[P. 6, l. 18], Trenchmore.]—See [note, p. 25].
[P. 6, l. 22], companions.]—scurvy fellows—a play on the word.
[P. 7, l. 7], Sir Thomas Mildmay, standing at his Parke pale.]—Sir Thomas Mildmay, Knt., of Moulsham-hall. He married the Lady Frances, only daughter, by his second wife, of Henry Ratcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter and Earl of Sussex; from which marriage his descendants derived their title and claim to the Barony of Fitzwalter. He died in 1608.—Morant’s Hist. of Essex, ii. 2; Dugdale’s Baron. ii. 288.
[P. 7, l. 9], points.]—tagged laces.
[P. 7, l. 9], being my ordinary marchandize, that I put out to venter for performance of my merry voyage.]—This “marchandize” was instead of a deposit in money: but we learn from a passage towards the end of the tract (p. 19), that our Morrice-dancer had also “put out some money to have threefold gain at his return,”—it being then a common custom for those who undertook expeditions to put out sums of money on condition of receiving them back trebled, quadrupled, or quintupled, at the completion of the voyages or journies. Kemp (ibid.) complains that the greater number of those with whom he had deposited money would not “willingly be found:” compare A Kicksey Winsey, or, A Lerry Come-twang; Wherein John Taylor hath Satyrically suted seuen hundred and fifty of his bad debtors, that will not pay him for his returne of his iourney from Scotland. Taylor the Water-poet’s Workes, 1630, p. 36.
[P. 7, l. 26], bels.]—“The number of bells round each leg of the morris-dancers amounted from twenty to forty. They had various appellations, as the fore-bell, the second bell, the treble, the tenor, the base, and the double-bell. Sometimes they used trebles only; but these refinements were of later times. The bells were occasionally jingled by the hands, or placed on the arms or wrists of the parties.”—Douce’s Illust. of Shakespeare, ii. 475. The same writer mentions that in the time of Henry the Eighth the Morris-dancers had “garters to which bells were attached,” 473.
[P. 7, l. 26], the olde fashion, with napking on her armes.]—“The handkerchiefs, or napkins, as they are sometimes called, were held in the hand, or tied to the shoulders.” Douce, ubi supra, 475.
[P. 8, l. 8], The hobby-horse quite forgotten.]—When the present tract was written, the Puritans, by their preachings and invectives, had succeeded in banishing this prominent personage from the Morris-dance, as an impious and pagan superstition. The expression in our text seems to have been almost proverbial; besides the well-known line cited in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act iii. sc. 2, (and in his Love’s Labours Lost, Act iii. sc. 1.)
“For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot,”
parallel passages are to be found in various other early dramas. As the admirable scene in Sir Walter Scott’s Abbot, I. ch. xiv. (Wav. Novels, xx.) must be familiar to every reader, a description of the hobby-horse is unnecessary.