Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/106

 NOTES AND QUERIES. f ii s. xn. AUG. 7, 1915.

FOLK-LORE IN EXCELSIS. Countess Marie 1L arisen records in 'My Past' the following Items concerning her aunt, Elizabeth, wife of Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria :

" The Empress was very superstitious, and occasionally, when I had exhausted the gossip of Vienna, she would make me put the white of an egg into a glass of water, and together we would try to read omens in the shapes it took. Elizabeth invariably made three bows to a mag- pie whenever she saw one ; and the new moon afforded her the occasion to indulge in any longed-for wish. The Empress firmly believed in the virtues of cold iron, and she never passed nails or cast horseshoes without picking them up ; the Evil Eye inspired her with real dread, and he feared the malign influence of those who possessed it." P. 109.

A bit of superstition which is new to me -was known to Queen Louise, wife of Frederick William III. of Prussia. We are told by Princess Anton Radziwill in ' Forty- Five Years of my Life ' (p. 326) that "" the day before she left for Strelitz there was .a State dinner at Charlottenburg to which we were invited. The Queen was as light-hearted and as happy as of old. The King, seeing her in such good spirits, reminded her, ' You forget, dear, to- morrow is Monday, and it is against your principles to travel on a Monday.' She laughed and said, to see your father.' "
 * Oh, nothing brings ill-luck when you are going

ST. SWITHIN.

"THE KING OF HUNGARY'S PEACE" IN SHAKESPEARE. In ' Measure for Measure ' (Act I. sc. ii.) Lucio, on entering with the two gentlemen exchanges the following re- marks with one of them a propos of nothing :

Lucio. If the Duke with the other dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then ail the dukes fall upon the King.

First Gent. Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary's !

This is a distinct allusion to the Hungarian nobles' right under their Magna Charta, the Golden Bull of 1222, to take up arms against their king in case of a breach of the constitution on his part. .

Shakespeare's source of information was no doubt, the small pamphlet which appeared in London in 1605, a copy of which is to be found in the British Museum (press -mark 1193. k. 35), with the following long title :

" A Declaration of the Lords and States of the Reaime of Hungarie contayning the reasons which mooued them in forcible manner to oppose them- selues against the violence and oppression vsed and practised upon the inhabitants of the foresaid country by the Emperour's subjects."

The English text was " translated out of French," but the original declaration was no doubt issued in Latin, considerably modi-

fied versions of which have been preserved. The proper names in our text are sadly dis- figured, but I have been able to identify nearly all.

Old Richard Knolles in his ' Turkish History, ' mentions the fact that the " rebel " Bocskay on 29 March, 1605, summoned all the nobility and states of Hungary to an assembly to be holden at Serentium (in Hungarian Szerencs) on 17 April, but clean forgets to inform his readers that at that assembly Bocskay was elected Prince of Hungary in opposition to that learned idiot the Emperor Rudolph, who some twenty years before had been elected and crowned their king, but had ever since failed to carry out the obligations towards the nation under- taken in his coronation oath. The ' Declara- tion ' sets forth at some length all the perse- cutions, robberies, massacres, &c., his hither- to loyal subjects had to endure at the hands of his proteges, the Jesuits, and their con- federates the Emperor's foreign soldiers ; and then quotes the decree of Andrew II., '' called King of Jerusalem, which he enacted in the yeare 1222, Art. 31," which entitled them to have recourse, in case of need, to armed resistance.

The English translation of this important clause, which was not abrogated till later in the century, is given as follows in our pamphlet :

" Now if either we [the King] or any of our successours in any time whatsoever, go against this our pleasure, we licence our subjects and give them all power to contradict and resist us, so as after- ward they may never be branded with any note of treason or infamy for the same."

The point is further elaborated in the 'Tripartitum Opus Juris Consuetudinarii . . . .Regni Hungariae,' Pars prima, titulus ix., which is referred to in our pamphlet as " the first Epistle, the ninth Tit. of that Tripartite work of the lawes of Hungary," and is quoted at some length.

The manifesto is dated from the " Citie of Cassouie [Hung. Kassa], the 24 April, 1605," and no doubt some time elapsed before the English translation was printed by Ar. Hatfield for John Hodgets. On the other hand, according to the account given in the contemporary Book of Revels, the authenticity of which has been fully re- established by Mr. Ernest Law, ' Measure for Measure ' was first acted on St. Stephen's Night in 1604 ; but the text of the piece as we know it was not published till 1623, in the First Folio, and it is quite possible that in the original text, as acted before the Court, Lucio and his gentleman companion