_Freedom from Serpents_ (Vol. iii., p. 490.).--Ireland is not the only country supposed to be inimical to reptiles. I may perhaps be allowed to add to the "Note" of your correspondent as to Ireland, that the Maltese declare that St. Paul after his shipwreck cursed all the venomous reptiles of the island, and banished them for ever, just as St. Patrick is said to have afterwards treated those of his favourite isle. Whatever be the cause of it, the fact is alleged by travellers to be certain, that there are _no venomous animals in Malta_. "They assured us" (says Brydone in his _Tour through Sicily and Malta_, vol. ii. p. 35.) "that vipers have been brought from Sicily, and died almost immediately on their arrival." Although perhaps more strictly coming under the head of folk lore, I may here advert to the traditions found in several parts of England, that venomous reptiles were banished by saints who came to live there. I have read that Keynsham--the hermitage of Keynes, a Cambrian lady, A.D. 490--was infested with serpents, which were converted by her prayers into the "Serpent-stones"--the _Cornua Ammonis_--that now cover the land. A similar story is told at Whitby, where these fine fossils of the Lias are called "St. Hilda's Serpent-stones;" and so, too, St. Godric, the famous hermit of Finchale, near Durham, is said to have destroyed the native race of serpents. W. S. G. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. _Nao, for Naw, for Ship_ (Vol. iv., pp. 28. 214.).--I am obliged to GOMER for his reference to Davies. In the cited passages from Taliesin and Meigant, _heb naw_ means without being able to swim. The word _nawv_ drops its final letter in order to furnish the rhyme. That appears, not only from the rejection of the word by all lexicographers, but from one of the manuscripts of Meigant, which actually writes it _nawv_. I esteem Davies's translation to be Daviesian. By way of a gentle pull at the torques, I will observe, that I am not in the habit of proving that people "did _not_ possess" a thing, but of inquiring for the evidence that they did. And when I find that tattooed and nearly naked people used coracles, and do not find that they used anything grander, I am led to suspect they did not. My answer to the Query, whether it be probable that British warriors went over to Gaul in coracles is, "Yes, highly so." Rude canoes of various sorts convey the expeditions of savage islanders in all seas. And the coracle rendered the Scots of Erin formidable to the Roman shores of Gaul and Britain. I do not see that the Dorsetshire folk being "water-dwellers" (if so be they were such) proved them to have used proper ships, any more than their being "water-drinkers" would prove them to have used glasses or silver tankards.