Miss Baker, in her “Northamptonshire Glossary” (1854, vol. i. p. 378). says, “The movement of the bobbins is timed by the modulation of the tune, which excites them to regularity and cheerfulness; and it is a pleasing sight to see them, in warm, sunny weather, seated outside their cottage doors, or seeking the shade of a neighboring tree; where, in cheerful groups, they unite in singing their rude and simple rhymes. The following is a specimen of one of these ditties, most descriptive of the occupation:
“‘Nineteen long lines, bring over my down,
The faster I work it, I’ll shorten my score,
But if I do play, it’ll stick to a stay,
So heigh ho! little fingers, and twank it away.’”
Letters. The word Emmanuel was formerly prefixed, probably from feelings of piety, to letters and public deeds. So in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 2) there is the following allusion to it:
“Cade. What is thy name?
Clerk. Emmanuel.
Dick. They use to write it on the top of letters.”
Staunton says: “We can refer to one MS. alone, in the British Museum (Ad. MSS. 19, 400), which contains no less than fourteen private epistles headed ‘Emanewell,’ or ‘Jesus Immanuel.’”
Another superscription of a letter in years gone by was “to the bosom” of a lady. Thus Hamlet (ii. 2) says in his letter to Ophelia:
“In her excellent white bosom, these.”
And in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (iii. 1), Proteus says: