Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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knees he fel down, and cryde, crêaunt.”

      It then became cravant, cravent, and at length craven.

      In the time of Shakespeare the word cock was used as a vulgar corruption or purposed disguise of the name of God, an instance of which occurs in “Hamlet” (iv. 5): “By cock, they are to blame.” This irreverent alteration of the sacred name is found at least a dozen times177 in Heywood’s “Edward the Fourth,” where one passage is,

      “Herald. Sweare on this booke, King Lewis, so help you God,

      You mean no otherwise then you have said.

      King Lewis. So helpe me Cock as I dissemble not.”

      We find, too, other allusions to the sacred name, as in “cock’s passion,” “cock’s body;” as in “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 1): “Cock’s passion, silence!” A not uncommon oath, too, in Shakespeare’s time was “Cock and pie” —cock referring to God, and pie being supposed to mean the service-book of the Romish Church; a meaning which, says Mr. Dyce, seems much more probable than Douce’s178 supposition that this oath was connected with the making of solemn vows by knights in the days of chivalry, during entertainments at which a roasted peacock was served up. It is used by Justice Shallow (“2 Henry IV.,” v. 1): “By cock and pye, sir, you shall not away to-night.” We may also compare the expression in the old play of “Soliman and Perseda” (1599): “By cock and pye and mousefoot.” Mr. Harting179 says the “Cock and Pye” (i. e., magpie) was an ordinary ale-house sign, and may have thus become a subject for the vulgar to swear by.

      The phrase, “Cock-a-hoop”180– which occurs in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 5),

      “You’ll make a mutiny among my guests!

      You will set cock-a-hoop! you’ll be the man!”

      – no doubt refers to a reckless person, who takes the cock or tap out of a cask, and lays it on the top or hoop of the barrel, thus letting all the contents of the cask run out. Formerly, a quart pot was called a hoop, being formed of staves bound together with hoops like barrels. There were generally three hoops to such a pot; hence, in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 2), one of Jack Cade’s popular reformations was to increase their number: “the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer.” Some, however, consider the term Cock-a-hoop181 refers to the boastful crowing of the cock.

      In “King Lear” (iii. 2) Shakespeare speaks of the “cataracts and hurricanoes” as having

      “drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!”

      Vanes on the tops of steeples were in days gone by made in the form of a cock – hence weathercocks – and put up, in papal times, to remind the clergy of watchfulness.182 Apart, too, from symbolism, the large tail of the cock was well adapted to turn with the wind.183

       Cormorant. The proverbial voracity of this bird184 gave rise to a man of large appetite being likened to it, a sense in which Shakespeare employs the word, as in “Coriolanus” (i. 1): “the cormorant belly;” in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (i. 1): “cormorant devouring Time;” and in “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 2): “this cormorant war.” “Although,” says Mr. Harting,185 “Shakespeare mentions the cormorant in several of his plays, he has nowhere alluded to the sport of using these birds, when trained, for fishing; a fact which is singular, since he often speaks of the then popular pastime of hawking, and he did not die until some years after James I. had made fishing with cormorants a fashionable amusement.”

      Crow. This has from the earliest times been reckoned a bird of bad omen; and in “Julius Cæsar” (v. 1), Cassius, on the eve of battle, predicted a defeat, because, to use his own words:

      “crows and kites

      Fly o’er our heads and downward look on us,

      As we were sickly prey: their shadows seem

      A canopy most fatal, under which

      Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.”

      Allusions to the same superstition occur in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 2); “King John” (v. 2), etc. Vergil (“Bucolic,” i. 18) mentions the croaking of the crow as a bad omen:

      “Sæpe sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice cornix.”

      And Butler, in his “Hudibras” (part ii. canto 3), remarks:

      “Is it not ominous in all countries,

      When crows and ravens croak upon trees.”

      Even children, nowadays, regard with no friendly feelings this bird of ill-omen;186 and in the north of England there is a rhyme to the following effect:

      “Crow, crow, get out of my sight,

      Or else I’ll eat thy liver and lights.”

      Among other allusions made by Shakespeare to the crow may be noticed the crow-keeper – a person employed to drive away crows from the fields. At present,187 in all the midland counties, a boy set to drive away the birds is said to keep birds; hence, a stuffed figure, now called a scarecrow, was also called a crow-keeper, as in “King Lear” (iv. 6): “That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper.”

      One of Tusser’s directions for September is:

      “No sooner a-sowing, but out by-and-by,

      With mother or boy that alarum can cry:

      And let them be armed with a sling or a bow,

      To scare away pigeon, the rook, or the crow.”

      In “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4) a scarecrow seems meant:

      “Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,

      Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper.”

      Among further references to this practice is that in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 4), where Lord Talbot relates that, when a prisoner in France, he was publicly exhibited in the market-place:

      “Here, said they, is the terror of the French,

      The scarecrow that affrights our children so.”188

      And once more, in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 1):

      “We must not make a scarecrow of the law,

      Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,

      And let it keep one shape, till custom make it

      Their perch and not their terror.”

      The phrase “to pluck a crow” is to complain good-naturedly, but reproachfully, and to threaten retaliation.189 It occurs in “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 1): “We’ll pluck a crow together.” Sometimes the word pull is substituted for pluck, as in Butler’s “Hudibras” (part ii. canto 2):

      “If not, resolve before we go

      That you and I must pull a crow.”

      The crow has been regarded as the emblem of darkness, which has not escaped the notice of Shakespeare, who, in “Pericles”

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