Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 39

[424] See Pliny's "Natural History," bk. viii.

_Fox._ It appears that the term fox was a common expression for the old English weapon, the broadsword of Jonson's days, as distinguished from the small (foreign) sword. The name was given from the circ.u.mstance that Andrea Ferrara adopted a fox as the blade-mark of his weapons-a practice, since his time, adopted by other foreign sword-cutlers. Swords with a running fox rudely engraved on the blades are still occasionally to be met with in the old curiosity shops of London.[425] Thus, in "Henry V." (iv. 4), Pistol says:

"O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox, Except, O signieur, thou do give to me Egregious ransom."

[425] Staunton's "Shakespeare," 1864, vol. ii. p. 367; Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 331.

In Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair" (ii. 6) the expression occurs: "What would you have, sister, of a fellow that knows nothing but a basket-hilt, and an old fox in it?"

The tricks and artifices of a hunted fox were supposed to be very extraordinary; hence Falstaff makes use of this expression in "1 Henry IV." (iii. 3): "No more truth in thee than in a drawn fox."

_Goat._ It is curious that the harmless goat should have had an evil name, and been a.s.sociated with devil-lore. Thus, there is a common superst.i.tion in England and Scotland that it is never seen for twenty-four hours together; and that once in this s.p.a.ce it pays a visit to the devil, in order to have its beard combed. It was, formerly, too, a popular notion that the devil appeared frequently in the shape of a goat, which accounted for his horns and tail. Sir Thomas Browne observes that the goat was the emblem of the sin-offering, and is the emblem of sinful men at the day of judgment. This may, perhaps, account for Shakespeare's enumerating the "gall of goat" ("Macbeth," iv. 1) among the ingredients of the witches' caldron. His object seems to have been to include the most distasteful and ill-omened things imaginable-a practice shared, indeed, by other poets contemporary with him.

_Hare._ This was formerly esteemed a melancholy animal, and its flesh was supposed to engender melancholy in those who ate it. This idea was not confined to our own country, but is mentioned by La Fontaine in one of his "Fables" (liv. ii. fab. 14):

"Dans un profond ennui ce lievre se plongeoit, Cet animal est triste, et la crainte le rounge;"

and later on he says: "Le melancolique animal." Hence, in "1 Henry IV."

(i. 2), Falstaff is told by Prince Henry that he is as melancholy as a hare. This notion was not quite forgotten in Swift's time; for in his "Polite Conversation," Lady Answerall, being asked to eat hare, replies: "No, madam; they say 'tis melancholy meat." Mr. Staunton quotes the following extract from Turbervile's book on Hunting and Falconry: "The hare first taught us the use of the hearbe called wyld succory, which is very excellent for those which are disposed to be melancholicke. She herself is one of the most melancholicke beasts that is, and to heale her own infirmitie, she goeth commonly to sit under that hearbe."

The old Greek epigram relating to the hare-

"Strike ye my body, now that life is fled; So hares insult the lion when he's dead,"

-is alluded to by the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in "King John" (ii. 1):

"You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, 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:

"By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear."

In Drayton's "Polyolbion" (xxiii.) we read:

"The man whose vacant mind prepares him to the sport, 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 a.s.sumed by mischievous elves.[426] Hence, in "The Tempest" (i. 2), Prospero says:

"Urchins 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, "th.o.r.n.y hedgehogs" are exorcised. For the use of urchins in similar a.s.sociations we may quote "Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 4), "like urchins, ouphes, and fairies;" and "t.i.tus 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 d.y.k.e. 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.

[426] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. ix. p. 75.

[427] See Wright's Notes to "The Tempest," 1875, p. 94.

[428] Conway's "Demonology and Devil-Lore," 1880, vol. i. p. 122.

_Horse._ Although Shakespeare's allusions to the horse are most extensive, yet he has said little of the many widespread superst.i.tions, legends, and traditional tales that have been a.s.sociated 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 superst.i.tion to which we referred in our chapter on Fairies, where Mercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 4), says:

"This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night, And bakes the elf-locks in foul s.l.u.ttish 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 superst.i.tion may have originated from the disease called "Plica Polonica." Witches, too, have generally been supposed to hara.s.s 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.

[429] Warburton on "Romeo and Juliet," i. 4.

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 animalculae cling to it.[430]

This ancient vulgar error is mentioned in "Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 2):

"much is breeding, Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life, And not a serpent's poison."

[430] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 104.

Steevens quotes from Churchyard's "Discourse of Rebellion," 1570:

"Hit is of kinde much worse than horses heare, 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 a.s.serted that these worms moved like serpents, and were poisonous to swallow. Coleridge tells us it was a common experiment with boys in c.u.mberland 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 Caesar, says:

"He has a cloud in's face,"

whereupon En.o.barbus adds:

"He were the worse for that, were he a horse; 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 a.s.sociated 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):

"is it your will 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:

"Had he none else to make a stale but me?"

[431] See Douce's "Ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare," p. 106; Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 830.

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 quant.i.ties of stuff for the purpose of making "stalking-coats and stalking-hose for the use of his majesty."[433]