QUAERO.

Curfew.—­In what towns or villages in England is the old custom of ringing the curfew still retained?

NABOC.

Alumni of Oxford, Cambridge, and Winchester.—­Are the alumni of the various colleges of Oxford, Cambridge, and Winchester, published from an early period, and the various preferments they held, similar to the one published at Eton.

J.R.  Fox.

St. Leger’s Life of Archbishop Walsh.—­In Doctor Oliver’s History of the Jesuits, it is stated that William St. Leger, an Irish member of that Society, wrote the Life of Thomas Walsh, Archbishop of Cashel, in Ireland, published in 4to. at Antwerp in 1655.  Can any of your numerous readers inform me if a copy of this work is to be found in the British Museum, or any other public library, and something of its contents?

J.W.H. {104}

Query put to a Pope.—­

  “Sancte Pater! scire vellem
  Si Papatus mutat pellem?”

I have been told that these lines were addressed to one of the popes, whose life, before his elevation to the see of St. Peter, had been passed in excesses but little suited to the clerical profession.

They were addressed to him orally, by one of his former associates, who met and stopped him while on his way to or from some high festival of the Church, and who plucked aside, as he spoke, the gorgeous robes in which his quondam fellow-reveller was dressed.

The reply of the pope was prompt, and, like the question, in a rhyming Latin couplet.  I wish, if possible, to discover, the name of the pope;—­the terms of his reply;—­the name of the bold man who “put him to the question;”—­by what writer the anecdote is recorded, or on what authority it rests.

C. FORBES.

Temple.

The Carpenter’s Maggot.—­I have in my possession a MS. tune called the “Carpenter’s Maggot,” which, until within the last few years, was played (I know for nearly a century) at the annual dinner of the Livery of the Carpenters’ Company.  Can any of your readers inform me where the original is to be found, and also the origin of the word “Maggot” as applied to a tune?

F.T.P.

Lord Delamere.—­Can any of your readers give me the words of a song called “Lord Delamere,” beginning: 

  “I wonder very much that our sovereign king,
  So many large taxes upon this land should bring.”

And inform me to what political event this song, of which I have an imperfect MS. copy, refers.

EDWARD PEACOCK, JUN.

Henry and the Nut-brown Maid.—­SEARCH would be obliged for any information as to the authorship of this beautiful ballad.

[Mr. Wright, in his handsome black-letter reprint, published by Pickering in 1836, states, that “it is impossible to fix the date of this ballad,” and has not attempted to trace the authorship.  We shall be very glad if SEARCH’s Query should produce information upon either of these points.]

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