T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

“ 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. ”

“ To understand Shakespeare’s allusion completely, it should be known that, as these fetters connect the legs of the offenders very close together, their attempts to rest must be as fruitless as those of Hamlet, in whose mind ‘there was a kind of fighting that would not let him sleep.’ Every motion of one must disturb his partner in confinement. The bilboes are still shown in the Tower of London, among the other spoils of the Spanish Armada. ”

“ Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse.”
“How much the splitting or tearing off of the slip had to do with magic we learn from a piece of Slavonic folk-lore. It is unlucky to use for a beam a branch or a tree broken by the wind. The devil, or storm-spirit, claims it as his own, and, were it used, the evil spirit would haunt the house. It is a broken branch the witches choose; a sliver’d slip the woodman will have none of.” ”

“ Indeed, no more pleasing picture can be imagined than that of a rustic sheep-shearing gathering in the olden times, when, the work over, the peasantry joined together in some simple dance, each one vieing with his neighbor to perform his part with as much grace as possible. ”

“ This, no doubt, originated in the notion that a person cannot die happily on a bed made of pigeons’ feathers. Grose says: “It is impossible for a person to die whilst resting on a pillow stuffed with the feathers of a dove; but that he will struggle with death in the most exquisite torture. The pillows of dying persons are therefore frequently taken away when they appear in great agonies, lest they may have pigeon’s feathers in them.” ”

“ Thus Shakespeare even puts into the mouth of the murderer and usurper Claudius, King of Denmark, the following sentence:
“Let him go, Gertrude: do not fear our person:
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.”
This notion is by no means confined to either civilized or semi-civilized nations. It is, says Mr. Hardwick, “a universal feeling among savage tribes.” The ignorant serf of Russia believed, and, indeed, yet believes, that if the deity were to die the emperor would succeed to his power and authority. ”

“ The so-called fairy-rings in old pastures [30] —little circles of a brighter green, within which it was supposed the fairies dance by night—are now known to result from the out-spreading propagation of a particular mushroom, the fairy-ringed fungus, by which the ground is manured for a richer following vegetation. An immense deal of legendary lore, however, has clustered round this curious phenomenon, popular superstition attributing it to the merry roundelays of the moonlight fairies. ”

“ Thus, an Australian legend says that Mityan, the moon, was a native cat, who fell in love with some one else’s wife, and was driven away to wander ever since. A Slavonic legend tells us that the moon, king of night, and husband of the sun, faithlessly loved the morning star, wherefore he was cloven through in punishment, as we see him in the sky. The Khasias of the Himalaya say that the moon falls monthly in love with his mother-in-law, who throws ashes in his face, whence his spots. ”

“ Another notion is that the nightingale never sings by day; and thus Portia, in “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1) , says:
“I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.”
Such, however, is not the case, for this bird often sings as sweetly in the day as at night-time. There is an old superstition [270] that the nightingale sings all night, to keep itself awake, lest the glow-worm should devour her. ”

“ Lord in St. Matthew, xvi. 2, 3: “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowring.” Shakespeare, in his “Venus and Adonis,” thus describes it:
“a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”
Mr. Swainson [95] shows that this notion is common on the Continent. Thus, at Milan the proverb runs, “If the morn be red, rain is at hand.” ”

“ There can be no doubt that the title of Shakespeare’s play, “Twelfth Night,” took its origin in the festivities associated with this festival. The season has, from time immemorial, been one of merriment, “the more decided from being the proper close of the festivities of Christmas, when games of chance were traditionally rife, and the sport of sudden and casual elevation gave the tone of the time. ”

“ From the cradle to the grave, through all the successive epochs of man’s existence, we find a series of traditional beliefs and popular notions, which have been handed down to us from the far-distant past. Although, indeed, these have lost much of their meaning in the lapse of years, yet in many cases they are survivals of primitive culture, and embody the conceptions of the ancestors of the human race. ”

“ It is a common notion that a father above the common rate of men has usually a son below it. Hence, in “The Tempest” (i. 2) , Shakespeare probably alludes to this Latin proverb:
“My trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood, in its contrary as great
As my trust was.”
“He knows not a hawk from a handsaw.” Hamlet says (ii. 2) : “When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
“He may hang himself in his own garters.” So, Falstaff (“1 Henry IV.” ii. 2) says: “Go, hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters.” ”

“ A popular superstition—in all probability derived from the Egyptians—referred to the rising and setting of Sirius, or the Dog-star, as infusing madness into the canine race. Consequently, the name of “Dog-days” was given by the Romans to the period between the 3d of July and 11th of August, to which Shakespeare alludes in “Henry VIII.” (v. 3) , “the dog-days now reign.” It is obvious that the notion is utterly groundless, for not only does the star vary [320] in its rising, but is later and later every year. ”

“ This young gentlewoman had a father—O, that ‘had!’ how sad a passage ’tis!—whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. ”

“ The witches in “Macbeth” are probably Scottish hags. As Mr. Gunnyon remarks, [53] “They are hellish monsters, brewing hell-broth, having cats and toads for familiars, loving midnight, riding on the passing storm, and devising evil against such as offend them. They crouch beneath the gibbet of the murderer, meet in gloomy caverns, amid earthquake convulsions, or in thunder, lightning, and rain.” Coleridge, speaking of them, observes that “the weird sisters are as true a creation of Shakespeare’s as his Ariel and Caliban—fates, fairies, and materializing witches being the elements. ”

“ At the present day, when there is an ever-growing tendency to discard and forget, as irrational and foolish, the customs of bygone years, it is interesting to find chronicled, for all future time, in the immortal pages of our illustrious poet, those superstitious rites and social usages which may be said to have been most intimately identified with the age to which they belonged. ”

“ Among other notions prevalent in days gone by was the general contagiousness of disease, to which an allusion seems to be made in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (i. 1) , where Helena says:
“Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go.”
Malone considers that Shakespeare, in the following passage in “Venus and Adonis,” alludes to a practice of his day, when it was customary, in time of the plague, to strew the rooms of every house with rue and other strong-smelling herbs, to prevent infection:
“Long may they kiss each other, for this cure! ”

“ Among other wedding customs alluded to by Shakespeare we may mention one referred to in “Taming of the Shrew” [354] (ii. 1) , where Katharina, speaking of Bianca, says to her father:
“She is your treasure, she must have a husband:
I must dance bare-foot on her wedding-day,
And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell,”
it being a popular notion that unless the elder sisters danced barefoot at the marriage of a younger one, they would inevitably become old maids, and be condemned “to lead apes in hell.” ”

“ It is still believed, for instance, in many places, that if a child’s first tooth appears in the upper jaw it is an omen of its dying in infancy; and when the teeth come early it is regarded as an indication that there will soon be another baby. In Sussex there is a dislike to throwing away the cast teeth of children, from a notion that, should they be found and gnawed by any animal, the child’s new tooth would be exactly like the animal’s that had bitten the old one. ”

“ Bat. The bat, immortalized by Shakespeare (“The Tempest,” v. 1) as the “delicate Ariel’s” steed—
“On the bat’s back I do fly,”
—has generally been an object of superstitious dread, and proved to the poet and painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror. [345] In Scotland [346] it is still connected with witchcraft, and if, while flying, it rise and then descend again earthwards, it is a sign that the witches’ hour is come—the hour in which they are supposed to have power over every human being who is not specially shielded from their influence. ”

“ Spine of crocodile is on his neck, tail of the serpent, and all the jagged ridges of rocks and sharp thorns of jungles bristle around him, while the ice of glaciers and brassy glitter of sunstrokes are in his scales. He is ideal of all that is hard, obstructive, perilous, loathsome, horrible in nature ”

“ There is reason for believing that the ancients placed a crescent at the beginning, and a crown, or some ornament that resembled it, at the end of their books.” In “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 5) , Hector says:
“The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost
A drop of Grecian blood: the end crowns all;
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.”
Prince Henry (“2 Henry IV.,” ii. 2) , in reply to Poins, gives another turn to the proverb: “By this hand, thou think’st me as far in the devil’s book as thou and Falstaff, for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man.” ”

“ Flowers, which so soon droop and wither, are, indeed, sweet emblems of that brief life which is the portion of mankind in this world, while, at the same time, their exquisite beauty is a further type of the glory that awaits the redeemed hereafter, when, like fair flowers, they shall burst forth in unspeakable grandeur on the resurrection morn. ”