Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

208

Josephus, “De Bello Judico,” iii. 5.

209

Harting’s “Ornithology of Shakespeare,” p. 33.

210

Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 378.

211

“Execration against Vulcan,” 1640, p. 37.

212

Singer’s “Notes,” 1875, vol. i. p. 283.

213

See “Archæologia,” vol. iii. p. 33.

214

Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 693. Some think that the bullfinch is meant.

215

Singer’s “Notes,” 1875, vol. v. p. 82; see Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 433.

216

Some doubt exists as to the derivation of gull. Nares says it is from the old French guiller. Tooke holds that gull, guile, wile, and guilt are all from the Anglo-Saxon “wiglian, gewiglian,” that by which any one is deceived. Harting’s “Ornithology of Shakespeare,” p. 267.

217

See D’Israeli’s “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. iii. p. 84.

218

See Thornbury’s “Shakespeare’s England,” vol. i. pp. 311-322.

219

Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 394.

220

Harting’s “Ornithology of Shakespeare,” p. 269.

221

Aldis Wright’s “Notes to ‘The Tempest’,” 1875, pp. 120, 121.

222

See Dyce’s “Shakespeare,” vol. i. p. 245.

223

See Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” 1876, pp. 60-97, and “Book of Days,” 1863, vol. ii. pp. 211-213; Smith’s “Festivals, Games, and Amusements,” 1831, p. 174.

224

“A hawk full-fed was untractable, and refused the lure – the lure being a thing stuffed to look like the game the hawk was to pursue; its lure was to tempt him back after he had flown.”

225

In the same play (iv. 2) Hortensio describes Bianca as “this proud disdainful haggard.” See Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 197; Cotgrave’s “French and English Dictionary,” sub. “Hagard;” and Latham’s “Falconry,” etc., 1658.

226

“To whistle off,” or dismiss by a whistle; a hawk seems to have been usually sent off in this way against the wind when sent in pursuit of prey.

227

Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 77; see “Twelfth Night,” ii. 5.

228

The use of the word is not quite the same here, because the voyage was Hamlet’s “proper game,” which he abandons. “Notes to Hamlet,” Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 205.

229

See Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 456; Harting’s “Ornithology of Shakespeare,” p. 39; Tuberville’s “Booke of Falconrie,” 1611, p. 53.

230

Also in i. 2 we read:

“And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Show’d like a rebel’s whore.”

Some read “quarry;” see “Notes to Macbeth.” Clark and Wright, p. 77. It denotes the square-headed bolt of a cross-bow; see Douce’s “Illustrations,” 1839, p. 227; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 206.

231

See Spenser’s “Fairy Queen,” book i. canto xi. l. 18:

“Low stooping with unwieldy sway.”

232

Ed. Dyce, 1857, p. 5.

233

See “3 Henry VI.” i. 1.

234

A quibble is perhaps intended between bate, the term of falconry, and abate, i. e., fall off, dwindle. “Bate is a term in falconry, to flutter the wings as preparing for flight, particularly at the sight of prey.” In ‘1 Henry IV.’ (iv. 1):

“‘All plumed like estridges, that with the wind Bated, like eagles having lately bathed.’”

– Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 60.

235

“Unmann’d” was applied to a hawk not tamed.

236

See Singer’s “Notes to Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. x. p. 86; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 448.

237

See passage in “Taming of the Shrew,” iv. 1, already referred to, p. 122.

238

Also in same play, i. 3.

239

Turbervile, in his “Booke of Falconrie,” 1575, gives some curious directions as “how to seele a hawke;” we may compare similar expressions in “Antony and Cleopatra,” iii. 13; v. 2.

240

Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. pp. 777, 778; cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, “Philaster,” v. 1.

241

Imp, from Anglo-Saxon, impan, to graft. Turbervile has a whole chapter on “The way and manner how to ympe a hawke’s feather, howsoever it be broken or bruised.”

242

Harting’s “Ornithology of Shakspeare,” p. 72.

243

The reading of the folios here is stallion; but the word wing, and the falconer’s term checks, prove that the bird must be meant. See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 832.

244

See kestrel and sparrow-hawk.

245

“Notes to Hamlet,” Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 159.

246

Ray’s “Proverbs,” 1768, p. 196.

247

Quoted in “Notes to Hamlet,” by Clark and Wright, p. 159; see Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 416.

248

That is, made by art: the creature not of nature, but of painting; cf. “Taming of the Shrew,” iv. 3; “The Tempest,” ii. 2.

249

Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 482.

250

Harting’s “Ornithology of Shakespeare,” p. 74.

251

“Notes,” vol. iii. pp. 357, 358.

252

“Description of England,” vol. i. p. 162.

253

“Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 88.

254

Sir Thomas Browne’s “Vulgar Errors,” bk. iii. chap. 10.

255

Also to the buzzard, which see, p. 100.

256

Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. iv. p. 67.

257

“Glossary,” p. 243.

258

“Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 495; see Yarrell’s “History of British Birds,” 2d edition, vol. ii. p. 482.

259

Ray’s “Proverbs,” 1768, p. 199.

260

Cf. “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iv. 1). “the morning lark;” “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), “the lark, the herald of the morn.”

261

Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 886; Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” 1839, p. 217.

262

Chambers’s “Popular Rhymes of Scotland,” 1870, p. 192.

263

See “English Folk-Lore,” p. 81.

264

Henderson’s “Folk-Lore o