Folk-lore of Shakespeare

Elephant. According to a vulgar error, current in bygone times, the elephant was supposed to have no joints – a notion which is said to have been first recorded from tradition by Ctesias the Cnidian.421 Sir Thomas Browne has entered largely into this superstition, arguing, from reason, anatomy, and general analogy with other animals, the absurdity of the error. In “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 3), Ulysses says: “The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.” Steevens quotes from “The Dialogues of Creatures Moralized” – a curious specimen of our early natural history – the following: “the olefawnte that bowyth not the kneys.” In the play of “All Fools,” 1605, we read: “I hope you are no elephant – you have joints.” In a note to Sir Thomas Browne’s Works,422 we are told, “it has long been the custom for the exhibitors of itinerant collections of wild animals, when showing the elephant, to mention the story of its having no joints, and its consequent inability to kneel; and they never fail to think it necessary to demonstrate its untruth by causing the animal to bend one of its fore-legs, and to kneel also.”

In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 1) the custom of seducing elephants into pitfalls, lightly covered with hurdles and turf, on which a proper bait to tempt them was exposed, is alluded to.423 Decius speaks of elephants being betrayed “with holes.”

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 circumstance 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.424 Thus, in “Henry V.” (iv. 4), Pistol says:

“O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox,Except, O signieur, thou do give to meEgregious ransom.”

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 associated with devil-lore. Thus, there is a common superstition in England and Scotland that it is never seen for twenty-four hours together; and that once in this space 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 Bastard 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 assumed by mischievous elves.425 Hence, in “The Tempest” (i. 2), Prospero says:

“UrchinsShall, 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.”426 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 hedgehog427 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:

“This is that very MabThat 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. Warburton428 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.429 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.”

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 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:

“He has a cloud in’s face,”

whereupon Enobarbus 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 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.”430 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 willTo 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?”

That it was also a hunting term might be shown, adds Dyce,431 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.”432

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 —

“I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock,Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,Till honour be bought up, and no sword wornBut 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:

“And Duncan’s horses – a thing most strange and certain —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:”433

“Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,Which better fits a lion than a man.”

It is recorded by Pliny434 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):

“for ’tisThe royal disposition of that beastTo 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):

“Fetch the Numidian lion I brought over;If she be sprung from royal blood, the lionHe’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 them without food that they may devour criminals exposed to them:

“So looks the pent-up lion o’er the wretchThat 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):

“Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may notHear a foot fall.”

And again by Pericles (i. 1):

“The blind mole castsCopp’d hills towards heaven.”

Hence the expression “blind as a mole.” Alexander Ross435 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.),436 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,”437 so called from the Anglo-Saxon, denoting turning the mould. Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1) Hotspur says:

“sometime he angers meWith 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):

“What’s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?”

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):

“Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time,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.438 Others are of opinion that the stoat439 is meant, the smallest of the weasel tribe, and others again the polecat. Mr. Staunton440 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:

“Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eatenHer 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.441

Porcupine. Another name for this animal was the porpentine, which spelling occurs in “Hamlet” (i. 5):

“Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.”

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.442

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.443 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.444 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:

“What if my house be troubled with a rat,And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducatsTo 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):

“Rhime them to death, as they do Irish rats,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.”445

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:

“they hurried us aboard a bark,Bore us some leagues to sea; where they preparedA rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg’d,Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very ratsInstinctively 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:

“Peer out, peer out, peer out of your hole,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:446

“Snailie, snailie, shoot out your horn,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:

“The herd hath more annoyance by the breeseThan by the tiger; but when the splitting windMakes 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.447 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):