We have already, in the Second Part of the present paper, seen Henryson, in the sixteenth century, describing his leper heroine as arrayed
With cop and clapper like ane Lazarous.
And from the advice proffered by the other lepers to the weeping Cresseid after she is actually removed to the lazar-house, the importance and frequent use of the clapper is sufficiently shown—
I counsall thee mak vertew of ane neid,
To leir to clap thy clapper to and fro,
And leir efter the law of lipper leid.[358]
Into some towns the lepers seem to have been allowed the liberty of entry, provided they used their clappers, to advertise the passing inhabitants of their presence, and thus allowed them to shun the supposed danger of their contact. The magistrates of Glasgow made the carrying of clappers one of the conditions on which they admitted the occasional entrance of the inmates of the Brigend hospital into their city, one of their edicts for October 1610 running thus:—“It is statut and ordanit that the Lipper of the hospital sall gang (walk) only on the calsie (street) syde near the gutter, and sall haif clapperis and ane claith upoun their mouth and face, and sall stand afar of quhill they resaif almous, or answer under the payne of banischeing them from the toun and hospital.”
One of the statutes of the Greenside hospital, Edinburgh, was to the effect—
“That nane of the lepperis cry or ask for alms, utherways then be thair clapper; and that every ane of thame, his day about, sitt at the dore of the said hospitall to that effect, the rest allwayes remaining within the samyn, and that thay distribute equallie amongs thame quhatsoever money they purches be thair said begging, and gif the just declaration thairof to the visitour appoynted everie Setterday, under sic payne as the counsill shall injoyne unto thame.”
Lepers regarded as Dead Persons by the Civil Law.