Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/590

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [u s. vi. DEC. 21, 1912.

charges against women namely, frivolity, vanity, credulity, deceitfulness, weakness of body and mind, incapacity for learning, great action, or government, with the one valuable attribute of beauty, which is fleeting.

The reasoning in this treatise smacks of the schools, with its array of premises from which conclusions follow with more or less of logical rigour ; and as in the conventional laus, so here the arguments are often enough more ingenious than inexpugnable. Their quaintness of phrasing imposes quotation of them in the original (chap. ii. p. 21) :

" Et quoy que nous trouv ions dans la Gcnese que ce fut Eve qui porta son mari a manger du fruict defendu, neantmoins ce fut Adam qui introduisit le pech6 et la morfc dans le monde. Car si Eve seule eust mange de la pomme d6- fendue, nous n'aurions pas encouru le peche originel. Aussi nous voyons que la Saincte -Ecriture diet, que nous avons tous peche en Adam, eo ne le diet pas en Eve .... De plus, il cst tres certain que 1'homicide d'Abel fut faict par Cain, sans que les femmes en eussent aulcune connoissance . ' '

He pursues the same vein and humour in chap. xii. p. 201 :

" Et pour tesmoigner a ce mcsme homme qu'il tte devait jamais pretendre d'egaler ses advantages ^, ceux de la femme : apres 1'avoir cree du limon de la terre, il forma la femme de la coste de 1'homme, qui estoit une matiere puriftee, vivifiee, et animee, ce qui fait voir clairement que la creation de la femme est de beaucoup plus noble -et plus excellente que celle de 1'homme. Et c'est peut-etre aussi pour cette raison, qu'une femme s'estant bien lavee une fois seulement, ne salit plus 1'eau, et qu'un homme la salit tousiours."

And in chap. iv. p. 49 :

" Us se sont voulu faire passer dans leurs livres pour des demy-Dieux, et les Femmes pour des Esclaves, et d'une espece differente (et mesme
 * bien inferieure) a celle des Hommes."

Like most pleaders, however, Du Soucy when coming to close grips with his " com- parative " subject, throws out at times a hazardous assertion which he evidently intends shall go unchallenged :

" La grande depense est si naturelle aux hommes qu'ils s'y portent tres facilement, jusques a la profusion. Au lieu que 1'espargne et la modestie, sont certainement essentielles et bien seantes aux Dames, qui par une force d esprit ne vont jamais. qu'au solide, a 1'ordre et a 1 economic."

Gerzan could hardly be expected to foresee the development in our day of "la grande nation des femmes depensieres " ; but in both his elaborate advocacy and in <Jueyedo's pungent bouiade it seems curious to discover the very arguments now become rso familiar to us. PAUL T. LAFLEUR.

McGrill University, Montreal.

EVERGREENS AT CHRISTMAS. It has pre- viously been noted in ' N. & Q.' that if prickly holly is first brought into a cottage at Christmastime the husband will rule during the ensuing year, and that if smooth holly come first into the house the wife's rule will prevail during the next twelve months. In some Derbyshire cottages great care was taken by the wife, aided by her daughters, to make sure that the lads, when they went to cut holly, brought home the right kind first. It was held that, to ensure a prosperous and lucky year, three kinds of holly must be used in decorating the house-place and window-panes prickly, smooth, and variegated. Some held that the white spots on the last were due to drops of " Mary's milk " falling on the holly leaves carried by the shepherds when they worshipped the Infant Jesus at His birth. This was common talk when I was a lad in Derbyshire.

In decking the leaded panes in a cottage window care was taken that in a row of panes at least one should have a sprig of the variegated kind, and also that some of the diamond -shaped panes should have slips of yew and box in them. Xo one would for this purpose pluck yew from the trees in a churchyard, for such trees were held to be sacred to the dead lying near. As regards sprigs of box, they should be taken from the box-borders in a garden, or from trees growing in a garden. My father had n row of box trees 10 ft. high in his old garden, and these he had clipped in the week before Christmas ; and the clippings were free to all neighbours who wished to have them for decorating the ho use -place and window-panes.

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

DlCKENSIANA : FAGIN IN ' OLIVER TWIST.' At 4 S. xi. 253 (29 March, 1873) was a suggestion that Dickens might have taken his type for an instructor of juvenile thieves from a quoted sixteenth-century letter to Lord Treasurer Burghley. But the following extract from The Gentleman's Magazine, xxxv. 145, under date 25 March, 1765, may indicate a more accessible and probable source : ;

" Four boys, detected in picking pockets. were examined before the Lord Mayor, when one was admitted as evidence, who gave an account, that a man. who kept a public house near Fleet- Market had a club of boys, whom he instructed in picking pockets, and other iniquitous prac- tices ; beginning first with teaching them to pick a handkerchief out of his own pocket, and next his watch, so that at last the evidence was