This amazon is often alluded to by our old writers. Her life was printed in 1582; and she was the heroine of a play noticed in Henslowe's _Diary_, under the date February 14, 1594. She also figured in a ballad entered on the Stationers' books in that year. In _Holland's Leaguer_, 1632, mention is made of a house kept by Long Meg in Southwark:-- "It was out of the citie, yet in the view of the citie, only divided by a delicate river: there was many handsome buildings, and many hearty neighbours, yet at the first foundation it was renowned for nothing so much as for the memory of that famous amazon _Longa Margarita_, who had there for many yeeres kept a famous _infamous_ house of open hospitality." According to Vaughan's _Golden Grove_, 1608,-- "Long Meg of Westminster kept alwaies twenty courtizans in her house, whom, by their pictures, she sold to all commers." From these extracts the occupation of Long Meg may be readily guessed at. Is it then likely that such a detestable character would have been buried amongst "goodly friars" and "holy abbots" in the cloisters of our venerable abbey? I think not: but I leave considerable doubts as to whether Meg was a real personage.--Query. Is she not akin to Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Doctor Rat, and a host of others of the same type? The stone in question is, I know, on account of its great size, jokingly called "Long Meg, of Westminster" by the vulgar; but no one, surely, before Mr. Cunningham, ever _seriously_ supposed it to be her burying-place. Henry Keefe, in his _Monumenta Westmonasteriensa_, 1682, gives the following account of this monument:-- "That large and stately plain black marble stone (which is vulgarly known by the name of _Long Meg of Westminster_) on the north side of _Laurentius_ the abbot, was placed there for _Gervasius de Blois_, another abbot of this monastery, who was base son to King Stephen, and by him placed as a monk here, and afterwards made abbot, who died _anno_ 1160, and was buried under this stone, having this distich formerly thereon: "_De regnum genere pater hic Gervasius ecce Monstrat defunctus, mors rapit omne genus_." Felix Summerly, in his _Handbook for Westminster Abbey_, p. 29., noticing the cloisters and the effigies of the abbots, says,-- "Towards this end there lies a large slab of blue marble, which is called 'Long Meg' of Westminster. Though it is inscribed to Gervasius de Blois, abbot, 1160 natural son of King Stephen, he is said to have been buried under a small stone, and tradition assigns 'Long Meg' as the gravestone of twenty-six monks, who were carried off by the plague in 1349, and buried together in one grave." The tradition here recorded may be correct. At any rate, it carries with it more plausibility than that recorded by Mr. Cunningham. EDWARD F. RIMIBAULT.