Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/357

 12 8. II. OCT. 28, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

351

" To GIVE THE MITTEN." Equivalent apparently to giving his conge to an un- welcome admirer. The expression occurs in an American story of which the scene is laid in Kansas city. How did the idea travel so far West ? It sounds like the alternative to kissing a lady's hand. But that practice does not seem to have ever taken root in the most Western states of the Union.

L. G. B.

ARTHUR COLLINS. I should be obliged to any reader who would tell me the birthplace of Arthur Collins, compiler of the ' Peerage.'

M.

THE FRENCH AND FROGS. (12 S. ii. 251, 293).

THE frog may not be a social success in the animal world, but he has found many apologists among writers on culinary dainties. I will first give a few early re- ferences to the esculent frog. JStius, the Alexandrian physician, recommended frog broth mixed with salt and oil. Pliny, in his ' Natural History,' confirms this, and (in Philemon Holland's translation/ says that a decoction of frogs

" sodden in wine and vinegre, is a soveralgne drinke for all poisons, but especially for the venom of the hedge toad and salamander. As for the froggs of rivers and fresh waters, if a man either eat the flesh or drink the broth wherein they were sodden, he shall flnde it yerie good. . . .moreover, Democritus saith that if a man take out the tongue of a frog alive so that no other part stick there to, and after he hath let the frog go againe into the water apply the said tongue unto the left pap of a woman whiles she is asleepe, in the very place where the heart beateth, she shall answer truly and directly in her sleepe to any interrogatione or question that is put to her."

This, if true, seems too good to be passed over, and ought to be made further known. Tom Coryat, who in 1608 set out on foot from the village of Odcombe in Somerset to travel in that manner through Europe, and earned many nicknames, including that of " The Odcombian Legstretcher," relates in his famous ' Crudities,' when giving an account of Cremona in Italy :

" I did eate Progges in this citie, which is a dish much used in many cities of Italy : they were so curiously dressed that they did exceedingly delight my palat, the head and the forepart being cut off." 'Crudities,' vol. i. p. 258, 1905 reprint (MacLehose).

Dampier, another Somerset man, born a generation later, says that in Tonquin he

found a New Year's entertainment going on, and his host,

" that he might better entertain me and his other guests, had been in the morning a-fishing in a pond not far from his house, and had caught a huge mess of frogs, and with great joy brought them home as soon as I came to his house. I wondered to see him turn out so many of these creatures into a basket, and, asking him what they were for, he told me to eat ! But how he dressed them I know not. I did not like his dainties so well as to stay and dine with him."

In ' The Boke of St. Albans ' (circa 1486) there is a sentence " a frogge for to eete." The Witches' cauldron in ' Macbeth ' con- tained

Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog.

Poor Tom, the fool in ' King Lear,' may well be recalled here :

" Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole."

In the Ayscough MSS. in the British Museum is a treatise ' On the Prolongation of Life,' and after a discourse upon the excellence of " frog broath," the writer goes on, still alluding to frogs :

" In Fraunce I once, by chance, eate them fried, but thought they had been another meate, otherwise I had not bin so hastie .... it might bee that thosse were frogs from standing-pooles and marshes .... but be they of what sort you will, I think penurie made some use them, and luxurie others, whose fat feeding and wanton stomacks crave unnaturall things, mushrups, snailes, &c."

The wife of Galvani, the philosopher, was ill, and was recommended as a restorative soup made of frogs. Several of the animals, skinned ready for use, lay on the table in her husband's laboratory near an electrical machine. An assistant touched with the point of a scalpel the nerve of one of the frogs as it lay near a prime conductor. It was observed that the muscles of the frog's limb were instantly thrown into convulsions. The result of Madame Galvani's frog soup was that Galvanism was discovered from that moment.

Grimod de la Reyniere, the witty and eccentric Frenchman, published his ' Al- manach des Gourmands ' between 1803 and 1812. No more ardent apologist for the frog has ever written. In various issues of his ' Almanach ' he returns again and again to the subject of ' Les Grenouilles ' :

" Au XIII* siecle, les habit, m(s dr la France se montraient tellement friinds de ce batracien que les Anglais les avaic-nt surnomm^s ' Mangeurs de grenouillos' surnom qui occiisioniuiit souvent des querellcs cntrc !<>s ^nts <! deux nations. Les Anglais du XVIII 8 siecle memo croyaient bonne- ment, sur la foi de quelques voyageurs sans doute, que tous les Fran cats etaient maitres de danse et se nourrissaient de grenouilles."