[P. 33]. “Anthropophagi and Canibals.” Associated synonymes probably suggested to both by the same heading in p. 1100 of Seb. Münster’s Cosmography (Basil, 1550).
[P. 42]. “Never faile to danse.” An authority for the dancing of Macbeth’s witches, and a probable authority for the dancing of the latter with broomsticks headed with brooms in their hands.
[P. 54]. The “Monarcho” of L. L. Lost appears from this to have been a madman.
[P. 64]. “Rime either man or beast to death.” An extension of the Shakespearean and general belief that they rhymed (Irish) rats to death. As You Like It, iii, 2.
[P. 77]. “No power to occupy.” Proof that this last word was used in the sense of to use or be busied with, from which general use it came to be employed as common slang for a disreputable and vile using.
[P. 170]. “Chattering of pies and haggisters.” A haggister is the Kentish term for a pie, or magpie. The passage explains why Duncan (i, 5) is not welcomed by these, but by the ill-omened raven that is hoarse with croaking his approach. W. Perkins on Witchcraft, works, ed. 1613, says: “When a raven stands on a high place and looks a particular way and cries, a corse comes thence soon.”
[P. 187]. “A thousand for one that fell out contrary.” We would more correctly write—“A thousand that fell out contrary for one that fell out rightly or correctly.” But this and others are examples of what we would call a more than loose way of expressing oneself, though then it was allowable, for Scot was an educated and intelligent man, who wrote well. “Each putter out of five for one”, Tempest, iii, 2, is an almost exactly similar instance. The putting out of five for one is considered as one action, and is—pace Dyce—the receiving, as Malone says, at the rate of five for one, the putter out being he who puts out in the hope of receiving five for one.
[P. 212]. “The blind man ... in killing the crow.” Green’s Defence of Cony-Catching, p. 70, ed. Grosart, gives this proverbial saying—“as blinde men shoote the crowe”. Hamlet, 4to., 1603, has the variant—“as the blinde man catcheth the hare”.
“A green silk curtain.” These words, also in Middleton’s Witch, i, 2, illustrate the custom which led Sir Toby (Tw. N., i, 4) to say, “Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before ’em? Are they like to take dust like Mistress Moll’s picture?” And these last words, by the way, prove that this same Moll had, for her own purposes, the portrait exposed in some painter’s shop, or painters’ shops, or rather free fronts, without a curtain.
[P. 269]. “If a soule wander ... by night.” Proof that the wandering of Hamlet’s father’s ghost was strictly in accordance with traditional folk-lore. So, p. 462, we have, “How common an opinion ... reveale their estate”; and p. 535, “They affirme ... soules of saints”.