5. 1. 48 A kind of Irish penance! ‘There is the same allusion to the rug gowns of the wild Irish, in the Night Walker of Fletcher:
We have divided the sexton’s household stuff Among us; one has the rug, and he’s turn’d Irish.’—G.
Cf. also Holinshed, Chron. (quoted CD.):‘As they distill the best aqua-vitæ, so they spin the choicest rug in Ireland.’ Fynes Moryson (Itinerary, fol. 1617, p. 160) says that the Irish merchants were forbidden to export their wool, in order that the peasants might ‘be nourished by working it into cloth, namely, Rugs ... & mantles generally worn by men and women, and exported in great quantity.’
Jonson mentions rug as an article of apparel several times. In Alch., Wks. 4. 14, it is spoken of as the dress of a poor man and ibid. 4. 83 as that of an astrologer. In Ev. Man out (Wks. 2. 110) a similar reference is made, and here Gifford explains that rug was ‘the usual dress of mathematicians, astrologers, &c., when engaged in their sublime speculations.’ Marston also speaks of rug gowns as the symbol of a strict life (What You Will, Wks. 2. 395):
Lamp-oil, watch-candles, rug-gowns, and small juice, Thin commons, four o’clock rising,—I renounce you all.
5. 2. 1 ff. put me To yoaking foxes, etc. Several at least of the following employments are derived from proverbial expressions familiar at the time. Jonson speaks of ‘milking he-goats’ in Timber, ed. Schelling, p. 34, which the editor explains as ‘a proverbial expression for a fruitless task.’ The occupation of lines 5-6 is adapted from a popular proverb given by Cotgrave: ‘J’aymeroy autant tirer vn pet d’un Asne mort, que. I would as soone vndertake to get a fart of a dead man, as &c.’ Under Asne he explains the same proverb as meaning ‘to worke impossibilities.’ This explains the passage in Staple of News 3. 1., Wks. 5. 226. The proverb is quoted again in Eastward Ho, Marston, Wks. 3. 90, and in Wm. Lilly’s Observations,’ Hist., pp. 269-70. ‘Making ropes of sand’ was Iniquity’s occupation in 1. 1. 119. This familiar proverb first appears in Aristides 2. 309: ἑκ ψάμμου σχοινίον πλέκειν. In the New Inn, Wks. 5. 394, Lovel says: ‘I will go catch the wind first in a sieve.’ Whalley says that the occupation of ‘keeping fleas within a circle’ is taken from Socrates’ employment in the Clouds of Aristophanes (ll. 144-5). Gifford, however, ridicules the notion. Jonson refers to the passage in the Clouds in Timber (ed. Schelling, 82. 33), where he thinks it would have made the Greeks merry to see Socrates ‘measure how many foot a flea could skip geometrically.’ But here again we seem to have a proverbial expression. It occurs in the morality-play of Nature, 642. II (quoted by Cushman, p. 116):
I had leiver keep as many flese, Or wyld hares in an opyn lese, As undertake that.
5. 2. 32. Scan:
And three/ pence. ͝/ Give me/ an an/swer. Sir.
Thos. Keightley, N. & Q. 4. 2. 603, suggests: