The land surveyed in Somerset was of somewhat poorer quality than in Dorset, and the hide accordingly averaged 2493 acres in Somerset against 240 acres in Dorset; but more than one-sixth of Somerset was omitted altogether from Domesday, as being utterly waste and profitless and not worth measurement. Somerset of Domesday was distributed in 3,488 hides, valued at 4,1641. per annum, so that the average rent of a hide was 17. 3s. 101d. The king reserved to himself one-fifth of the whole county; churchmen and religious houses, with their vassals and dependents, were the owners of more than half; and the remaining threetenths were occupied as lay fiefs, held by twenty-four barons, nine king's serjeants, ten Franco-thanes, and eighteen Anglo-thanes. The greatest landowners among the Churchmen were the Abbot of Glastonbury and Geoffrey de Mowbray, Bishop of Coutances, whose respective possessions amounted to one-eighth and onetenth of Somerset. The king's brother, Robert, Count of Moretain, was also the owner of a tenth, but his estates were three times as large as those of any other layman, and were almost equal to the collective fiefs of Walter de Douai, Roger de Corcelle, William de Mohun, and Roger Arundel, who were the four greatest landowners amongst the Somersetshire barons. The eighteen Anglo-thanes had only one-fiftieth part of the county between them. Mr. Eyton's analysis of the Somerset Domesday is tabulated with the same accuracy and minuteness which were conspicuous in his digest of Dorset, and the tables are improved by the valuable addition of the Domesday value of every manor. The summary fills forty-three pages, and the labour expended on it can scarcely be appreciated by those who have never attempted inquiries of the same nature. They will, however, be of permanent value, and will literally save months of drudgery to future students of Domesday. Mr. Eyton has worked on virgin ground, for Collinson, the county historian, was rather a hindrance than a help, seeing that it was the exception when he blundered right. Mr. Eyton's second chapter has a special interest and attraction for genealogical readers, for his schedule of landowners brings to light a multitude of new facts in the descent and distribution of the Domesday baronies in Somerset.

Primitive Folk- Moots; or, Open-Air Assemblies in Britain. By G. Laurence Gomme, F.S.A. (Sampson Low & Co.)

MR. GOMME, well known among the lovers of folk-lore and contributors to " N. & Q.," has for some time past devoted much of his untiring zeal in historic research to an interesting but difficult period, which lies so far back that we should perhaps best call it the dawn of history. That open-air assemblies should be the rule of archaic polities is so natural that any other system would bear the aspect of being the "emendation" of historians living in days when the Agora, the Boulè, the Thing, have given way to the Parliament, i.e., to representation. So far, then, Mr. Gomme is amply justified in his high sense of the historic value of open-air assemblies. It seems to us, however, that the point is one requiring for its establishment that wide induction of facts which Mr. Gomme has succeeded in placing before us in so convenient a compass, rather than any special theory, how ever ingenious. As kings and bishops have sat to do right to all men under a tree or in a circle of standing stones, so also have sat village councils and folk-moots. We need scarcely remind Mr. Gomme's readers how Joinville's "good king" sat under an oak, holding what might be called his patriarchal court of justice, of which custom St. Louis perhaps afforded the latest example in medieval practice. The antiquity of such courts, whether held by king, or tribal chief, or judge, or by the

tribe or nation itself in Thing or Moot assembled, is of course unquestionable, and, so far as we know, unquestioned. It is not difficult for Mr. Gomme to bring forward examples from the practice of early Russia as well as from that of early Britain. He might even have gone further afield, and reminded us that what is reputed to be the oldest tree in Ceylon is one beneath whose shade the Gang Sabhawa, or council of village elders, has met, seated on stone seats, through century upon century of Cinghalese history. Without pledging ourselves to any theory of folk-moots, we may congratulate Mr. Gomme on having brought together a mass of useful material for the student of early political institutions. Mr. Gomme is less strong in his philological than in his purely archæological researches. That the epithet "Law," for instance, as applied to a certain class of hills, indicates places where early courts were held, seems scarcely a serious suggestion. Some of the other Scottish placenames mentioned are not quite accurately rendered. Thus, on p. 265, "Clack-a-mhoid" is given where "Clach" must have stood in the original; on p. 272, "Elgonshire" takes the place of Elginshire.

Arabian Poetry for English Readers. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by W. A. Clouston. (Trübner & Co.)

MR. CLOUSTON has done good service to the nonOrientalist literary public of England by placing before them reprints of translations of the choicest specimens of Arabian literature of olden times, the translations themselves being the work of men of acknowledged talent. But he has done far more than this: he has selected with refined taste and judgment from numerous materials, and his introduction, special prefaces, and notes in the appendix display a varied erudition and vast research, by means of which he has not only explained the theory and history of the treasures his collection exhibits, but, by giving divers parallel passages from Greek, Latin, French, and English classical writers, and by tracing many of the ideas to Sanscrit sources he has elucidated in a most striking manner the force of the well-known motto, "Ex Oriente lux."

Besides Sir William Jones's version of the Mu'allaqāt, shorter poems, translated into English verse by J. D. Carlyle, are reprinted with illustrative remarks, and an epitome of Hamilton's translation of the celebrated Bedouin romance of Antar, offering signal examples of tender and beautiful bursts of poetry, equal, if not superior, to the finest passages of that redoubtable hero's prize poem. The learned Oriental scholar, Mr. J. W. Redhouse, also lends a lustre to, and enhances the value of, this choice Arabian anthology by translations, with notes on obscure passages, of Káb's Burda, or The Mantle, a poem of the seventh century; of El-Busiri's poem of the eleventh century, neither of which has been published before in English; and by a literal translation of the famous Lamiyat poem of the foreigner by ElTugrāï.

This interesting miscellany is rendered still more harmonious and complete by extracts from Major W. F. Prideaux's Lay of the Himyarites, of which twenty-five copies only were printed, and extracts from the poet Omar, by Mr. W. Gifford Palgrave; by an instructive paper, from the pen of Mr. J. Payne, on the prosody of the Arabs, with specimens of poetry from The Thousand and One Nights; and by a frontispiece, lithographed in fac-simile of a page of a beautifully illuminated Arabian MS. in the possession of Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, whose translation, in the original metre and rhyme, of Mesihi's Ode on Spring embellishes pp. 440-3 of the appendix. A judicious compilation, so skilfully put together, so well interwoven, s0

learnedly illustrated, and in such simple language, justly entitles the editor to the thanks of the uninitiated in Eastern literature. The want of uniformity in the spelling of Arabic proper names throughout the work ought not to be considered an imperfection, as every eminent Arabist has his own favourite system of transliteration, which Mr. Clouston very properly retains in each case. Mr. Clouston has nobly performed his selfallotted task. Arabian Poetry for English Readers has met with the patronage it deserves. Already it is among the literary treasures of public libraries, already its perusal is whiling away the leisure hours of men of title, rank, and talent, of men of mark, of light and learning.

Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland, of the Reign of James I., 1615-1625. Edited by the late Rev. C. W. Russell, D.D., and John D. Prendergast. (Longmans & Co.)

THE publication of this volume has been delayed by the deplorable accident which happened three years ago to one of the joint editors. Dr. Russell, the President of Maynooth, was thrown from his horse close to the college gate on May 16, 1877, and although his partial recovery for a time gave ground for hoping that he would soon resume his work, he died from the effects of his fall on February 26, 1880. The loss to Irish historical literature will not easily be repaired, for Dr. Russell's candour and moderation were as conspicuous as his intimate knowledge of the national records, and commanded equal respect from Catholics and Protestants. It is a standing testimony to his acknowledged fairness of judgment that those who clamoured for Mr. Turnbull's resignation were contented to entrust to the President of Maynooth the duty of calendaring the Records of the Anglican Church in Ireland in the reign of James I. The documents contained in vol. v. extend over a period of ten years, 1615-25, and are mainly occupied with the story of the plantations in Connaught and Leinster, undertaken by Lord Deputies St. John and Falkland in imitation of Chichester's plantation of Ulster, which was the great event of this reign. The discontent of the native proprietors broke out in a series of conspiracies and disturbances, which were put down with merciless rigour, for confessions of guilt were extracted from the conspirators by the application of torture. Amongst the interesting papers printed in this volume is a muster roll of all the undertakers, servitors, and natives of Ulster in 1618, with the acreage of their respective estates, and the arms at their disposal; and also a survey of Londonderry in 1622, as it was distributed between the different companies of the City of London.

We have received a copy of the catalogue of the valuable collection of English caricatures exhibited at the rooms of the Liverpool Art Club, Myrtle Street, in January of the present year. The contributors to the exhibition were Mr. Joseph Grego, whose exhaustive volumes on Rowlandson were not long since reviewed in these pages, Mr. Julius Franks, Mr. Capron, of Richmond, and Dr. John Newton, of Liverpool, who has also prefixed a brief and interesting introduction to the book. One anecdote in this, as bearing on an unrecognized merit of caricature, is worth preserving here. "When it was proposed," says Dr. Newton, "to erect a statue of Sir Robert Peel, the portrait selected as most characteristic in its resemblance, as most distinctly preserving his natural expression, was found in a humorous cartoon by John Leech, published in Punch, and from this likeness the head was accordingly modelled." The exhibition appears to have been exceedingly rich in the works of Rowlandson, Gillray, and the Cruikshanks (father and son). There is a great deal of useful information in the

catalogue, which is rendered more attractive by the addition of several woodcuts.

Notices to Correspondents.

We must call special attention to the following notice: ON all communications should be written the name and

address of the sender, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.

C. L. W.-No parallel work exists, so far as we know. It is probable, however, that you would find matter of use to you in the Earls of Kildare, the Earls of Granard, Shirley's Monaghan, the Irish pedigrees in Burke's Landed Gentry, and in O'Hart's Irish Pedigrees, as well as in the Reports of the Historical MSS. Commission, and the various printed Records and State Papers relating to Ireland."

refer you is that which you will find laid down in the C. S.-The best general principle to which we can men's rank that confers precedence." Applying this Rules of Precedence in Burke's Peerage, viz., "It is principle to the case of a courtesy title, Mary, wife of the Hon. Reginald Fitz-Argent, would most correctly be called the Hon. Mrs. Reginald Fitz-Argent. But in the particular case in point we should have thought it better to have disused titles as much as possible, and simply to have described her as Mary, wife of Reginald Fitz-Argent. To call her the Hon. Mary, when she is the wife of an earl's younger son, can only result, it seems to us, in confusion for future genealogical students of the tablet on which she is so described.

HEPATICUS. - See Bonwick's Who are the Irish? (Bogue), for a very condensed account of the Fenians of Irish legend. There is an extensive Fenian literature, and a sharp Fenian controversy. Fionn himself you may take either as an historical character or an eponymous hero, and either view will have supporters.

J. H. M.-The case is one, we think, in which custom, springing out of a mode of judicial designation now confined to Scotland, has so rooted itself in the minds of men, that any attempt to use the title of peerage would be worse than useless. English literature refuses to know Viscount St. Albans.

PHILIP H. LEE.-We sympathize with your feeling, but have had so much already on the subject that we are unable to reopen a discussion which could lead to no practical result. For the hymn "Rock of Ages," see N. & Q.," 4th S. vi. 220, 302, 397.

E. G.-We have not the type necessary for producing your cryptogram,

5th S. iv. 201, 242, 262, 303, 341, 414; v. 359. F. P.-For a list of works on sword play see "N. & Q.,"

FRENCH REFORM.-Suited rather to an educational

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BIBLE REVISION.

THE ENGLISH HEXAPLA:

THE SIX PRINCIPAL ENGLISH VERSIONS OF
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