Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/229

 9*8. XL MARCH 21, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

221

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1903.

CONTENTS. No. 273.

NOTES : Women in the Talmud, 221 Notes on Burton's 1 Anatomy of Melancholy,' 222 Accuracy in Quotation, 223 First Rector of Edinburgh Academy Trinity Sunday Folk-lore Crcsar and the Elephant, 224- " C<>ffee-letter"= News-letter " Prigg " " Loathly " Thackeray and ' Pendemiis,' 225 "Cup-turning" in Fortune-telling Printing of Records -Story of Ungrateful Son, 226 Betty or Settee" Maize," 227.

QUERIES : Recusant Wykehamists, 227 Bruce and Ave- nell Mansion, Miniature Painter Chapels to St. Clare ' Lyra Apostolic i ' Hubhell Arms ' Account of Historical and Political F vents,' 228 "Let it check our pride" Hinde " C.I.F." Lincoln Proverbs Scotch Ballad : 'Habbie Simpson' Cipher Price-Marks "Weep not for her " " And whose little pigs are these ? "Anne Boleyn's Mother, 229 " To dive " " Trapeza " in Russian, 230.

REPLIES -. "U ram," 230 St. Mary Axe Mrs. Glasse. 231 "Bagman "= Commercial Traveller " Maiden " for Married Woman " Loon-slatt" Keats : " Sloth," 232 Oornish Wreckers Origin of the Turnbulls, 233 Vanity Fair, 234 Sexton's Tombstone 18th Hussars, 1821 Notes on Skea 's 'Concise Dictionary,' 235 Portraits of Nath Dictionary of Greek Mythology The beatific vision " Races of Mankind Savoir Vivre Club Statistical Data Quotations Wanted, 236 "Dutch courage" "PUce" Dairy Windows Witnessing by Signs Castle Uushen, Isle of Man, 237 Linguistic Curio- sitiesArms Wmted Smythies Family Wilbye Foot- print of the Prophet Recnrds in Maternity, 238 Monarch in a Wheelbarrow Lord Whitehill, 239.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Shuckburgh's 'Two Biographies of William Bedell ' ' Archseologia^liana ' 'The Language Question in Greece' 'Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Archaeo- logical Journal.'

Notices to Correspondents.

fjtotes,

WOMEN IN THE TALMUD. WHEN it is pointed out that no inconsider- able portion of the Talmudical writings is assigned to the intricacies of gynaecology, one may be excused some slight amazement on perusing Mill's 'Subjection of Women' to find a positive lacuna. As a matter of fact, the whole social conditions of ^Hebrew women in Biblical and post-Biblical times are quietly ignored. This is the more remarkable, con- sidering that the entire subject is one that, if it had been handled by Mill at all, would have furnished matter of the first order for the defence of his case and formed the ground plan of his unrivalled powers of attack. Grant that direct access to this vast original mass of evidence was closed to him ; still his association with the most cultured Jews of his age would have made it all accessible. Why did he then elect to ignore it? The answer is not hard to supply. For while " subjection " in Mill's special sense was possibly the dominant note of the marital compact between the sexes of Greece arid Rome, the doctors of the Talmud (Chagiga, 107) strongly condemned it. In its stead they inculcated a spiritual side to the rela-

tionship. They looked upon marriage as a sacred trust existing exclusively for the enlargement of the boundaries of the State, and not for personal gratification. This was no use to Mill at all. The apostle of Utili- ijmself, when working up the materials for nis essay, bound either to admit the whole evidence or to discard it altogether. He decided to ignore it.
 * arianism, the disciple of Malthus, found

That Jewish women have played important roles on the stage of history barely needs to oe said. Deborah, Hannah, Miriam, Hildah, Ruth, Esther, Beruria, the wife of Rabbi Myer, and Queen Alexandra are all fragrant memories. All these women in divers ways took some share in the public life of their times, although the unwritten law was against them. " Women," we read (Nazir, 59), are not to take up arms in defence of their country." This, like most Talmudical dicta, must be read in the broadest possible sense. Nor was it any special hardship for Jewish women to be debarred from public work. They, very properly, left the entire manage- ment of State affairs to more virile hands, and did not seek to weaken authority by ompetition with it in the council chamber. Nevertheless, if the Hebrew ladies were not asked to frame laws, to sit in the Sanhedrin or in the judgment seat, or to take part in politics, if they never held office, sacerdotal or political, still their social status was im- measurably higher than that of their Greek and Roman sisters.

Much as Mill complains that in the home alone woman's larger life is stifled, the Jewish home gave its mistress ample scope for the expansion of her higher nature. There she was priestess as well as mistress. Manj^ of the religious ordinances were very properly consigned to her care ; the education of her children was a primary duty, which she shared equally with her husband. It would take me too far to descend to details. I will give one or two illustrations out of Erubin, 96. Meechal, King Saul's daughter, was in the habit of wearing tephellin (phylac- teries). The wife of Jonah, when he was away engaged in professional duty, attended the cus- tomary festivities in Jerusalem on his behalf. Another illustration may well be the custom that has persisted from time immemorial that of lighting up the Sabbath lights by the mistress of the house herself. This beau- tiful rite is the only relic left to us of that idyllic age when the Jewish matron was the Pythoness of the sacred hearth ; and so widely is it cherished that, even in those families where the last vestige of Jewish