"Qui pretium poseit quod non meruisse videtur,
Atque super fragilem ponit sua brachia cannam
Illius in dorso Cancrorum semita stabit;
Devolet inque suum rictum satis assa Columba."
It appears, then, to me, that the design of the medallist was to hold up to the exceration of the English people the machinations of Father Petre, who (together with Sunderland) guided the councils of the king at the juncture. The Jesuits, like the crustaceous fish above-mentioned, were alleged to accomplish their dark and crooked designs by creeping and sedulously working their way straight forward through the mud, until some real danger presented itself, and then reculing with equal adroitness.
At this time, too, the bigoted and superstitious adherents of James had been offering their vows at every shrine, and even making pilgrimages, to induce Heaven to grant a male heir to the throne, and thus exclude the Protestant daughters of the king. The premature and unexpected event, therefore, of the birth of a son, was pronounced by James's friends to have been predestined by the special grace of the Most High. All this, I apprehend, was intended to be typified by the figure of the Jesuit Petre riding upon a Lobster.
JOS. BROOKS YATES
Straw Necklaces—Method of keeping Notes, &c.
Sir,—As I see this matter is not yet explained, I venture a suggestion. Wheat straw was an emblem of peace among heathen nations; in it the first-fruits brought by Abaris the Hyperborean to Delos were wrapped; and when commerce, or rather trade by barter, had rendered transmission from hand to hand practicable, wheat straw was still used. With the worship of Diana the offering of wheat straw passed over to Thrace, where it was a recognition of that goddess as the patron of chastity. In Judea the wheat harvest was later than that of barley, the Jews therefore offered a sheaf of the latter grain as first-fruits; it is, however, extraordinary that Moses orders barley-meal as the offering for jealousy (Numbers, v 15.), though the price of barley was but half that of wheat. It seems as if there were the same connection between this peace-offering and that of the first-fruits with the Jews, that we see between the offering to Diana and the first-fruits of the Hyperboreans; both may have been derived from Egypt, in the learning of which, we are told, Moses was skilled. The straw necklace or chaplet of Erasmus' pilgrim might be worn to secure him from molestation in travelling, or it may refer to the patroness of Walsingham, the Virgin Mary.
I dare say many persons have thought with me, that a poet's promise of a "belt of straw" to his love, was not a very complimentary one; one possible meaning never struck me till this moment: it may be a compliment unconsciously drawn from a heathen source, and perpetuated, like so many of our old-world customs, among a class of people the least likely to understand the meaning.