"Now let us touch thumbs, and be friends ere we part;
Here, John, is my thumb, and here, Mat, is my heart."
Various old songs record this mystic sign of truth and fealty; one in Orpheus Caledonius, 1725, says,
"Dearest maid! nay, do not fly me,
Let your pride no more deny me;
Never doubt your faithful Willie,
There's my thumb, I'll ne'er beguile ye."
Another, in Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, 1723, has it,
"Though kith and kin, and a' revile ye,
There's my thumb, I'll ne'er beguile ye."
To bite the thumb at any one was anciently an insult in Scotland and England, as it is still in France. Scott mentions it in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, when describing the quarrel between the Laird of Hunthill and Conrad of Wolfenstein, canto vi.,
"Stern Rutherford right little said,
But bit his glove, and shook his head," &c.
And Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, has,
"I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace if they bear it!"
"Dags and pistols! to bite his thumb at me!"