Be it thy course, to busy giddy minds With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out, More would I, but my lungs are wasted so, You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me; Enter Prince JOHN of LANCASTER, WARWICK, Lords, and Others. K. HEN. Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster. P. JOHN. Health, peace, and happiness, to my royal father! K. HEN. Thou bring'st me happiness, and peace, son John; But health, alack, with youthful wings is flown Where is my lord of Warwick? P. HEN. My lord of Warwick! K. HEN. Doth any name particular belong Unto the lodging where I first did swoon? WAR. 'Tis call'd Jerusalem, my noble lord. K. HEN. Laud be to God!-even there my life must end 3. 3 2 How I came, &c.] This is a true picture of a mind divided between heaven and earth. He prays for the prosperity of guilt while he deprecates its punishment. JOHNSON. "At 3 Laud be to God!-even there my life must end.] length he recovered his speech, and understanding and perceiving himselfe in a strange place, which he knew not, he willed to know if the chamber had anie particular name, whereunto It hath been prophesied to me many years, [Exeunt. answer was made, that it was called Jerusalem. Then said the king; Lauds be given to the Father of heaven, for now I know that I shall die here in this chamber, according to the prophesie of me declared, that I should depart this life in Jerusalem." Holinshed, p. 541. The same equivocal prediction occurs also in the Orygynale Cronykil of Androw of Wyntown, b. vi. ch. xii. v. 47. Pope Sylvester, having sold himself to the devil for the sake of worldly advancement, was desirous of knowing how long he should live and enjoy it : "The dewil answeryd hym agayne, Our Pope soon afterwards was conducted, by the duties of his office, into a church he had never visited before : Then speryd he, quhat thai oysyd to call And then the prophecy was completed by his death. STEEVENS. The same story of Pope Sylvester is told in Lodge's Devil Conjured, where, however, the reader will have the satisfaction to find that his holiness at last outwitted the devil. The following communication was received by Mr. Malone, from the late very learned and excellent Dean of Westminster, nomen mihi semper honoratum. BosWELL. Robert Guiscard, king of Sicily, when invading the Greek empire, arrives at Cephallenia, and lying at Cape Ather, is seized with a fever. He asks for water; when his people dispersing about the island to find a spring, one of the inhabitants addresses them: Ορᾶτε ταύτην τὴν νῆσον τὴν Ιθάκην ἐν αὐτῇ πρώην πόλις μεγάλη ἀνῳκοδόμητο, Ιερεσαλημ καλεμένη, καν τῷ χρόνῳ ἠρείπωται. ἐν αὐτῇ πηγὴ ἦν πότιμον ἐσαὲι και ψυχρον ὕδωρ αναδιδέσα. Τέτων ὁ Ρομπέρτος ἀκάσας, δέει πολλῷ τηνικαυτα συνεσχέθη, συμβαλὼν ἦν τὸν Αθέρα, καὶ τὴν πόλιν Ιερεσαληὴμ, τὸν ἐφιστάμενον αυτῷ θάνατον ἐπεγίνωσκε. καὶ γὰρ πρὸ πολλὰ τινὲς ἀυτῷ εμαντέυοντο, οποια ειώθασιν οι κόλακες τοῖς μεγιστᾶσιν εισηγεῖσθαι,—ὅτι μέχρι τῇ Αθέρος αυτ ACT V. SCENE I. Glostershire. A Hall in SHALLOW'S House. Enter SHALLOW, Falstaff, BARDOLPH, and Page. SHAL. By cock and pye, sir, you shall not away to-night.--What, Davy, I say! ἅπαντα μέλλεις ὑποτάξαι, ἐκεῖθεν δὲ ἐις Ιερεσαλὴμ ἀπερχόμενος τῷ XPEWN NEITUPYNTES. Anna Comnena. Alexias. lib. vi. p. 162. Ed. Paris, 1658. The date of Robert's death is 1085, of our Henry IV. 1413, and Anna the historian is contemporary with Robert. Gibbon, who mentions Robert's death at Cephallenia, (vol. v. p. 625,) takes no notice of Jerusalem, which I was surprised to find, as it was a circumstance agreeable to his usual way of thinking, both as a classical and a superstitious fact. I think he can hardly have introduced it elsewhere. My Dear Sir, You have here Henry IV. in Greek. You will not wonder at Anna's making out Cephallenia to be Ithaca, when D'Anville can hardly find it out with all his learning. Yet here lived the hero of Homer in arato non inglorius. How a Jerusalem came to have been built in Cephallenia, Ishall not attempt to explain; but the holy sepulchre was visited, from devotion or pilgrimage, several centuries before 1085; and temples might consequently have been built in Cephallenia, as well as other Christian countries. A city of Jerusalem seems highly dubious. However, be the fiction what it may, it is previous to Henry IV. and corresponds in almost all its parts. Yours, very truly, W. VINCENT. Deanery, Feb. 19, 1806. 4 By COCK AND PYE,] This adjuration, which seems to have been very popular, is used in Soliman and Perseda, 1599: “ By cock and pie and mousefoot." Again, in Wily Beguiled, 1606: "Now by cock and pie, you never spake a truer word in your life." Again, in The Two Angry Women of Abington, 1599: 66 Merry go sorry, cock and pie, my hearts." FAL. You must excuse me, master Robert Shallow. Cock is only a corruption of the Sacred Name, as appears from many passages in the old interludes, Gammer Gurton's Needle, &c. viz. Cocks-bones, cocks-wounds, by cock's-mother, and some others. Cock's-body, cock's passion, &c. occur in the old morality of Hycke Scorner, and in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Ophelia likewise says: The pie is a table or rule in the old Roman offices, showing, in a technical way, how to find out the service which is to be read upon each day. 66 Among some Ordinances, however, made at Eltham, in the reign of King Henry VIII." we have-" Item that the Pye of coals be abridged to the one halfe that theretofore had been served." A printing letter of a particular size, called the pica, was probably denominated from the pie, as the brevier, from the breviary, and the primer from the primer. STEEVENS. What was called The Pie by the clergy before the Reformation, was called by the Greeks ПIwas, or the index. Though the word Пwas signifies a plank in its original, yet in its metaphorical sense it signifies σανὶς ἐξωγραφημένη, a painted table or picture: and because indexes or tables of books were formed into square figures, resembling pictures or painters' tables, hung up in a frame, these likewise were called Пlívaxes, or, being marked only with the first letter of the word, II's or Pies. All other derivations of the word are manifestly erroneous. In the second preface Concerning the Service of the Church, prefixed to the Common Prayer, this table is mentioned as follows: 66 Moreover the number and hardness of the rules called the Pie, and the manifold changes," &c. RIDley. This oath has been supposed to refer to the sacred name, and to that service book of the Romish church which in England, before the Reformation, was denominated a pie: but it is improbable that a volume with which the common people would scarcely be acquainted, and exclusively intended for the use of the clergy, could have suggested a popular adjuration. It will, no doubt, be recollected, that in the days of ancient chivalry it was the practice to make solemn vows or engagements for the performance of some considerable enterprise. This ceremony was usually performed during some grand feast or entertainment, at which a roasted peacock or pheasant, being served up by SHAL. I will not excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not be admitted; there is ladies in a dish of gold or silver, was thus presented to each knight, who then made the particular vow which he had chosen, with great solemnity. When this custom had fallen into disuse, the peacock nevertheless continued to be a favourite dish, and was introduced on the table in a pie, the head, with gilded beak, being proudly elevated above the crust, and the splendid tail expanded. Other birds of smaller value were introduced in the same manner, and the recollection of the old peacock vows might occasion the less serious, or even burlesque, imitation of swearing not only by the bird itself but also by the pie; and hence probably the oath by cock and pie, for the use of which no very old authority can be found. The vow to the peacock had even got into the mouths of such as had no pretensions to knighthood. Thus, in The Merchant's Second Tale, or the History of Beryn, the host is made to say, "I make a vowe to the pecock there shal wake a foul mist." There is an alehouse sign of the cock and magpie, which seems a corruption of the peacock pie. Although the latter still preserved its genuine appellation of the cock and pie, the magic art of modern painters would not fail to produce a metamorphosis like that which we have witnessed on many other occasions. DOUCE. By cock and pie." Perhaps this is only a ludicrous oath, by the common sign of an alehouse. Here is a sketch from an old one at Bewdley: 66 "By cock and pie and mousefoot," quoted by Mr. Steevens, looks as if the oath had not so solemn and sacred an origin as he assigns it; but was rather of the nature of those adjurations |
