Folk-lore of Shakespeare, Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer [e reader comics TXT] 📗
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The old Greek epigram relating to the hare—
So hares insult the lion when he’s dead,”
—is alluded to by the Bastard in “King John” (ii. 1):
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.”
A familiar expression among sportsmen for a hare is “Wat,” so called, perhaps, from its long ears or wattles. In “Venus and Adonis” the term occurs:
Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear.”
In Drayton’s “Polyolbion” (xxiii.) we read:
The finder sendeth out, to seek out nimble Wat,
Which crosseth in the field, each furlong, every flat,
Till he this pretty beast upon the form hath found.”
Hedgehog. The urchin or hedgehog, like the toad, for its solitariness, the ugliness of its appearance, and from a popular belief that it sucked or poisoned the udders of cows, was adopted into the demonologic system; and its shape was sometimes supposed to be assumed by mischievous elves.[426] Hence, in “The Tempest” (i. 2), Prospero says:
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee;”
and later on in the same play (ii. 2) Caliban speaks of being frighted with “urchin shows.” In the witch scene in “Macbeth” (iv. 1) the hedge-pig is represented as one of the witches’ familiars; and in the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2), in the incantation of the fairies, “thorny hedgehogs” are exorcised. For the use of urchins in similar associations we may quote “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 4), “like urchins, ouphes, and fairies;” and “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 3), “ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins.”[427] In the phrase still current, of “little urchin” for a child, the idea of the fairy also remains. In various legends we find this animal holding a prominent place. Thus, for example, it was in the form of a hedgehog[428] that the devil is said to have made his attempt to let the sea in through the Brighton Downs, which was prevented by a light being brought, though the seriousness of the scheme is still attested in the Devil’s Dyke. There is an ancient tradition that when the devil had smuggled himself into Noah’s Ark he tried to sink it by boring a hole; but this scheme was defeated, and the human race saved, by the hedgehog stuffing himself into the hole. In the Brighton story, as Mr. Conway points out, the devil would appear to have remembered his former failure in drowning people, and to have appropriated the form which defeated him. In “Richard III.” (i. 2), the hedgehog is used as a term of reproach by Lady Anne, when addressing Gloster.
Horse. Although Shakespeare’s allusions to the horse are most extensive, yet he has said little of the many widespread superstitions, legends, and traditional tales that have been associated from the earliest times with this brave and intellectual animal. Indeed, even nowadays, both in our own country and abroad, many a fairy tale is told and credited by the peasantry in which the horse occupies a prominent place. It seems to have been a common notion that, at night-time, fairies in their nocturnal revels played various pranks with horses, often entangling in a thousand knots their hair—a superstition to which we referred in our chapter on Fairies, where Mercutio, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4), says:
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.”
In “King Lear” (ii. 3), Edgar says: “I’ll ... elf all my hair in knots.”
Mr. Hunt, in his “Popular Romances of the West of England” (1871, p. 87), tells us that, when a boy, he was on a visit at a farmhouse near Fowey River, and well remembers the farmer, with much sorrow, telling the party one morning at breakfast, how “the piskie people had been riding Tom again.” The mane was said to be knotted into fairy stirrups, and the farmer said he had no doubt that at least twenty small people had sat upon the horse’s neck. Warburton[429] considers that this superstition may have originated from the disease called “Plica Polonica.” Witches, too, have generally been supposed to harass the horse, using it in various ways for their fiendish purposes. Thus, there are numerous local traditions in which the horse at night-time has been ridden by the witches, and found in the morning in an almost prostrate condition, bathed in sweat.
It was a current notion that a horse-hair dropped into corrupted water would soon become an animal. The fact, however, is that the hair moves like a living thing because a number of animalculæ cling to it.[430] This ancient vulgar error is mentioned in “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 2):
Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life,
And not a serpent’s poison.”
Steevens quotes from Churchyard’s “Discourse of Rebellion,” 1570:
That lyes in donge, where on vyle serpents brede.”
Dr. Lister, in the “Philosophical Transactions,” says that these animated horse-hairs are real thread-worms. It was asserted that these worms moved like serpents, and were poisonous to swallow. Coleridge tells us it was a common experiment with boys in Cumberland and Westmoreland to lay a horse-hair in water, which, when removed after a time, would twirl round the finger and sensibly compress it—having become the supporter of an immense number of small, slimy water-lice.
A horse is said to have a “cloud in his face” when he has a dark-colored spot in his forehead between his eyes. This gives him a sour look, and, being supposed to indicate an ill-temper, is generally considered a great blemish. This notion is alluded to in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 2), where Agrippa, speaking of Cæsar, says:
whereupon Enobarbus adds:
So is he, being a man.”
Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” uses the phrase for the look of a woman: “Every lover admires his mistress, though she be very deformed of herselfe—thin, leane, chitty face, have clouds in her face,” etc.
“To mose in the chine,” a phrase we find in “Taming of the Shrew” (iii. 2)—“Possessed with the glanders, and like to mose in the chine”—refers to a disorder in horses, also known as “mourning in the chine.”
Alluding to the custom associated with horses, we may note that a stalking-horse, or stale, was either a real or artificial one, under cover of which the fowler approached towards and shot at his game. It is alluded to in “As You Like It” (v. 4) by the Duke, who says of Touchstone: “He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.” In “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 3), Claudio says: “Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.”[431] In “Comedy of Errors” (ii. 1), Adriana says: “I am but his stale,” upon which Malone remarks: “Adriana undoubtedly means to compare herself to a stalking-horse, behind whom Antipholus shoots at such game as he selects.” In “Taming of the Shrew,” Katharina says to her father (i. 1):
To make a stale of me amongst these mates?”
which, says Singer, means “make an object of mockery.” So in “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 3), Warwick says:
That it was also a hunting term might be shown, adds Dyce,[432] by quotations from various old writers. In the inventories of the wardrobe belonging to King Henry VIII. we frequently find the allowance of certain quantities of stuff for the purpose of making “stalking-coats and stalking-hose for the use of his majesty.”[433]
Again, the forehorse of a team was generally gayly ornamented with tufts and ribbons and bells. Hence, in “All’s Well That Ends Well” (ii. 1), Bertram complains that, bedizened like one of these animals, he will have to squire ladies at the court, instead of achieving honor in the wars—
Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,
Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn
But one to dance with.”
A familiar name for a common horse was “Cut”—either from its being docked or gelded—a name occasionally applied to a man as a term of contempt. In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 3), Sir Toby Belch says: “Send for money, knight; if thou hast her not i’ the end, call me cut.” In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1), the first carrier says: “I prithee, Tom, beat Cut’s saddle.” We may compare, too, what Falstaff says further on in the same play (ii. 4): “I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse.” Hence, call me cut is the same as call me horse—both expressions having been used.
In Shakespeare’s day a race of horses was the term for what is now called a stud. So in “Macbeth” (ii. 4), Rosse says:
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn’d wild in nature.”
The words “minions of their race,” according to Steevens, mean the favorite horses on the race-ground.
Lion. The traditions and stories of the darker ages abounded with examples of the lion’s generosity. “Upon the supposition that these acts of clemency were true, Troilus, in the passage below, reasons not improperly (‘Troilus and Cressida,’ v. 3) that to spare against reason, by mere instinct and pity, became rather a generous beast than a wise man:”[434]
Which better fits a lion than a man.”
It is recorded by Pliny[435] that “the lion alone of all wild animals is gentle to those that humble themselves before him, and will not touch any such upon their submission, but spareth what creature soever lieth prostrate before him.” Hence Spenser’s Una, attended by a lion; and Perceval’s lion, in “Morte d’Arthur” (bk. xiv. c. 6). Bartholomæus says the lion’s “mercie is known by many and oft ensamples: for they spare them that lie on the ground.” Shakespeare again alludes to this notion in “As You Like It” (iv. 3):
The royal disposition of that beast
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.”
It was also supposed that the lion would not injure a royal prince. Hence, in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) the Prince says: “You are lions too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince; no, fie!” The same notion is alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in “The Mad Lover” (iv. 5):
If she be sprung from royal blood, the lion
He’ll do you reverence, else—
*****
He’ll tear her all to pieces.”
According to some commentators there is an allusion in “3 Henry VI.” (i. 3) to the practice of confining lions and keeping
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