DISH FOR THE KING

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3270, 10 March 1931, Page 7

DISH FOR THE KING

Isn't this a dainty dish to set before the King? Four .and twenty woodcock were baked in a pie and sent to His Majesty as a Christmas present from Mr James McNeill, Governor-General of the Irish Free State.

This (explains the Sunday News) follows a custom begun in 1813, when Lord Talbot, then Viceroy of Ireland, presented George 111. with a pie of 24 woodcock and associated with it the old nursery rhyme. Every Viceroy since then has made a similar gift. Mr Tim Healy, the first GovernorGeneral of the State, continued the practice at the special request of the outgoing Viceroy, Lord Fitz Alan.

Mr Healy made one change in the century-old custom. The pie has always been made in the vice-regal kitchen, but Mr Healy sent the woodcock to a famous firm in Piccadily to be made into the historic pie.. Mr James McNeill has followed that example.

A King's Head for Sixpence 6 6... The claim of a French writer, M. Joseph Bourdais, that a mummified head he l bought for sixpence, at a Paris sale 10 years ago is that of King Henry IV., the debonair and romantic King of France and Navarre, has excited interest among historians in Paris (writes the correspondent in that city of the News,Chronicle). M Bourdais says that the head resembles the King's portraits. He also states that when the remains of the French Kings were removed from their tombs by the revolutionaries in 1793 portions were afterwards preserved, and came into the posession of the German Count von Erbach, whose home was sacked by Napoleon's soldiers. These soldiers brought the head back to France. ,

Henry of Navarre (1553-1610) was a brave but reckless soldier, a notorious lover, and an immensely popular King. At first fighting in the Protestant cause, he eventually became a Roman Catholic. In 1610 he was assassinated.