The stone in question is, I know, on account of its great size, jokingly called "Long Meg, of Westminster" by the vulgar; but no one, surely, before Mr. Cunningham, ever _seriously_ supposed it to be her burying-place. Henry Keefe, in his _Monumenta Westmonasteriensa_, 1682, gives the following account of this monument:--
"That large and stately plain black marble stone (which is vulgarly known by the name of _Long Meg of Westminster_) on the north side of _Laurentius_ the abbot, was placed there for _Gervasius de Blois_, another abbot of this monastery, who was base son to King Stephen, and by him placed as a monk here, and afterwards made abbot, who died _anno_ 1160, and was buried under this stone, having this distich formerly thereon:
"_De regnum genere pater hic Gervasius ecce Monstrat defunctus, mors rapit omne genus_."
Felix Summerly, in his _Handbook for Westminster Abbey_, p. 29., noticing the cloisters and the effigies of the abbots, says,--
"Towards this end there lies a large slab of blue marble, which is called 'Long Meg' of Westminster. Though it is inscribed to Gervasius de Blois, abbot, 1160 natural son of King Stephen, he is said to have been buried under a small stone, and tradition assigns 'Long Meg' as the gravestone of twenty-six monks, who were carried off by the plague in 1349, and buried together in one grave."
The tradition here recorded may be correct. At any rate, it carries with it more plausibility than that recorded by Mr. Cunningham.
[Some additional and curious allusions to this probably mythic virago are recorded in Mr. Halliwell's _Descriptive Notices of Popular English Histories_, printed for the Percy Society.]
A NOTE ON SPELLING.--"SANATORY," "CONNECTION."
I trust that "NOTES AND QUERIES" may, among many other benefits, improve spelling by example as well as precept. Let me make a note on two words that I find in No. 37.: _sanatory_, p. 99., and _connection_, p. 98.
Why "_sanatory_ laws?" _Sanare_ is _to cure_, and a curing-place is, if you like, properly called _sanatorium_. But the Latin for _health_ is _sanitas_, and the laws which relate to health should be called _sanitary_.
Analogy leads us to _connexion_, not _connection_; _plecto_, _plexus_, _complexion_; _flecto_, _flexus_, _inflexion_; _necto_, _nexus_, _connexion_, &c.; while the termination _ction_ belongs to words derived from Latin verbs whose passive participles end in _ctus_ as _lego_, _lectus_, _collection_; _injecio_, _injectus_, _injection_; _seco_, _sectus_, _section_, &c.