"Augustus, having b' oversight
Put on his left shoe 'fore his right,
Had like to have been slain that day
By soldiers mutin'ing for pay."
An old writer speaking of Jewish customs tells us that "some of them observe, in dressing themselves in the morning, to put on the right stocking and right shoe first without tying it. Then afterwards to put on the left shoe, and so return to the right; that so they may begin and end with the right one, which they account to be the most fortunate." A Suffolk doggrel respecting the "wear of shoes" teaches us the following:—
"Tip at the toe: live to see woe;
Wear at the side: live to be a bride;
Wear at the ball: live to spend all;
Wear at the heel: live to save a deal."
Among some of the many charms in which the shoe has been found efficacious, may be mentioned one practised in the North of England, where the peasantry, to cure cramp, are in the habit of laying their shoes across to avert it. Mrs. Latham, in her "West Sussex Superstitions," published in the "Folk-lore Record," tells us of an old woman who was at a complete loss to understand why her "rheumatics was so uncommon bad, for she had put her shoes in the form of a cross every night by the side of her head, ever since she felt the first twinge." In the same county, a cure for ague consists in wearing a leaf of tansy in the shoe.
It is curious that the shoe should have entered into the superstitions associated with death. According to an Aryan tradition, the greater part of the way from the land of the living to that of death lay through morasses, and vast moors overgrown with furze and thorns. That the dead might not pass over them barefoot, a pair of shoes was laid with them in the grave. Hence a funeral is still called in the Henneberg district "dead-shoe," and in Scandinavia the shoe itself is known as "hel-shoe." There are countless other items of folk-lore connected with the shoe: thus in days gone by the phrase, "Over shoes, over boots" was equivalent to the popular phrase, "In for a penny, in for a pound," an allusion to which we find in Taylor's "Workes" (1630):—
"Where true courage roots,
The proverb says, once over shoes, o'er boots."
Again, "to stand in another man's shoe" is a popular expression for occupying the place or laying claim to the honours of another. "Looking for dead men's shoes" is still an every-day phrase denoting those who are continually expecting some advantage which will accrue to them on the death of another. The shoe-horn, too, from its convenient use in drawing on a tight shoe, was formerly applied in a jocular metaphor to subservient and tractable assistants. Thus, for instance, Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida (Act v., sc. 1) makes Thersites in his railing mood give this name to Menelaus, whom he calls "a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's (Agamemnon's) leg." It was also employed as a contemptuous phrase for danglers after young women.
A further article of dress that has had much honour conferred upon it is the glove, holding as it does a conspicuous place in many of our old customs and ceremonies. Thus in days gone by it was given, by way of delivery or investiture, in sales or conveyances of lands and goods. It was also employed as the token of a challenge to fight, a symbolical staking, perhaps of the prowess of the hand to which the glove belonged. Hence to hang up a glove in church was a public challenge, very much as a notice affixed to a church-door is a public notice. Apropos of this custom, a story is given in the life of the Rev. Bernard Gilpin, of the diocese of Durham, who died in 1583. It appears that he observed a glove hanging high up in his church, and ascertaining that it was designed as a challenge to any one who should dare to displace it, he desired his sexton to do so. "Not I, sir, I dare do no such thing," he replied. Whereupon the parson called for a long staff, and taking it down himself, put it in his pocket. Preaching afterwards on the subject, he denounced this unseemly practice, saying, "Behold, I have taken it down myself," and producing the glove, he exhibited it to the whole congregation as a spectacle of honour. This custom, we are told, does not appear to have been much older in this country than the thirteenth century, for Matthew Paris, in writing of the year 1245, speaks of it expressly as French. Noblemen wore their ladies' gloves in front of their hats, a practice mentioned by Drayton as having been in vogue at the battle of Agincourt:—