Welsh Journals

NOTES AND QUERIES. 617 " The Copper Plate Magazine " (via.—510).—In a catalogue for Michaelmas, 1885, sent me by Mr. Wm. Withers, 25, Loseby Lane, Leicester, I find the entry following, which answers the last of the " Queries " put by your Southamp¬ ton correspondent " Mahlstick :"— 160 COPPER PLATE Magazine, 42 exceedingly fine portraits of poets, philosophers, statesmen, &c, in elaborate characteristic borders and 84 magnificent engravings of classical subjects, views of gentlemen's seats, &c, with descriptions, 2 vols., 4to, mottled calf, gilt back, £1 15s. 1778. A nice copy, with brilliant impressions of the celebrated portraits and plates. Seven leaves very slightly wormed towards the bottom. Cardiff. Blackletter Polio. A Welsh Author's " Guide to Bath " (viii.—478, 479).—I wish I could assist Mr, Arthur to the extent he desires. Here, however, is my mite. The Welsh physician, whoever he was, who wrote The Bathes of Bathes Ayde, managed to turn out a good book for the time. The work is eulogistically referred to by Thomas Guidott in his Observations on Bath, published in 1674. Both these books were quartos. Mr. Park, a sonneteer of some repute in his day and the able editor of several reprints of early English literature, observes of John Jones, M.D., that " this medical Welchman was a profound genealogist, and in his wonderful pamphlet traces the pedigree of legendary Bladud up to Adam !" By the way, sir, why do not some of your countrymen who live in London, and to whom the British Museum is always accessible, come to the rescue of their brethren in the provinces when interesting points of this kind are under discus¬ sion ? Is it because they have not penetration enough to see the value of such information, or does their interest in Wales and Welsh questions cease when the incentive of an Eisteddfod prize, or of paid engagements for adjudicating on Eisteddfodic competitions, is withdrawn ? It looks to me very much as if the patriotism of the pocket were a prevalent disease among your countrymen. The Notes and Queries section of the National Magazine, which I will make bold to assert is incomparably the best thing of the kind ever attempted in Wales and for Welshmen, appears to me to be supported almost entirely by contributors of English nationality like your very obedient servant, Cardiff. Blackletter Folio. * # The Sin Eater (vi.—477 ; vii.—89 ; viii.—511).—Some time ago (I have lost the reference) there was a " Note " in the Bed Dragon on the curious old custom of sin eating. The subject, if I recollect, was not very fully discussed, and perhaps the following remarks may be not without interest. They are taken from a curious book called Agriconensia, or Archaeological Sketches of Boss, by a Hereford¬ shire antiquary named Fosbroke. It is a small volume, written apparently as a companion to Gilpin's Wye Tour, with which, in the copy I picked up the other day at a bookstall, it is bound. After mentioning various customs, he says, " It appears that so late as the 17th century there was in the villages adjoining to Wales an old man called the ' Sin Eater ;' and his office was, for a trifling compensation, to pawn his own soul for the ease and rest of the soul departed." Ellis, the editor of the Bopular Antiquities, has extracted the following curious passage from the Lansdowne Manuscripts concerning a "Sin Eater" who "lived in a cottage on Rosse highway." " In the county of Hereford was an old custom at funerals to hire poor people who were to take upon them the sinnes of the party deceased. One of them (he was a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor Rascal), I remember, lived in a cottage on Rosse highway. The manner was, that when the corps was brought out of the house, and layd on the Biere, a loaf of bread was brought out and delivered to the Sinne-Eater, over the corps, as also a mazar bowl of maple, full of beer, which he was to drink up, and six¬ pence in money, in consideration whereof he took upon him, ipso facto, all the sinnes of the defunct and freed him or her from walking after they were dead. This custom alludes, methinks, something to the Scape Goat in the old Lawe, Leviticus, chap, xvi., v. 21, 22." Cambridge. W.A. A A