When Hempe is spun This is a popish prediction, edited before the defeat of the Armada. The word HEMPE is formed of the letters H.E.M.P.E., the initials of Henry, Edward, Mary, Philip, and Elizabeth, and supposes to threaten that after the reigns of these princes England would be lost, i.e. conquered. . . . Some interpret the distich more literally; supposing it meant that when all the hemp in England was expended, there would be an end of our naval force; which would indeed be fact, if no more could be procured. AU. Yet to keep this proverb in countenance, it may pretend to some truth, because then England, with the addition of Scotland, lost its name in Great Britain, by royal proclamation. Fuller. Alias When Our Lady falls in our Lord's lap Then England beware a mishap. sad clap. Then let the clergyman look to his cap. This is supposed to be a kind of popish prophetical menace, coined since the Reformation, intimating that the Virgin Mary, offended at the English nation for abolishing the worship of her before that event, waited for an opportunity of revenge, and when her day, March 25, chanced to fall on the same day with Christ's Resurrection, then she, strengthened by her Son's assistance, would inflict some remarkable punishment on the kingdom. This conjunction, it was calculated, would happen in the year 1722; but we do not learn that anything happened in consequence, either to the nation, or to the caps or wigs of the clergy. AU. From AT. (1840) we gather that . . . Elias Ashmole computed it had happened fifteen times since the Conquest, and gave the principal events of those years. Fuller says, speaking after 1543" Hitherto this proverb had but intermitting truth at the most, seeing no constancy in sad casualties. But the sting, some will say, is in the tail thereof," etc. He then gives the years 1554, 1627, 1638, 1649, and quotes their events thus: i. Queen Mary setteth up Popery, and martyreth Protestants. ii. The unprosperous voyage to the Isle of Rees. iii. The first cloud of trouble in Scotland. iv. The first complete year of the English Commonwealth (or tyranny rather), which since, blessed be God, is returned to a monarchy. Hazlitt, Proverbs (1882), p. 475, gives this version When Easter Day falls on Our Lady's lap Then let England beware a rap; And adds-Easter fell on March 25, the day alluded to, in 1459, when Henry VI. was deposed and murdered; in 1638, when the Scottish troubles began, on which ensued the great trouble in 1640–9, when Charles the First was beheaded. Current Notes, January, 1853, p. 3. When the black fleet of Norway is come and gone, For after, wars you shall have none. * AU. Fuller says "Some make it fulfilled in the year eightyeight, when the Spanish fleet was beaten, the name of whose king, as a learned author (The Lord Bacon in his Essays, p. 215) doth observe, was Norway. It is true that afterwards England built houses of lime and stone; and our most handsome and artificial buildings (though formerly far greater and stronger) bear their date from the defeating of the Spanish fleet. As for the remainder, 'After, wars you shall have none,' we find it false as to our civil wars by our woful experience." When the sand feeds the clay, But when the clay feeds the sand, It is merry with England. The clay lands in England are to those of a sandy soil as five to one, and equally or more fertile. If, from a wet season, the sandy lands succeed, and the clay lands miss, only one-fifth of the crop is produced that there would have been, had the contrary happened this, as the proverb expresses, is a national misfortune. AU.: Fuller; BK. 17; AK. 61. Another version is When the sand doth feed the clay, On Prophecies. The lines as there given are: There shall be seen upon a day Between the Baugh and May, CG. ix. 149. But when the clay doth feed the sand, Whoso hath but a mouth, Shall ne'er in England suffer drouth. For, if he doth but open, it is a chance but it will rain in. True it is, we seldom suffer for want of rain; and if there be any fault in the temper of our air, it is over-moistness, which inclines us to the scurvy and consumptions: diseases the one scarce known, the other but rare, in hotter countries.-Ray : BC. 492 : BD. i. 335. ENGLISH COUNTIES. BEDFORDSHIRE. Bedfordshire bull-dogs Hertfordshire hedgehogs, Buckinghams. great fools.-CH. iv. 507. Hazlitt, Proverbs, quoting Heywood's Proverbs (1562), gives, "As plain as Dunstable by-way," adding-Quoted in a ballad printed about 1570. See Ancient Ballads and Broadsides, 1867, p. I. Clarke (Paramiologia, 1639, p. 243) has— In the Dunstable highway To Needham and beggary, But it is there quoted differently. The meaning seems to be ironical, as Dunstable by-way was probably by no means plain. Latimer (Sermons, 1549, repr. Arber, p. 56) says "Howbeit there were some good walkers among them, that walked in the kynges highe waye ordinarilye, vprightlye, playne Dunstable waye." "Wherein I iudge him the more too be esteemed, bicause hee vseth no going about the bushe, but treades Dunstable way in all his trauell." Gosson's Ephemerides of Phialo, 1586, Epist. Dedic. to Sydney. The author of A Journey through England in the Year 1752 (privately printed 1869, 8vo, p. 75), testifies to the bad state of the roads in that part of the country nearly two centuries later, p. 74 Despite the last evidence, I doubt an ironical meaning in the proverb, and fail to see such in either of the extracts. BERKSHIRE. Isley, remote amidst the Berkshire downs, Claims three distinctions o'er her sister towns Far famed for sheep and wool, tho' not for spinners, ? modern. BP. i. 77. One mile north-east of Newbury is Shaw House, built in 1581 by Thomas Dolman, a member of an old Yorkshire family who had settled in Newbury as a clothier, and, having made a fortune, retired here to live as a country gentleman. The proceeding was distasteful to the townsmen, and they expressed their feelings in these lines : Lord have mercy upon us miserable sinners, And has turned away all his spinners. To which he retorted in the haughty lines still remaining over the gateway— Edentulus vescentium dentibus invidet Et oculos caprearum talpa contemnit.-BP. i. 66. Newbury has long been noted for its corn market. The old custom that everything must be paid for on delivery, gave rise to the local proverb The farmer doth take back The money in his sack.-BP. i. 63. BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. BLEDLOW. They that live and do abide Shall see the church fall in the Lyde. Bledlow Church, parish of Aylesbury, "stands near the edge of a rock, under which, in a deep glen overgrown with trees, and exhibiting some picturesque scenery, little to be expected from the character of the neighbouring country, issue some transparent springs, which form there a pool called the Lyde. They are said to wear away the rock, which has occasioned the . . . proverb." Lysons, Buckinghamshire, p. 516. The church stands so near the edge that it seems in imminent danger. BP. ii. 161. Brill upon the Hill, Shabby little Ickford, ? Ashendon Hundred, West Bucks., six miles north-west-bynorth of Thame. At Brill on the Hill The wind blows shrill, At Stow in the Wold The wind blows cold. I know no more than this. A nursery rhyme. AY. 301. Stow in the Wold is in Gloucestershire. Buckinghamshire bread and beef: Here, if you beat a bush, it is odds you'll start a thief. "The former as fine, the latter as fat, in this as in any other county." Fuller (1662): Ray. "No doubt there was just occasion for this proverb at the original thereof, which then contained a satirical truth, proportioned to the place before it was reformed; whereof thus our great antiquary: 'It was altogether unpassable, in times past, by reason of trees, until Leofstane, Abbot of St. Albans, did cut them down, because they yielded a place of refuge for thieves.' But this proverb is now antiquated as to the truth thereof; Buckinghamshire affording as many maiden assizes as any county of equal populousness." Fuller, ut supra. The second line forms part of the proverb, and completes the couplet, such as it is; but the two lines have been invariably separated. Hazlitt, Proverbs, p. 101. BULSTRODE (family). When William conquer'd English ground, Bulstrode had per annum three hundred pound.-BP. ii. 161. When the Conqueror gave away his (Bulstrode's) estate to a Norman follower, says the legend, he and his adherents, mounted upon bulls, resisted the invaders and retained possession. Afterwards, accompanied by his seven sons, mounted in the same fashion, he went under safe conduct to William's court, and the Conqueror was so much amused at the strangeness of the scene |