Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/193

 10 s. XL FEB. 20, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

ST. S WITHIN quotes " Here 's a fellow frights English out of his wits " ; and this is the reading of the Globe edition. Isaac Reed, however, and Charles Knight give " frights humour out of his wits," and mention no other reading. What authority is there for substituting English for humour ?

T. M. W.

["English" is the reading of the First Folio.] The fashionable use of the word in Eliza- bethan days came to be " applied on all occasions, with as little judgment as wit ; every coxcomb had it always in his mouth ; and every particularity he affected was de- nominated by the name of humour." Nym appears to be a burlesque type of those who were given to such affectation, and the jocosity involved lies in Shakespeare's ridi- cule of its abuse. See Ben Jonson's ' Every Man in his Humour,' III ii., and the Pro- logue to ' Every Man out of his Humour.'

TOM JONES.

SIR WALTER SCOTT ON THE SCOTCH AND THE IRISH (10 S. xi. 107). The passage referred to is probably that in Lockhart's ' Scott,' 1st ed., vol. vi. p. 43. Scott was in July, 1825, just crossing to Ireland in a steamboat. It contained packages of the cast-off raiment of Scotch beggars for the Irish :

" Sir Walter rather irritated a military pas- senger (a stout old Highlander), by asking whether it had never occurred to him that the beautiful checkery of the clan tartans might have originated in a pious wish on the part of the Scottish Gael to imitate the tatters of the parent race. After soothing the veteran into good -humour. .. .he remarked that if the Scotch Highlanders were really descended in the main from the Irish blood, it seemed to him the most curious and difficult problem in the world to account for the startling contrasts in so many points of their character, temper, and demeanour."

See the passage further for Scott's opinion on these differences. NEL MEZZO.

SNAKES DRINKING MILK (10 S. x. 265, 316, 335, 377, 418). In his ' Primitive Culture,' 2nd ed., chap, xv., Dr. Tylor says :

" To this day Europe has not forgotten in nursery tales or more serious belief the snake that comes with its golden crown and drinks milk out of the child's porringer ; the house-snake, tame and kindly, but seldom seen, that cares for the cows and the children . . . . " And he refers to Hanuseh for the snake that was kept and fed with milk in the temple of the old Slavonic god Potimpos.

In Africa the Baris give milk and meat to the snakes, calling them their grand- mothers (Ratzel, ' History of Mankind,' trans. Butler, vol. ii. p. 357, 1899). From a

similar motive possibly, the old Chinese Buddhists offered cream to Liu, a constella- tion shaped as, and governed by, a serpent (Twan Ching-Shih, ' Yu - yang - tsah - tsu,' 9th cent. AD., rom. iii.). Southey's ' Com- monplace Book ' (Reeves & Turner, 1876, Foxirth Series, pp. 425-6) contains a storv of a snake which regularly visited a little boy to share his breakfast of bread and milk.

The folk-lore of snakes and milk is re- garded as traceable to ancestor-worship by Dr. Frazer, who writes :

" Where serpents are thus viewed as ancestors come to life [as by the Zulus and other Kafir tribes, &c.], the people treat them with great respect, and then feed them with milk, perhaps because milk is the food of human babes and the reptiles are treated as human beings in embryo, who can be born again from women. . . .Perhaps the libations of milk which the Greeks poured upon graves were intended to be drunk by serpents." ' Adonis, Attis, Osiris,' 1907, pp. 74-5.

Notwithstanding this reasonable exposi- tion, there is no lack of assertors that snakes drink milk. For example, Ermete Pierotti, ' Customs and Traditions of Palestine,' 1864, pp. 47-8, has this passage :

" I once occupied a house at Jerusalem, in the Via Dolorosa .... the outer walls and inner court of which were overgrown with hyssop .... It harboured a number of serpents .... I abandoned my hostile intentions, and ordered them to be supplied with milk every day. They showed their gratitude for this treatment by visiting my bedroom, where I used to find them coiled up in a comer. These ' faithful friends ' are rarely wanting in the old Arab houses at Jerusalem, where then* presence is regarded as a good omen by the inhabitants. The most surprising thing is that neither the women nor the babies fear them. . . .Mothers are not unfrequently awakened in the night by the reptiles, which have fastened on their breasts, and are sucking their milk .... Serpents are also in the habit of entering the folds and grottoes in which flocks are penned, and, during the night, quietly sucking the milk from the teats of the ewes or she-goats, without awaking them ; which is as good a proof of their cunning as any that we could find."

It is noteworthy that the Albanians hold milk to act inimically upon serpents that drink it with overmuch greed. The story runs thus :

" A shepherd once found a snake asleep, coiled round a large heap of gold pieces ; and knowing how to set to work under the circumstances, placed a pail of milk by its side, and waited in a hiding-place until it should wake. It came to pass as he expected. The snake took to the milk with avidity, and drank its fill. On this it returned to the heap of gold, in order to go to sleep again, but the thirst with which snakes are attacked after drinking milk prevented it from doing so. It became restless, and moved irresolutely round and round the heap, till the