Lie tumbling in my bare-foot way, and mount
Their pricks at my footfall.”
Tempest, Act ii. Sc. 2.
[24.] “Rere-mouse” from the old English “hrere-mus,” literally a raw mouse. The adjective “rere” is still used in Wiltshire for “raw.” The bat is also known as the “rennie-mouse” or “reiny-mouse,” although Miss Gurney, in her “Glossary of Norfolk Words,” gives “ranny” for the shrew-mouse. The old name of “flittermouse,” “fluttermouse,” or “fliddermouse,” from the high German, “fledermaus,” does not appear in Shakespeare’s works.
[25.] “The Natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakspeare’s Plays,” by Robert Patterson, 12mo. Lond. 1841.
[26.] Mudie, “Feathered Tribes of the British Islands,” i. p. 82.
[27.] “De Bello Judico,” iii. 5.
[28.] Xenophon, “Cyropædia,” vii.
[29.] “Annals and Magazine of Natural History,” June, 1864.
[30.] Colquhoun, “The Moor and the Loch,” p. 330. And this is not an isolated instance. See Newton, “Ootheca Wolleyana,” Part I. p. 11.