Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/11

 112 8. VI. JAN., 1920.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

the Lees of Wine " (J. Brown, ' Poetry and Music '). In the present case the circum- stance would appear to have been skilfully made use of by the dramatist at the close of Hamlet's colloquy with Horatio on the excesses of the Danish soldiery, the effects of intemperance, and the kindred ills resulting "from any defect of body or mind in, man just as Hamlet is about to be brought face to face with the apparition of his murdered "father. One can easily imagine what a tour deforce might be produced at the closing of Hamlet's moralizing with the words :

The dram of lees

Doth all the noble substance overdaub To its own scandal,

on the spell-bound audience by the re-entry of the Ghost ! one of those dramatic effects of which Shakespeare is an acknowledged master.

Since writing at the penultimate reference, I find that Elze, in his ' Notes on Elizabethan Dramatists,' 1889, p. 226, cites several instances of the word " daub's " occurrence in Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Nash. He states, too, that a Mr. Samuel N>eil, who published an edition of Shake- speare's ' Works,' had also proposed the reading " over daube," seemingly without having got the idea from Elze. The latter concludes with the remark : " Some Eliza- bethan authority for the verb ' overdaub ' would be welcome."

In Bolchier's ' Invisible Comedy of Hans' Beer Pot ' (Elze, loc. cit., p. 252) the couplet occurs :

Enough, myladde, wilt drink an ocean? Methinks a whirlpool cannot ore drinke me,

which goes to show that the preposition was not always directly connected with the verb in Elizabethan orthography ; though such compounds as " overfear," " overlaw," " overquell," " oversnow," " overthink," " overyoke " are to be met with, and the examples " o'er growth " and " o'er leavens " occur a few lines earlier in this very speech of Hamlet's.

The ' N.E.D.' gives no instance of " base " used as a noun to support Theobald's reading. N. W. HILL.

35 Woburn Place, W.C.I.

SHAKESPEARE : A SURVIVAL or AUGURY

(12 S. v. 5, 116). There are several sets of

rime lines known to country folk about the

magpie, or "pynet" as it is commonly

called in Derbyshire, and the best known in

the Midlands are those given by Mr. PAGE.

' The most sinister lines I have met with

I found current in North Notts, in a small village, which run :

One for sorrow,

Two for mirth,

Three for a wedding,

Four a birth ;

Five for a parson,

Six for a clerk,

Seven for a babe

Buried in the dark. Another ending is

Five for England, Six for France, Seven for a fiddler. Eight for a dance.

A very satisfactory and pastoral ending. Another Derbyshire saying :

I see one magpie.

May the devil take the magpie,

An' God take me.

Derbyshire children sixty years ago were taught to dread the sight of a single magpie , to spit over the extended forefinger of the left hand and make a cross on the ground with their shoe toe, if the bird crossed their path when on the way to school ; but if the bird flew straight ahead to keep right on. Other children instead of this turned back as it was unlucky to go on. To see two or more was deemed the best of luck and a good augury. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

A BATCH OF EMEND ATIOSES : (12 S. v. 202.)

' Tempest,' I. ii. 81 :

To trash for over-topping.

Most editors retain the word trash and explain the line as to lop for over-topping, i.e., to cut off the heads of rebellious spirits. Plash was proposed by Hanmer ; but so far it has not come into favour. N. W. HILL.

' Tempest,' V. i., Ariel's song. The only fault I find with this song is the rather too big break between the third and fourth lines. Would it be better if only a comma was put after the third line, and " or " added to the beginning of the fourth deleting, of course, also its unnecessary " do " before " fly " ? The song would then go thus :

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,

In a cowslip's bell 1 lie,

There I couch when owls do cry,

Or on the bat's back I fly

After summer merrily, &o.

I see no need for the introduction of the swallow. The bat is nearly as much a follower of summer as the " temple- haunting martlet." W. H. PINCHBECK.