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36. quern, a hand-mill. A. S. cweorn or cwýrn; Gothic kwairnus. Compare Chaucer, Moukes Tale, l. 14080 (ed. Tyrwhitt) of Samson: But now is he in prison in a cave,

Wheras they made him at the querne grinde.'

Johnson imagined a difficulty. The mention of the mill,' he says, 'seems out of place, for she is not now telling the good but the evil he does.' He suggested the transposition of lines 36 and 37, or the reading

And sometimes make the breathless housewife churn
Skim milk, and bootless labour in the quern.'

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But the fairy is enumerating all Robin Goodfellow's pranks, and among them when he was in a good humour the old song makes him say (Percy's Reliques, vol. iii.) :

'I grind at mill
Their malt up still.'

See the quotation from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy in the Preface. The only alternative is with Delius to regard 'quern' as equivalent to 'churn' for which there appears to be no authority.

38. sometime, sometimes. Compare 'beside' and 'besides'; 'while' and 'whiles'; 'toward' and 'towards'; and see iii. 1. 98; iii. 2. 360.

Ib. barm, yeast; so called in many provincial dialects still: A. S. beorma. Cotgrave has, Leveton: m. Yeast, or Barme.'

39. night-wanderers. Milton had probably this passage in his mind when he described the Will o' the wisp (Paradise Lost, ix. 640) which

'Hovering and blazing with delusive light,

Misleads the amazed night wanderer from his way.'

Ib. harm, misfortune. Compare As You Like It, iii. 2. 80: Glad of other men's good, content with my harm.'

40. Hobgoblin. So Drayton, Nymphidia, 283:

'He meeteth Pucke, which most men call
Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall.'

47. a gossip's bowl, originally a christening cup; for a gossip or godsib was properly a sponsor. Hence, from signifying those who were associated in the festivities of a christening, it came to denote generally those who were accustomed to make merry together. Archbishop Trench mentions that the word retains its original signification among the peasantry of Hampshire. He adds, Gossips are, first, the sponsors, brought by the act of a common sponsorship into affinity and near familiarity with one another; secondly, these sponsors, who being thus brought together, allow themselves one with the other in familiar, and then in trivial and idle, talk; thirdly, any who allow themselves in this trivial and idle talk,-called in French "commérage," from the fact that "commère" has run through exactly the same stages as its English equivalent.' (English Past and Present, pp. 204-5, 4th ed.). Warton, in his note on Milton's L'Allegro, 100, identifies the spicy

nut-brown ale' with the gossip's bowl of Shakespeare. The composition was ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples. It was called Lambs-wool.' See Breton's Fantastickes, January: An Apple and a Nutmeg make a Gossips cup.' Compare Comedy of Errors, v. I. 405:

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'Go to a gossips' feast, and go with me.'

And Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5. 175:

Utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl.'

48. crab, crab apple. See King Lear, i. 5. 16: 'For though she's as like this as a crab's like an apple, yet I can tell what I can tell.'

50. dewlap, spelt 'dewlop' in the quartos and folios, is properly the loose skin which hangs from the throat of cattle. See iv. 1. 121, and The Tempest, iii. 3. 45: 'Dewlapp'd like bulls.' Baret (Alvearie, s. v.) has: 'the Dewlap of a rudder beast, hanging downe vnder the necke. Palear.' 51. aunt, a familiar name for an old woman. Compare 'nuncle' in King Lear, i. 4. 117. It is elsewhere used in a bad sense, but not in this passage or in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, ii. I; where Justice Overdo in the habit of a fool says, Ale for thine aunt, boy.' Mr. Grant White remarks that In New England villages good-natured old people are still called "aunt" and "uncle" by the whole community.' In Cornwall, according to Pegge (Grose's Glossary), the same usage prevails.

Ib. saddest tale, most grave or serious story. Compare Merchant of Venice, ii. 2. 205:

'Like one well studied in a sad ostent

To please his grandam';

where sad ostent •

means an assumed appearance of gravity. In the present passage 'sad' may possibly be understood in its ordinary sense. 54. tailor. Johnson says, 'The custom of crying tailor at a sudden fall backwards, I think I remember to have observed. He that slips beside his chair, falls as a tailor squats upon his board.' If this be not the true explanation it is at least the only one which has been proposed.

54-55. cough... laugh. The old copies for the sake of the rhyme print 'coffe... loffe.'

56. waxen in their mirth, grow merrier and merrier. Farmer conjectured 'yoxen' or 'yexen,' to hiccup; the latter was adopted by Singer. The old plural waxen' probably survived in the country dialects of Shakespeare's time.

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Ib. neeze, sneeze; A. S. niesan, Germ. niesen. Similarly we find the two forms of the same word 'knap' and 'snap'; 'top' and 'stop,' 'cratch' and 'scratch'; 'lightly' and 'slightly'; 'quinsy' and 'squinancy.' In 2 Kings iv. 35 the text originally stood, And the child neesed seven times'; but the word has been altered in modern editions to sneezed.' In Job xli. 18 however 'neesings' still holds its place. Compare Homilies (ed. Griffiths, 1859), P, 227: Using these sayings: such as learn, God and St. Nicholas

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be my speed; such as neese, God help and St John; to the horse, God and St. Loy save thee.' Palsgrave (Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse) And Cotgrave gives both forms, Esternuer. To

has, 'I nese, le esterne.' neeze, or sneeze.'

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58. Johnson on account of the metre would read 'fairy' as a trisyllable. Dr. Abbott, for the same reason, would prolong room' (Shakesperian Grammar, § 484). The metre is scarcely mended in either way. Pope read 'make room.' Dyce in his second edition read' room, now.' Dr. Nicholson suggests 'roomer,' a sea term, which is applied to a ship when going from the wind.

59. In the stage direction as it appears in the quartos and folios Oberon is called the King of Fairies,' and Titania 'the Queen.'

61. Fairies, skip hence. The old copies have 'Fairy,' which Capell understands of the leading fairy, her gentleman-usher, and therefore considers Theobald's change to 'Fairies' unnecessary. See however l. 144.

67. pipes of corn, made of oat straw. Ritson quotes from Chaucer [House of Fame, iii. 134]:

'And many a floyte and litling horne,

And pipes made of greene corne.'

Compare Cotgrave, ‘Sampongne: f. A bagpipe, or oaten pipe.' And Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 913:

'When shepherds pipe on oaten straws.'

Also Milton, Lycidas, 33:

'Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute.'

And Comus, 345:

'Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops.'

Ib. versing love, making love in verse.

69. steppe. So the first quarto. The second, followed by the folios, reads 'steepe'; and this was apparently in Milton's mind when he wrote Comus, 139:

'Ere the blabbing eastern scout,

The nice morn on the Indian steep
From her cabin'd loop-hole peep.'

To the reading' steppe' it is objected that the word in the sense in which it is applied to the vast plains of Central Asia was not known in Shakespeare's day, but it is dangerous to assert a proposition which may be disproved by a single instance of the contrary. There is certainly no a priori reason why the present passage should not furnish that instance, inasmuch as a word of similar origin, 'horde,' was perfectly well known in England at the beginning of the 17th century. On the other hand, too much weight must not be attached to the spelling of the first quarto, for in iii. 2. 85 'sleep' is misprinted 'slippe.'

75. Glance at, hint at, indirectly attack. Compare Julius Cæsar, i. 2. 324: 'Wherein obscurely

Cæsar's ambition shall be glanced at.'

For the substantive 'glance' in the sense of hint, allusion,' see As You Like It, ii. 7. 57:

'The wise man's folly is anatomized

Even by the squandering glances of the fool.'

And Bacon's Advancement of Learning, 1. 7, § 8 (p. 57, ed. Wright): 'But when Marcus Philosophus came in, Silenus was gravelled and out of countenance, not knowing where to carp at him; save at the last he gave a glance at his patience towards his wife.'

78. Perigenia. In North's Plutarch she is called Perigouna, the daughter of the famous robber Sinnis, by whom Theseus had a son Menalippus.

79. Egle. Rowe's correction. The quartos and folios have 'Eagles.' In North's Plutarch (ed. 1631), Theseus, p. 9, we read: 'For some say, that Ariadne hung herselfe for sorrow, when she saw that Theseus had cast her off. Other write, that she was transported by mariners into the Ile of Naxos, where she was married unto Oenarus the priest of Bacchus and they thinke that Theseus left her because he was in love with another, as by these verses should appeare,

Egles the Nymph was lou'd of Theseus,

Who was the daughter of Panopeus.'

80. Antiopa, according to some, was the name of the Amazon queen, and the mother of Hippolytus. See North's Plutarch, p. 14.

82. middle summer's spring, the beginning of midsummer. quotes 2 Henry IV, iv. 4. 35:

'As humorous as winter and as sudden

As flaws congealed in the spring of day.'

Steevens

Also Luke i. 78: 'Whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.' Again we find in Gower's Confessio Amantis (ii. p. 97):

For till I se the daies spring,

I sette slepe nought at a risshe.'

84. paved fountain, a fountain with pebbly bottom; not artificially paved, for a fountain of this kind would scarcely be frequented by fairies. See Milton, Comus 119, of the wood-nymphs' dance:

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And Paradise Lost, i. 783.

85. in, on. See below,

90, and compare Venus and Adonis, 118: 'What seest thou in the ground?' And the Lord's Prayer, Thy will be done in earth as it is done in heaven.'

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Ib. beached, formed by a beach, or which serves as a beach. Compare Timon of Athens, v. I. 219:

Upon the beached verge of the salt flood.'

For similar instances of adjectives formed from substantives, seeguiled,' Merchant of Venice, iii. 2. 97; 'disdain'd,' 1 Henry IV, i. 3. 183; 'simpleanswer'd,' that is, simple in your answer, furnished with a simple answer, which is the reading of the folios in King Lear, iii. 7. 43: 'the caged cloister,' the cloister which serves as a cage, A Lover's Complaint, 249: ‘ravin'd,' for ravenous, Macbeth, iv. 1. 24: poysened' for poisonous, Lyly, Euphues (ed. Arber), p. 196: Nylus breedeth the precious stone and the poysened serpent.'

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Ib. margent, margin. So in A Lover's Complaint, 39:

'Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set.'

And Romeo and Juliet, i. 3. 86:

'And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.'

For the form of the word, compare ‘aliant' for 'alien,' 'tyrant' from Túpavvos, and 'vild' which is a corrupt spelling of 'vile.' Milton has the same spelling in Comus, 232:

By slow Mæander's margent green.'

Shakespeare never uses 'margin'; but in The Tempest, iv. 1. 69, he has

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And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard.'

86. dance our ringlets. See above, 1. 9.

87. brawls, quarrels. Originally a brawl was a French dance, as in Love's Labour's Lost, iii. 1. 9: Will you win your love with a French brawl?' And it was a dance of a violent and boisterous character, as appears by the following extract from Cotgrave: Bransle: m. A totter, swing, or swidge; a shake, shog, or shocke; a stirring, an vncertain and inconstant motion; . . . also, a brawle, or daunce, wherein many (men, and women) holding by the hands sometimes in a ring, and other whiles at length, moue altogether.' It may be however that there is no etymological connexion between these two words which are the same in form; and 'brawl' in the sense of 'quarrel' may be an imitative word and akin to 'brabble.'

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88. piping to us in vain, because we could not dance to them. See Matthew xi. 17: 'We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced.' 89, 90. Compare King Lear, ii. 4. 168, 169:

Infect her beauty,

You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun.'

See note on

91. Have. So Rowe corrected the 'Hath' of the quartos and folios, which is attracted into the singular by the preceding 'land.' Hamlet, i. 2. 38.

Ib. pelting, paltry, insignificant. The folios have 'petty.'

The two

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