and carries out the germ of ill to its full extent, as exemplified in Sir Leoline:

It appears to me that the third line in this passage, from its being introduced too early (if I may venture to say so), on this account unnecessarily increases the difficulty; it occurs before the idea has been sufficiently developed; while it belongs rather to the result of this evil leaven than to the explanation of it, with which the poet is here engaged. The "charm" to which he alludes is, of course, the tie that binds us to the object of affection, and which forbids us to speak any but words of love and tenderness.

The poet, then, from the aspect of this strange anomaly, as exemplified in Sir Leoline, is forced to the following conclusion:

If we turn now to the last two paragraphs of the poem, we find all this illustrated; in these two paragraphs the poet has

In the former are enumerated all those memorials which could move the Baron to "love and pity;" in the latter we are told of the "rage and pain" of his heart; and on this strange union the poet soliloquises in the conclusion.

A full discussion of this subject would be perhaps unsuited to the pages of "N. & Q.;" for, various as are the subjects to which they are open, ethics can hardly be reckoned one of them. I will conclude, therefore, with the following suggestion, viz. that the delicacy, the acuteness, and the truth evinced in this last scene of Christabel and its conclusion, tell of a deeper mind than has, perhaps, fallen to the lot of any English poet since the days of William Shakspeare.

H. C. K.

—— Rectory, Hereford.

CONVERTIBILITY OF THE WORDS "GRIN" AND "GIN".

Will some more learned readers than your present querist be so good as to tell us how it came to pass that the word grin became changed in our modern Bibles for gin (sometimes spelled ginn), with which it would seem there can be no cognation? In the sense of a trap or snare grin occurs in Job xviii. 9., Ps. cxl. 5., and Ps. cxli. 9., in two Bibles which I have, viz., one "printed at London by Robert Barker, printer to the King's most excellent Majestie, 1640," and the other "printed by John Hayes, printer to the University of Cambridge, 1677."

In Cruden's Concordance, 1737, 1761, and 1769, it is given as grin in these instances; neither in the modern editions of that valuable book have they noticed the word gin as now used in the said three texts which would indicate that it is only within some eighty years, at any rate, that the change was adopted by the king's printer, and Oxford and Cambridge. Singularly enough, in these old editions of 1640 and 1677, while grin is used in Job and Psalms, gin is given in the side-note of Job xl. 24., in the text of Isa. viii. 14., and Amos iii. 5.

Now to grin (from the Saxon grinian) means, according to philologists, to show the teeth set together; the act of closing the teeth; so that we may suppose an allusion to the barbarous instrument called a man-trap, unless the idea is negatived by the side-note Job xl. 24., on the impossibility of boring Behemoth's nose with a gin, which would hardly be the word adopted to convey the idea of boring; an awl or gimlet better suiting the conditions of the case. Some commentators read ring—this may be illustrated by the ring we see even now frequently in the noses of our bulls. Be this as it may, the reasonable conjecture is, that the same word, conveying the same meaning, is appropriate in all the six places quoted.

It is therefore asked, 1. Why, in the sacred volume, a century ago it should have been spelled grin in the three first-mentioned passages, and gin in the three others? and 2. Why it should have been altered in the three first-quoted verses from grin to gin? In short, if they are cognate words (which the separate use of them in various editions formerly seems to render doubtful), what advantage resulted from changing the word which more familiarly explains itself by the action of the teeth for a much less forcible term?

B. B.

FOLK LORE.

Game Feathers.

—I do not see that any of your numerous correspondents have mentioned the common belief among the poor in this county (Sussex), that a person cannot die if his bed is stuffed with game feathers. A friend of mine a little time back was talking to a labourer on the absurdity of such a belief; but he failed to convince the good man, who, as a proof of the correctness of his belief brought forward the case of a poor man who had lately died after a lingering illness. "Look at poor Muster S——, how hard he were a dying; poor soul, he could not die ony way, till neighbour Puttick found out how it wer,—'Muster S——,' says he, 'ye be lying on geame feathers, mon, surely;' and so he wer. So we took'n out o'bed, and laid'n on the floore, and he pretty soon died then!"

NEDLAM.

Isle of Man Folk Lore.

—A young person from Castletown tells me as follows:—

A woman walking over Barrule met two fairy armies going to battle, which was to begin on the ringing of a bell; she pulled the bell, and in consequence both armies attacked her, and kept her prisoner for three years, when she escaped.

A little girl, walking over a bridge, was offered by three little men (one after the other) a farthing, which she persevered in refusing; knowing that, if accepted, she would have been carried off.

A labouring man, passing by a house which is said to be haunted by soldiers, saw a soldier from Castletown sitting on a stile; and, on going up to tell him that the bugle had sounded, the soldier vanished into air, and the man saw a ball of fire before him all the way home.

A white lady walked through a room one evening when the doors were bolted and barred, and could not be found anywhere; a murder was once committed in a room of this house, and, although the boards have been moved, blood will come again.

At Peel, a witch with a basin of water said that the herring fleet would never return; every ship was lost, and she was put in a barrel with spikes, and rolled down the hill, the grass never having grown since; "and I saw the mark all down."

Women are turned into hares, and can only be shot with a silver sixpence.

A white lady was seen every night after dark; and one night, when all were in bed, a servant heard a knock at the door, put her head out of window, and saw a little doll hop round the house and knock three times; she was so frightened that she could not get her head in, till others pulled her. The house was then suddenly illuminated, and, when quite dark again, the bed-clothes pulled off.

The fairies are seen to hop from trees: a man took one home for a doll, and became very ill; but on the advice of a woman, he returned it where found, and then quite recovered.

Fairies change children; a woman had one for eighteen