Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850 | Page 3

to countervail the impression created by his early removal.
With these facts before us, King Henry's supposed generosity in
renominating Gascoigne can no longer be credited. But, even

presuming that none of these facts had been discovered, I must own
myself surprised that any one could maintain that Gascoigne was ever
Chief Justice to Hen. V., with two existing records before him, both
containing conclusive proof to the contrary.
The first is the entry on the Issue Roll of July, 1413, of a payment made
of an arrear of Gascoigne's salary and pension, in which he is called
"late Chief Justice of the Bench of _Lord Henry, father of the present
King_."
The second is the inscription on his monument in Harwood Church in
Yorkshire, where he is described as "nuper capit. justio. de banco Hen.
nuper regis angliæ quarti."
I think I may fairly ask whether it is possible to suppose that in either
of these records, particularly {163} the latter, he would have been
docked his title, had he ever been Chief Justice of the reigning king?
Allow me to take this opportunity of thanking L.B.L. for his extracts
from the Hospitaller's Survey (Vol. ii., p. 123.), which are most
interesting, and, to use a modern word, very suggestive.
Edward Foss.
Street-End House, near Canterbury.
* * * * *
AN OLD GUY?
No one would at present think of any other answer to a Query as to the
meaning of this term than that the phrase originated with the
scarecrows and stuffed apings of humanity with which the rising
generation enlivens our streets on every fifth of November, and dins in
our ears the cry, "Please to remember the guy," and that it alludes to the
Christian name of the culprit, Guido. Have, however, any of your
readers met this title, or any allusion to it, in any writer previously to
1605? and may its attribution to the supposed framer of the Gunpowder
Plot only have been the accidental appropriation of an earlier term of
popular reproach, and which had become so since the conversion of the
nation to Christianity? This naturally heaped contumely and insult upon
every thing relating to the Druids, and the heathen superstitions of the
earlier inhabitants.
Amongst others, Guy was a term by which, no doubt, the Druids were
very early designated, and is cognate, with the Italian Guido and our
own _Guide_, to the Latin _cuidare_, which would give it great

appropriativeness when applied to the offices of teachers and leaders,
with which these lordly flamens were invested. Narrowly connected
with their rites, the term has descended to the present day, as is
decidedly shown in the French name of the mistletoe, _le Gui_, and as
denoting the priesthood. The common cry of the children at Christmas
in France, _au gui l'an neuf_, marks the winter solstice, and their most
solemn festival; so _ai-guil-lac_, as the name of new year's gifts, so
necessary and expensive to a Frenchman, which they particularly bear
in the diocese of Chartres, can only be explained by referring it to the
same origin. In the French vocabulary at present this word, as I have
before observed, is restricted to the mistletoe, the viscum album of
Linnæus: but in Germany we have pretty much the same conversion of
a favourite druidical plant, the trefoil, or shamrock, and the cinquefoil;
both of them go in Bavaria and many other parts of Germany under the
name of _Truten-fuss_, or Druid's foot, and are thought potent charms
in guarding fields and cattle from harm; but there too, as with us,
possibly the oldest title of guy, the term Druid, has grown into a name
of the greatest disgrace: "_Trute, Trute, Saudreck_," "Druid, Druid,
sow dirt," is an insulting phrase reserved for the highest ebullitions of a
peasant's rage in Schwaben and Franken.
Whilst on the subject of the mistletoe, I cannot forbear to mark the
coincidences that run through the popular notions of a country in all
ages. Pliny, in his very exact account of the druidical rites, tells us,
when the archdruid mounted the oak to cut the sacred parasite with a
golden pruning-hook, two other priests stood below to catch it in a
white linen cloth, extremely cautious lest it should fall to earth. One is
almost tempted to fancy that Shakspeare was describing a similar scene
when he makes Hecate say
"Upon the corner of the moon, There hangs a vap'rous drop profound,
I'll catch it ere it come to ground."
In a very excellent note to Dr. Giles' translation of Richard of
Cirencester, p. 432., he adduces the opinion of Dr. Daubeny, of Oxford,
that as the mistletoe is now so rarely found in Europe on oaks, it had
been exterminated with the other druidical rites on the