_Passage in Tennyson_ (Vol. vi., p. 272.).--It appears to me that Tennyson has fallen into the error of a Latin construction. I call it an error, because in that language the varied terminations of the cases and numbers make that plain which we have no means of evidencing in English. I should translate it "Numenii strepitus volantis"--"The call of the curlew dreary (drearily) gleams about the moorland, _as he flies_ o'er Locksley Hall." The summer note of the curlew is a shrill clear whistle, but in winter they sometimes indulge in a wild melancholy scream.
_Inscriptions in Churches_ (Vol. vi., p. 510.).--I differ from your reply to NORWOOD'S Query, in which you refer to the colloquy between Queen Elizabeth and Dean Nowell as the origin of these inscriptions. No doubt they were derived from the custom of our ante-Reformation ancestors, of painting figures and legends of saints upon the walls of churches; but the following instance will suffice to prove that they originated in the reign of Edward VI., and not in Queen Elizabeth's.
In the interesting paper by the Rev. E. Venables in the _Transactions of the Cambridge Camden Society_, on "The Church of St. Mary the Great, Cambridge," he gives, under the year { 26} 1550, the following extracts from the churchwardens' accounts:
"For makyng of the wall where Saynt George stood in the chyrche vj^d It. payd for wythynge y^e chyrch xx^s iiij^d It. payd for _wryghtynge of y^e chyrch walls with Scriptures_ iiij^{ lib} iij^s iiij^d."
Shortly after the accession of Queen Mary in 1553, the following entry occurs:
"Payd to Barnes for mendyng over the rode and over the altar in the chapell, and _for washing oute the Scriptures_ 4^s 4^d."
They do not appear to have been restored after this, for in the year 1840 some of the plaister between two of the windows of the south aisle peeling off, discovered traces of "wryghtynge" beneath; and I and another member of the Cambridge Camden Society spent some time in laying it bare, and after much difficulty made out that it was the Lord's Prayer in English, headed, "The Lord's Prayer, called the Paternoster," and written in the church text of the period, the whole enclosed in a sort of arabesque border; it was not merely whited over, but had evidently been partially effaced, or partly "washed oute," before being "concealed under its dreary shroud of whitewash." On examination there were traces of more of this writing between the other windows, but we had not time to make any further investigation, for the church was then being cleaned, and in a few days all that we had laid bare was again concealed under a veil of whitewash.