Chapter C: Mansfield Ingleby

Birmingham.

_Warwickshire Folk Lore._--The only certain remedy for the bite of an adder is to kill the offending reptile, and apply some of its fat to the wound. Whether the fat should be raw or melted down, my informant did not say, but doubtless the same effect would be produced in either case.

If a pig is killed in the wane of the moon, the bacon is sure to shrink in the boiling; if, on the other hand, the pig is killed when the moon is at the full, the bacon will swell.

ERICA.

Warwick.

_Northamptonshire Folk Lore._--There is a singular custom prevailing in some parts of Northamptonshire, and perhaps some of your correspondents may be able to mention other places where a similar practice exists. If a female is afflicted with fits, nine pieces of silver money and nine threehalfpences are collected from nine bachelors: the silver money is converted into a ring to be worn by the afflicted person, and the threehalfpences (_i. e._ 13½_d._) are paid to the maker of the ring, an inadequate remuneration for his labour, but which he good-naturedly accepts. If the afflicted person be a male, the contributions are levied upon females.

E. H.

_Slow-worm Superstition_ (Vol. viii., p. 33.).--As a child I was always told by the servants that if _any serpent_ was "scotched, not killed," it would revive if it could reach its hole before sunset, but that otherwise it must die. Hence the custom, so universal, of hanging any serpent on a tree after killing it.

SELEUCUS.

_A Devonshire Charm for the Thrush._--On visiting one of my parishioners, whose infant was ill with the thrush, I asked her what medicine she had given the child? She replied, she had done nothing to it but say the eighth Psalm over it. I found that her cure was to repeat the eighth Psalm over the infant three times, three days running; and on my hesitating a doubt as to the efficacy of the remedy, she appealed to the case of another of her children who had suffered badly from the thrush, but had been cured by the use of no other means. If it was said "with the virtue," it was, she declared, an unfailing cure. The mention, in this Psalm, of "the mouths of babes and sucklings," I suppose led to its selection.

W. FRASER.

Tor-Mohun.

* * * * *

OLD JOKES.

Every man ought to read the jest-books, that he may not make himself disagreeable by repeating "old Joes" as the very last good things. One book of this class is little more than the copy of another as to the points, with a change of the persons; and the same joke, slightly varied, appears in as many different countries as the same fairy-tale. Seven years ago I found at Prague the "Joe" of the Irishman saying that there were a hundred judges on the bench, because there was one with two cyphers. The valet-de-place told me that when the Emperor and Metternich were together they were called "the council of ten," because they were _eins und zero_.

It is interesting to trace a joke back, of which process I send an example. In the very clever version of the Chancellor of Oxford's speech on introducing the new doctors (_Punch_, No. 622.) are these lines:

"En Henleium! en Stanleium! Hic eminens prosator:
Ille, filius pulchro patre, hercle pulchrior orator;
Demosthenes in herbâ, _sed in ore retinens illos_
_Quos, antequam peroravit, Græcus respuit lapillos._"

Ebenezer Grubb, in his description of the opposition in 1814, thus notices Mr. F. Douglas:

"He is a forward and frequent speaker; remarkable for a
graceful inclination of the upper part of his body in advance
of the lower, and speaketh, I suspect _(after the manner of an
ancient), with pebbles in his mouth_."--_New Whig Guide_, 1819,
p. 47.

In Foote's _Patron_, Sir Roger Dowlas, an East India proprietor, who has sought instruction in oratory from Sir Thomas Lofty, is introduced to the _conversazione_:--

"_Sir Thomas._ Sir Roger, be seated. This gentleman has, in
common with the greatest orator the world ever saw, a small
natural infirmity; he stutters a little: but I have prescribed
the same remedy that Demosthenes used, and don't despair of a
radical cure. Well, sir, have you digested those general rules?

_Sir Roger._ Pr-ett-y well, I am obli-g'd to you, Sir Th-omas.

_Sir Thomas._ Did you open at the last general court?

_Sir Roger._ I att-empt-ed fo-ur or five times.

_Sir Thomas._ What hindered your progress?

_Sir Roger._ _The pe-b-bles._

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_Sir Thomas._ _Oh, the pebbles in his mouth_: but they are only
put in to practise in private: _you should take them out when
you are addressing the public_."

I cannot trace the joke farther, but as Foote, though so rich in wit, was a great borrower, it might not be new in 1764.

H. B. C.

Garrick Club.

* * * * *

AN INTERPOLATION OF THE PLAYERS: TOBACCO.

I have witnessed the representation of the _Twelfth Night_ as often, during the last five-and-forty years, as I have had an opportunity; and, in every instance, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown, in their rollicking orgies, _smoke tobacco_. Now, this must be an "interpolation of the players;" for not only was tobacco unknown in Illyria, at the period of the story, but _Shakspeare does not once name tobacco in his works, and, therefore_, was not likely to give a stage-direction for the use of it. The great poet is freely blamed for anachronisms; it is but fair he should have due credit when he avoids them. The stories of his plays are all antecedent to his own time, therefore he never mentions either the _drinking of tobacco_, or the tumultuous scenes of the _ordinary_ which belonged to it, and which are so constantly met with in his cotemporary dramatists. I see there is a note in my commonplace-book, after some remarks upon Green's _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, "that this play, though written by a pedant, and a Master of Arts, contains more anachronisms than any one play of Shakspeare's."

Can any of your correspondents learned in stage traditions say when this "smoking interpolation" was first made?

* * * * *

But, Sir, I think I shall surprise some of your readers by pointing out another instance of the absence of tobacco or smoking. In the _Arabian Night's Entertainments_, which are said to be such faithful pictures of oriental manners, there is no mention of the pipe. Neither is coffee to be met with in those tales, so delightful to all ages. We with difficulty imagine an oriental without his _chibauk_; and yet it is certain they knew nothing of this luxury before the sixteenth century. At present, such is the almost imperious necessity felt by the Turk for smoking and coffee, that as soon as the gun announces the setting of the sun, during the fast of the Ramada, before he thinks of satisfying his craving stomach with any solid food, he takes his cup of coffee and lights his pipe.--As I think it dishonest to deck ourselves with knowledge that is not self-acquired, I confess to the having but just read this "note" in the last number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in a fine work upon America by the celebrated savant, M. Ampère.

W. ROBSON.

Stockwell.

* * * * *

Minor Notes.

_Curious Epitaph._--In the _Diary of Thomas Moore_, Charles Lamb is said at a certain dinner party to have "quoted an epitaph by Clio Rickman, in which, after several lines in the usual jog-trot style of epitaph, he continued thus:

'He well perform'd the husband's, father's part,
And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.'"

There is an epitaph in the churchyard of Newhaven, Sussex, in which the last of these two lines occurs, but which does not answer in other respects to the character of the one quoted by Lamb. On the contrary, it is altogether eminently quaint, peculiar, and consistent. The stone is to the memory of Thomas Tipper, who departed this life May the 14th, 1785, aged fifty-four years; and the upper part is embellished with a representation, in bas-relief, of the drawbridge which crosses the river, whence it might be inferred that the comprehensive genius of Mr. Tipper included engineering and architecture. The epitaph runs thus:

"Reader, with kind regard this grave survey,
Nor heedless pass where Tipper's ashes lay.
Honest he was, ingenuous, blunt and kind,
And dared do what few dare do--speak his mind.
Philosophy and History well he knew,
Was versed in Physick and in Surgery too:
The best old Stingo he both brew'd and sold,
Nor did one knavish act to get his gold.
He play'd through life a varied comic part,
And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.
Reader, in real truth this was the man:
Be better, wiser, laugh more if you can."

Is there any reason for supposing this epitaph to have been written by Clio Rickman; and is anything known of Mr. Tipper beyond the biography of his tombstone?

G. J. DE WILDE.

_Enigmatical Epitaph._--I offer for solution an enigma, copied from a tomb in the churchyard of Christchurch in Hampshire:

"WE WERE NOT SLAYNE BUT RAYSD;
RAYSD NOT TO LIFE,
BVT TO BE BVRIED TWICE
BY MEN OF STRIFE.
WHAT REST COVLD ᵀᴴ LIVING HAVE,
WHEN DEAD HAD NONE?
AGREE AMONGST YOV,
HERE WE TEN ARE ONE.
HEN. ROGERS DIED APRIL 17, 1641.