Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/97

 2 nd S. N" 5., FEB. 2. '56.]

NOTES AND QUEKIES.

which he shows that he took umbrage at the vulgar familiarity of Hamlet, in alluding to his mo- ther's shoes, I have, after a diligent search, failed to discover a single note in extenuation, explana- tion, illustration, or emendation, of what appears to me a singular anti- climax. I can hardly con- ceive that any intelligent reader of the passage and context can fail to be conscious of a halt in the first two lines, and to suspect that the hitch is, not as the French dramatist says, in the vulgar familiarity of the allusion, but, in the inappropri- ateness and incongruity of Hamlet, making the antiquity or the wear and tear of his mother's shoes the measure of her sorrows, or at least of her sense of propriety. I ask with Theobald, on a kindred passage in King John, " Why her shoes, in the name of propriety ? " for let them be as black as they may, I suppose she did not put them into mourning. Now in the passage in King John, to which I have alluded, that most sagacious of all verbal critics, Theobald, proposed to read Alcides' shows, instead of Alcides' "shoes;" an emendation which the ability of your quondam correspondent, A. E. B. ("N. & Q.,"-l rt S. viii. 28.), will not serve to shelve until he has proved that " shoes " was used by the early dramatists to express the entire pro- perties of a character.

It is a year ago since I first suggested shows instead of " shoes " in the passage which stands at the head of this Note, and time has only served to confirm me in that suggestion. Mr. Hunter is inclined to adopt moods of the second folio, vice " modes," in a preceding passage of the same scene, and to distinguish between the " forms, moods, shows of grief," thus :

" Forms, including habits exterior.

Moods, the musings of the melancholy mind, occasionally

and partially appearing. Shows of grief, mourning-apparel." New Illustrations,

ii. 216., 1845.

In point of fact, Hamlet gives us the definition of " shows of grief," viz. " the trappings and the suits of woe ; " and he says that he has " that within, which passeth show ; " his sorrow was such as no mourning apparel could truly denote. Com paring the passage in which these expressions occur with that which I have taken as text, what, I ask, are the shows with which Gertrude followed her husband's corse to the grave but "customary suits of solemn black" ? What were her Niobe's tears but " the fruitful river in the eye " ? What were these but "forms and shows of grief "? That there would be no incongruity in applying the epithet " old " to these "shows, 1 ' may be inferred from another passage in Slnik- speare, even if it were not evident from the special use of " shows " in the text. We read :

"At Christmas I no more desire a rose, Thau wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows."

Love's Labour Lo$t, Act I. Sc. 1.

There may be other passages still more in point, but I take the first at hand. I paraphrase the text thus :

Before my mother's ' mourning- weeds ' (2 Hen. VI.) were worn out, she doffed them for the wedding-gear. Oh ! most wicked speed," &c.

Accordingly, I regulate the passage thus :

" A little month ; or e'er those shows were old, With which she followed my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears ; " &c.

C. MANSFIELD INGLEBT.

Birmingham.

ILLUSTRATIONS OP MACACLAY.

The Song of Lillihullero. Several of our readers have suggested to us the propriety of reprinting in our columns one of the most talked of, yet least known, songs that ever gave a voice to public feeling, namely, Lillibullero. True it is that it may be found at least the first portion of it in Percy's Reliques, vol. ii. p. 373., edit. 1794; but it is not every one who would think of looking there for it, even if possessed of a copy of Percy.

Before quoting the song, let us give its history in the words both of Burnet and Macaulay. Bur- net (History of his Own: Time) says :

" The king [James II.] saw himself forsaken by those whom he had trusted and favoured most, even by his own children ; and of the army, there was not one body en- tirely united and firm to him. A foolish ballad made at the time, treating Papists, chiefly Irish, in a ridiculous manner, had a burden, said to be Irish words, ' lero, lero, lillibulero,' that made an impression on the army that cannot be well imagined by those who saw it not. The whole army, and at last all people in city and country, were singing it perpetually. Perhaps never had so slight a thing so great an effect."

On which Swift (with his usual bitterness) says, " They are not Irish words, but better than Scotch;" and Lord Dartmouth adds :

" There was a particular expression in the song which the king remembered he had made use of to the Earl of Dorset ; from whence it was concluded that he was the author."

Macaulay, in his second volume, p. 428., de- scribing the discontent which prevailed among the clergy, the gentry, and the army, with the conduct of James after the trial of the bishops, observes :

" Public feeling did not then manifest itself by those, signs with which we are familiar, bv large meetings, and by vehement harangues. Nevertheless it found a vent. Thomas VVharton, who, in the last Parliament, had re- presented Buckinghamshire, and who was already con- spicuous both as a libertine and as a Whijr, had written a satirical ballad on the administration of Tyrconnel. In this little poem an Irishman congratulates a brother Irishman, in a barbarous jargon, on the approaching triumph of popery, and of the Milesian race. The Pro- testant heir will" be excluded. The Protestant officers