And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats
To have it baned?”
And in “As You Like It” (iii. 2), Rosalind says: “I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.” We find it mentioned by Ben Jonson in the “Poetaster” (v. 1):
In drumming tunes.”
“The reference, however, is generally referred, in Ireland,” says Mr. Mackay, “to the supposed potency of the verses pronounced by the professional rhymers of Ireland, which, according to popular superstition, could not only drive rats to destruction, but could absolutely turn a man’s face to the back of his head.”[446]
Sir W. Temple, in his “Essay on Poetry,” seems to derive the idea from the Runic incantations, for, after speaking of them in various ways, he adds, “and the proverb of rhyming rats to death, came, I suppose, from the same root.”
According to a superstitious notion of considerable antiquity, rats leaving a ship are considered indicative of misfortune to a vessel, probably from the same idea that crows will not build upon trees that are likely to fall. This idea is noticed by Shakespeare in “The Tempest” (i. 2), where Prospero, describing the vessel in which himself and daughter had been placed, with the view to their certain destruction at sea, says:
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg’d,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it.”
The Shipping Gazette of April, 1869, contained a communication entitled, “A Sailor’s Notion about Rats,” in which the following passage occurs: “It is a well-authenticated fact that rats have often been known to leave ships in the harbor previous to their being lost at sea. Some of those wiseacres who want to convince us against the evidence of our senses will call this superstition. As neither I have time, nor you space, to cavil with such at present, I shall leave them alone in their glory.” The fact, however, as Mr. Hardwick has pointed out in his “Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore” (1872, p. 251), that rats do sometimes migrate from one ship to another, or from one barn or corn-stack to another, from various causes, ought to be quite sufficient to explain such a superstition. Indeed, a story is told of a cunning Welsh captain who wanted to get rid of rats that infested his ship, then lying in the Mersey, at Liverpool. Having found out that there was a vessel laden with cheese in the basin, and getting alongside of her about dusk, he left all his hatches open, and waited till all the rats were in his neighbor’s ship, and then moved off.
Snail. A common amusement among children consists in charming snails, in order to induce them to put out their horns—a couplet, such as the following, being repeated on the occasion:
Or else I’ll beat you as black as a coal.”
In Scotland, it is regarded as a token of fine weather if the snail obey the command and put out its horn:[447]
And tell us if it will be a bonnie day the morn.”
Shakespeare alludes to snail-charming in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 2), where Mrs. Page says of Mrs. Ford’s husband, he “so buffets himself on the forehead, crying, Peer out! peer out! that any madness I ever yet beheld seemed but tameness, civility, and patience, to this his distemper he is in now.” In “Comedy of Errors” (ii. 2), the snail is used to denote a lazy person.
Tiger. It was an ancient belief that this animal roared and raged most furiously in stormy and high winds—a piece of folk-lore alluded to in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 3), by Nestor, who says:
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,
And flies fled under shade, why then, the thing of courage,
As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize.”
Unicorn. In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 1) Decius tells how “unicorns may be betray’d with trees,” alluding to their traditionary mode of capture. They are reported to have been taken by one who, running behind a tree, eluded the violent push the animal was making at him, so that his horn spent its force on the trunk, and stuck fast, detaining the animal till he was despatched by the hunter.[448] In Topsell’s “History of Beasts” (1658, p. 557), we read of the unicorn: “He is an enemy to the lions, wherefore, as soon as ever a lion seeth a unicorn, he runneth to a tree for succour, that so when the unicorn maketh force at him, he may not only avoid his horn, but also destroy him; for the unicorn, in the swiftness of his course, runneth against the tree, wherein his sharp horn sticketh fast, that when the lion seeth the unicorn fastened by the horn, without all danger he falleth upon him and killeth him.” With this passage we may compare the following from Spenser’s “Fairy Queen” (bk. ii. canto 5):
A prowd rebellious unicorn defyes,
T’ avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre
Of his fiers foe, him to a tree applyes,
And when him ronning in full course he spyes,
He slips aside: the whiles that furious beast
His precious horne, sought of his enimyes
Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast,
But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast.”
Weasel. To meet a weasel was formerly considered a bad omen.[449] That may be a tacit allusion to this superstition in “Lucrece” (l. 307):
They fright him, yet he still pursues his fear.”
It appears that weasels were kept in houses, instead of cats, for the purpose of killing vermin. Phædrus notices this their feline office in the first and fourth fables of his fourth book. The supposed quarrelsomeness of this animal is spoken of by Pisanio in “Cymbeline” (iii. 4), who tells Imogen that she must be “as quarrelous as the weasel;” and in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 3), Lady Percy says to Hotspur:
As you are toss’d with.”
This character of the weasel is not, however, generally mentioned by naturalists.
FOOTNOTES:
[342] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 38.
[343] “Glossary to Shakespeare,” 1876, p. 20.
[344] “Asinico, a little ass,” Connelly’s “Spanish and English Dictionary,” Madrid, 4to.
[345] “English Folk-Lore,” p. 115; cf. “Macbeth,” iii. 2.
[346] Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties,” 1879, pp. 125, 126.
[347] It has been speciously derived from the English word rear, in the sense of being able to raise itself in the air, but this is erroneous. Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 726.
[348] Aldis Wright’s “Notes to A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” 1877, p. 101.
[349] “Folk-Lore Record,” 1879, p. 201.
[350] Jamieson’s “Scottish Dictionary,” 1879, vol. i p. 106.
[351] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 189; Harting’s “Ornithology of Shakespeare,” 1871, pp. 13, 14.
[352] “Vulgar Errors,” 1852, vol. i. p. 247.
[353] See Bartholomæus, “De Proprietate Rerum,” lib. xviii. c. 112; Aristotle, “History of Animals,” lib. vi. c. 31; Pliny’s “Natural History,” lib. viii. c. 54.
[354] Steevens on this passage.
[355] “Notes on Julius Cæsar,” 1878, p. 134.
[356] “Notices Illustrative of the Drama and other Popular Amusements,” incidentally illustrating Shakespeare and his contemporaries, extracted from the MSS. of Leicester, by W. Kelly, 1865, p. 152.
[357] No. 433. The document is given at length in Collier’s “Annals of the Stage,” vol. i. p. 35, note.
[358] Kelly’s “Notices of Leicester,” p. 152.
[359] Wright’s “Domestic Manners,” p. 304.
[360] “Progresses and Processions,” vol. ii. p. 259.
[361] About 1760 it was customary to have a bear baited at the election of the mayor. Corry, “History of Liverpool,” 1810, p. 93.
[362] Edited by M. A. Thorns, 1853, p. 170.
[363] For further information on this subject consult Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” 1876; Kelly’s “Notices of Leicester,” pp. 152-159.
[364] Chambers’s “Book of Days,” 1864, vol. ii. pp. 518, 519.
[365] Hampson’s “Œvi Medii Kalendarium,” vol. i. p. 96.
[366] See Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xcviii. pp. 401, 402.
[367] See “Book of Days,” vol. ii. pp. 517-519.
[368] “Embossed” is a hunting term, properly applied to a deer when foaming at the mouth from fatigue, see p. 179; also Dyce’s “Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 142; see Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 275.
[369] Wright’s “Domestic Manners,” p. 304; see Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes;” Smith’s “Festivals, Games, and Amusements,” 1831, pp. 192-229.
[370] “Book of Days,” vol. ii. p. 59.
[371] Cf. “2 Henry IV.” ii. 2, “the town-bull.”
[372] “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties,” p. 267; Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 7.
[373] Malkin is a diminutive of “Mary;” “Maukin,” the same word, is still used in Scotland for a hare. “Notes to Macbeth,” by Clark and Wright, 1877, p. 75.
[374] Sternberg’s “Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire,” 1851, p. 148.
[375] Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties” 1879, p. 206.
[376] Kelly’s “Indo-European Folk-Lore,” 1863, p. 238.
[377] Thorpe’s “Northern Mythology,” 1851, vol. iii. p. 32.
[378] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 32; vol. iii. pp. 26-236.
[379] See Baring-Gould’s “Book of Werewolves,” 1869, p. 65.
[380] Ibid., p. 66.
[381] Dyce’s “Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 70.
[382] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 39; also Wright’s “Essays on the Superstitions of the Middle Ages,” 1846.
[383] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. iii. p. 42.
[384] Dyce’s “Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 466.
[385] From Tibert, Tib was also a common name for a cat.
[386] Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” 1839, p. 41.
[387] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 183.
[388] A gibbe (an old male cat), Macou, Cotgrave’s “French and English Dictionary.”
[389] “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 360.
[390] “Vulgar Errors,” bk. iii. p. 21, 1852; bk. i. p. 321, note.
[391] Ovid (“Metamorphoses,” bk. xv. l. 411) speaks of its changes of color.
[392] Cuvier’s “Animal Kingdom,” 1831, vol. ix. p. 226.
[393] “Vulgar Errors,” bk. iii. p. 7.
[394] See “Cymbeline,” ii. 4; “Winter’s Tale,” i. 2.
[395] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p 173.
[396] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 29; see “1 Henry IV.,” ii. 3, “of basilisks, of cannon, culverin.”
[397] “Handbook Index to Shakespeare.”
[398] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. x. p. 118.
[399] See Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” 1876, pp. 66, 75, 79, 80, 113, 117.
[400] See “As You Like It,” iv. 2; “All’s Well That Ends Well,” v. 2; “Macbeth,” iv. 3; “1 Henry IV.,” v. 4; “1 Henry VI.,” iv. 2; “2 Henry VI.,” v. 2; “Titus Andronicus,” iii. 1, etc.
[401] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. viii. p. 421
[402] Chappell’s “Popular Music of the Olden Time,” 2d ed. vol. i. p. 61; see Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 432; see, too, Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 440.
[403] See Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 401.
[404] See Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” 1876, p. 65.
[405] “De Proprietate Rerum,” lib. xviii. c. 30.
[406] Cf. Vergil’s description of the wounded stag in “Æneid,” bk. vii.
[407] Commentary on Bartholomæus’s “De Proprietate Rerum.”
[408] The drops which fall from their eyes are not tears from the lachrymal glands, but an oily secretion from the inner angle of the eye close to the nose.—Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,” p. 217.
[409] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 183.
[410] These dogs were kept for baiting bears, when that amusement was in vogue, and “from their terrific howling they are occasionally introduced to heighten the horror of the picture.” Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 50.
[411] See Kelly’s “Indo-European Folk-Lore,” p. 109.
[412] Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,” p. 48.
[413] See “English Folk-Lore,” p. 101.
[414] See Hardwick’s “Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore,” p. 171.
[415] “Myths and Mythmakers,” 1873, p. 36.
[416] “Nares’s Glossary,” vol. i. p. 218.
[417] For the various versions of this myth consult Baring-Gould’s “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,” 1877, pp. 266-316.
[418] Cf. “Troilus and Cressida,” v. 8; “Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” iii. 2.
[419] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. x. p. 363.
[420] “Demonology and Devil-Lore,” 1880, vol. i. p. 383.
[421] The dragon formerly constituted a part of the morris-dance.
[422] Sir Thomas Browne’s Works, 1852, vol. i. pp. 220-232.
[423] Edited by Simon Wilkin, 1852, vol. i. p. 226.
[424] See Pliny’s “Natural History,” bk. viii.
[425] Staunton’s “Shakespeare,” 1864, vol. ii. p. 367; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 331.
[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.
[429] Warburton on “Romeo and Juliet,” i. 4.
[430] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 104.
[431] See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 106; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 830.
[432] “Glossary,” p. 412.
[433] See Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” p. 48.
[434] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. vii. p. 277.
[435] “Natural History,” bk. viii. c. 19.
[436] “Arcana Microcosmi,” p. 151.
[437] 1852, vol. i. pp. 312-315.
[438] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 577; Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. v. p. 77.
[439] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” 1866, p. 331.
[440] Forby’s “Vocabulary of East Anglia,” vol. ii. p. 222.
[441] See Staunton’s “Shakespeare,” vol. i. p. 278.
[442] Cf. “King Lear,” iv. 6.
[443] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 673.
[444] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 189.
[445] See D’Israeli’s “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. iii. p. 78.
[446] “The strange phrase and the superstition that arose out of it seem to have been produced by a mistranslation, by the English-speaking population of a considerable portion of Ireland, of two Celtic or Gaelic words, ran, to roar, to shriek, to bellow, to make a great noise on a wind instrument; and rann, to versify, to rhyme. It is well known that rats are scared by any great and persistent noise in the house which they infest. The Saxon English, as well as Saxon Irish, of Shakespeare’s time, confounding rann, a rhyme, with ran, a roar, fell into the error which led to the English phrase as used by Shakespeare.”—Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer, 1882, vol. ii. p. 9. “On Some Obscure Words and Celtic Phrases in Shakespeare,” by Charles Mackay.
[447] See “English Folk-Lore,” 1878, p. 120.
[448] See Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,” p. 922.
[449] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 283.
CHAPTER VIII.
PLANTS.
That Shakespeare possessed an extensive knowledge of the history and superstitions associated with flowers is evident, from even only a slight perusal of his plays. Apart from the extensive use which he has made of these lovely objects of nature for the purpose of embellishing, or adding pathos to, passages here and there, he has also, with a master hand, interwoven many a little legend or superstition, thereby infusing an additional force into his writings. Thus we know with what effect he has made use of the willow in “Othello,” in that touching passage where Desdemona (iv. 3), anticipating her death, relates how her mother had a maid called Barbara:
And did forsake her; she had a song of willow,
An old thing ’twas, but it expressed her fortune,
And she died singing it: that song, to-night,
Will not go from my mind.”
In a similar manner Shakespeare has frequently introduced flowers with a wonderful aptness, as in the case of poor Ophelia. Those, however, desirous of gaining a good insight into Shakespeare’s knowledge of flowers, as illustrated by his plays, would do well to consult Mr. Ellacombe’s exhaustive work on the “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” a book to which we are much indebted in the following pages, as also to Mr. Beisly’s “Shakespeare’s Garden.”
Aconite.[450] This plant, from the deadly virulence of its juice, which, Mr. Turner says, “is of all poysones the most hastie poysone,” is compared by Shakespeare to gunpowder, as in “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 4):
Mingled with venom of suggestion,
As, force perforce, the age will pour it in,
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong
As aconitum, or rash gunpowder.”
It is, too, probably alluded to in the following passage in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 1), where Romeo says:
A dram of poison; such soon-speeding gear
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead;
And that the trunk may be discharg’d of breath
As violently, as hasty powder fir’d
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.”
According to Ovid, it derived its name from growing upon rock (Metamorphoses, bk. vii. l. 418):
Agrestes aconita vocant.”
It is probably derived from the Greek ἀκόνιτος, “without a struggle,” in allusion to the intensity of its poisonous qualities. Vergil[451] speaks of it, and tells us how the aconite deceives the wretched gatherers, because often mistaken for some harmless plant.[452] The ancients fabled it as the invention of Hecate,[453] who caused the plant to spring from the foam of Cerberus, when Hercules dragged him from the gloomy regions of Pluto. Ovid pictures the stepdame as preparing a deadly potion of aconite (Metamorphoses, bk. i. l. 147):
In hunting, the ancients poisoned their arrows with this venomous plant, as “also when following their mortal brutal trade of slaughtering their fellow-creatures.”[454] Numerous instances are on record of fatal results through persons eating this plant. In the “Philosophical Transactions” (1732, vol. xxxvii.) we read of a man who was poisoned in that year, by eating some of it in a salad, instead of celery. Dr. Turner mentions the case of some Frenchmen at Antwerp, who, eating the shoots of this plant for masterwort, all died, with the exception of two, in forty-eight hours. The aconitum is equally pernicious to animals.
Anemone. This favorite flower of early spring is probably alluded to in the following passage of “Venus and Adonis:”
Was melted like a vapour from her sight;
And in his blood, that on the ground lay spill’d,
A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.”
According to Bion, it is said to have sprung from the tears that Venus wept over the body of Adonis:
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain,
But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around;
From every drop that falls upon the ground
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose,
And where a tear has dropp’d a wind-flower blows.”
Other classical writers make the anemone to be the flower of Adonis. Mr. Ellacombe[455] says that although Shakespeare does not actually name the anemone, yet the evidence is in favor of this plant. The “purple color,” he adds, is no objection, for purple in Shakespeare’s time had a very wide signification, meaning almost any bright color, just as “purpureus” had in Latin.[456]
Apple. Although Shakespeare has so frequently introduced the apple into his plays, yet he has abstained from alluding to the extensive folk-lore associated with this favorite fruit. Indeed, beyond mentioning some of the popular nicknames by which the apple was known in his day, little is said about it. The term apple was not originally confined to the fruit now so called, but was a generic name applied to any fruit, as we still speak of the love-apple, pine-apple, etc.[457] So when Shakespeare (Sonnet xciii.) makes mention of Eve’s apple, he simply means that it was some fruit that grew in Eden: