lordship, with many a broad acre besides, passed from the Quins, and are now the property of the O'Briens to this day; and while the rest of the castle is little better than a heap of ruins, the fatal window still remains nearly as perfect as when the lady sprang through it, an irrefragable proof of the truth of the legend in the eyes of the peasantry. FRANCIS ROBERT DAVIES. _The Seven Whisperers._--I have been informed by an old and trustworthy servant that about twenty years ago, as he was walking one clear starlight night with two other persons, they heard, for the space of several minutes, high up in the air, beautiful sounds like music, which gradually died away towards the north. He spoke of it as an occurrence not very uncommon, and said it was always called "The Seven Whisperers." On inquiry I found the name well known amongst the poorer classes. Is it not an electrical phenomenon? METAOUO. Essex. * * * * * ITALIAN-ENGLISH, GERMAN-ENGLISH, AND THE REFUGEE STYLE. (Vol. vii., p. 149.) Every one has admired the odd bits of Italian-English which "N. & Q." lately published, a true {437} philological curiosity. Such queer medleys have been the result whenever two opposite idioms have been thrown together and unskilfully stirred up. Very few foreigners indeed, Sclavonic nations being excepted, and particularly the Russians, write French tolerably well. The present Lord Mahon and Lady Montaigne, in an excellent _Essay on Marriage_, are exceptions to the rule. Voltaire used to say,-- "Faites tous vos vers a Paris; Et n'allez pas en Allemagne!" And very right he was. His kingly disciple committed more than once such Irish rhymes as these: "Je vais cueillir dans leurs sentiers (des Muses) De fraiches et charmantes roses; Et je dedaigne les lauriers, En exceptant les lauriers _sauces_." Forgetting the difference of pronunciation between the soft _s_ of _rose (roze)_ and the lisping sound of the _c_ in _sauce (soss)_. As I have not by me the ponderous and voluminous works of the poetical monarch, I may have altered some of the words of the quotation; but the rhymes _sauce_ and _rose_ I aver to be true to the primitive copy. Even Protestant refugees, born of French parents, brought up amongst their co-religionists and countrymen, wrote a strange gibberish, often ungrammatical, always unidiomatic, of which traces may be found even in Basnage and Ancillon. A recent French theologian, the clever author of a Life of Spinosa, written in Germany and published in Paris with some success, has such expressions as these: "Les villes protestantes preferent la liberte avec Calvin QUE la tyrannique concorde avec Luther."--_Hist. Crit. du Rationalisme_, p. 49. "Et ailleuz: Stuttgard Dontil etait conservateur DE LA Bibliotheque."-_Ib_.