Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (year 2 reading books .txt) đź“–
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That trembles under his devouring paws.”
Mole. The eyes of the mole are so extremely minute, and so perfectly hid in its hair, that our ancestors considered it blind—a vulgar error, to which reference is made by Caliban in “The Tempest” (iv. 1):
Hear a foot fall.”
And again by Pericles (i. 1):
Copp’d hills towards heaven.”
Hence the expression “blind as a mole.” Alexander Ross[436] absurdly speaks of the mole’s eyes as only the “forms of eyes,” given by nature “rather for ornament than for use; as wings are given to the ostrich, which never flies, and a long tail to the rat, which serves for no other purpose but to be catched sometimes by it.” Sir Thomas Browne, however, in his “Vulgar Errors” (bk. iii. c. xviii.),[437] has, with his usual minuteness, disproved this idea, remarking “that they have eyes in their head is manifested unto any that wants them not in his own.” A popular term for the mole was the “moldwarp” or “mouldiwarp,”[438] so called from the Anglo-Saxon, denoting turning the mould. Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1) Hotspur says:
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant.”
Mouse. This word was formerly used as a term of endearment, from either sex to the other. In this sense it is used by Rosaline in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):
and again in “Hamlet” (iii. 4).
Some doubt exists as to the exact meaning of “Mouse-hunt,” by Lady Capulet, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 4):
But I will watch you from such watching now.”
According to some, the expression implies “a hunter of gay women,” mouse having been used in this signification.[439] Others are of opinion that the stoat[440] is meant, the smallest of the weasel tribe, and others again the polecat. Mr. Staunton[441] tells us that the mouse-hunt is the marten, an animal of the weasel tribe which prowls about for its prey at night, and is applied to any one of rakish propensities.
Holinshed, in his “History of Scotland” (1577, p. 181), quotes from the laws of Kenneth II., King of Scotland: “If a sowe eate her pigges, let hyr be stoned to death and buried, that no man eate of hyr fleshe.” This offence is probably alluded to by Shakespeare in “Macbeth” (iv. 1), where the witch says:
Her nine farrow.”
Polecat, or Fitchew. This animal is supposed to be very amorous; and hence its name, Mr. Steevens says, was often applied to ladies of easy or no virtue. In “Othello” (iv. 1) Cassio calls Bianca a “fitchew,” and in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 1) Thersites alludes to it.[442]
Porcupine. Another name for this animal was the porpentine, which spelling occurs in “Hamlet” (i. 5):
And again, in “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1) York speaks of “a sharp-quill’d porpentine.” Ajax, too, in “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 1), applies the term to Thersites: “do not, porpentine.” In the above passages, however, and elsewhere, the word has been altered by editors to porcupine. According to a popular error, the porcupine could dart his quills. They are easily detached, very sharp, and slightly barbed, and may easily stick to a person’s legs, when he is not aware that he is near enough to touch them.[443]
Rabbit. In “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 2) this animal is used as a term of reproach, a sense in which it was known in Shakespeare’s day. The phrase “cony-catch,” which occurs in “Taming of the Shrew” (v. 1)—“Take heed, Signior Baptista, lest you be cony-catched in this business”—implied the act of deceiving or cheating a simple person—the cony or rabbit being considered a foolish animal.[444] It has been shown, from Dekker’s “English Villanies,” that the system of cheating was carried to a great length in the early part of the seventeenth century, that a collective society of sharpers was called “a warren,” and their dupes “rabbit-suckers,” i. e., young rabbit or conies.[445] Shakespeare has once used the term to express harmless roguery, in the “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 1). When Grumio will not answer his fellow-servants, except in a jesting way, Curtis says to him: “Come, you are so full of cony-catching.”
Rat. The fanciful idea that rats were commonly rhymed to death, in Ireland, is said to have arisen from some metrical charm or incantation, used there for that purpose, to which there are constant allusions in old writers. In the “Merchant of Venice” (iv. 1) Shylock says:
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
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