Queer questions and ready replies

by Samuel Grant Oliphant

205. What noted poet was so thin that he was said to wear lead in his shoes to keep himself from being blown away by the wind?

Philetas, a distinguished poet and critic of the Alexandrian school, who lived in the fourth and third centuries B. C., was so sickly and so thin, that the comic poets stated that he used to wear lead in his shoes to keep himself from being blown away. The story runs that he died from the excessive assiduity with which he sought the answer to the sophistical problem, called “The Liar,” viz.: If a man says he is telling a lie, does he speak truly or falsely?

206. Was Adam created with a beard?

Scripture does not tell us, but the tradition that he was created with one (which may be described as bushy rather than flowing) is recorded on ancient monuments, and especially on an antique sarcophagus, which is one of the ornaments of the Vatican. The Jews, with the Orientals generally, seem to have accepted the tradition for a law. Among them the beard was a cherished and sacred thing. The Scriptures abound with examples of how the beard and its treatment interpreted the feelings, the joy, the pride, the sorrow, or the despondency of the wearer.

207. Who was the wealthiest President?

Washington, who left an estate valued at $800,000. The next in order of wealth was Van Buren, whose property was valued at $400,000.

208. Who were the original “Jersey Blues”?

They were a battalion of five hundred soldiers from New Jersey, during King George’s War (1745–1748), and were so called from the color of their uniform,—blue, faced with red, gray stockings, and buckskin breeches. They were described at the time as “the likeliest well-set men who ever entered upon a campaign.”

209. Who was “Tam O’Shanter”?

He was the hero of Burns’s poem of the same name, a farmer, who, riding home very late and very drunk, from Ayr, in a stormy night, had to pass by the kirk of Alloway, a place reputed to be a favorite haunt of the devil and his friends and emissaries. On approaching the kirk, he perceived a light gleaming through the windows; but having got courageously drunk, he ventured on till he could look into the edifice, when he saw a dance of witches merrily footing it round their master, who was playing on the bagpipe to them. The dance grew so furious that they all stripped themselves of their upper garments, and kept at it in their shifts. One “winsome wench,” happening unluckily to have a shift which was considerably too short to answer all the purposes of that useful article of dress, Tam was so tickled that he involuntarily roared out, “Weel done, Cutty-sark!” (Well done, Short-smock); whereupon, in an instant, all was dark, and Tam, recollecting himself, turned and spurred his horse to the top of her speed, chased by the whole fiendish crew. It is a current belief, that witches, or any evil spirits, have no power to follow a poor wight any farther than the middle of the next running stream. Fortunately for Tam, the river Doon was near; for, notwithstanding the speed of his horse, by the time he gained the middle of the arch of the bridge, and consequently the middle of the stream, the pursuing vengeful hags were so close at his heels, that one of them, “Cutty-sark,” actually sprang to seize him; but it was too late,—nothing was on her side of the stream but the horse’s tail, which immediately gave way at her infernal gripe, as if blasted by a stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond her reach.