The Maltese at Valletta, a people singularly, and, as we should say, morbidly, addicted to the seeming enjoyment of the most horrid discords, on Good Friday Eve, have the custom of jangling the church bells with the utmost violence, in execration of the memory of Judas; and I have seen there a large wooden machine (of which they have many in use), constructed on a principle similar to that of an old-fashioned watchman’s rattle, but of far greater power in creating an uproar, intended to be symbolical of the rattling of Judas’s bones, that will not rest in his grave.  The Maltese, as is well known, are a very superstitious people.  The employment of Judas candles would, no doubt, if properly explained, turn out to mean to imply execration against the memory of Judas, wherever they may be used.  But in the expression Judas bell, the greatest conceivable amount of discord is that which is intended to be expressed.

ROBERT SNOW.

6.  Chesterfield street, Mayfair, March 23. 1850.

[To this we may add, that the question at present pending between this country and Greece, so far as regards the claim of M. Pacifico, appears, from the papers laid before Parliament, to have had its origin in what Sir Edward Lyon states “to have been the custom in Athens for some years, to burn an effigy of Judas on Easter day.”  And from the account of the origin of the riots by the Council of the Criminal Court of Athens, we learn, that “it is proved by the {358} investigation, that on March 23, 1847, Easter Day, a report was spread in the parish of the Church des incorporels, that the Jew, D. Pacifico, by paying the churchwarden of the church, succeeded in preventing the effigy of Judas from being burnt, which by annual custom was made and burnt in that parish on Easter Day.”  From another document in the same collection it seems, that the Greek Government, out of respect to M. Charles de Rothschild, who was at Athens in April, 1847, forbid in all the Greek churches of the capital the burning of Judas.]

Grummett (No. 20. p. 319.).—­The following use of the word whose definition is sought by “[Greek:  Sigma]” occurs in a description of the members or adjuncts of the Cinque Port of Hastings in 1229:—­

    “Servicia inde debita domino regi xxi. naves, et in qualibet
    nave xxi. homines, cum uno garcione qui dicitur gromet.”

In quoting this passage in a paper “On the Seals of the Cinque Ports,” in the Sussex Archaeological Collections (Vol. i. p. 16.), I applied the following illustration:—­

“Gromet seems to be a diminutive of ‘grome’, a serving-man, whence the modern groom.  The provincialism grummet, much used in Sussex to designate a clumsy, awkward youth, has doubtless some relation to this cabin-boy of the Ports’ navy.”

I ought to add, that the passage above given is to be found in Jeake’s Charters of the Cinque Ports.