I was about to address some photographic Queries to the correspondents of "N. & Q." when a note caught my attention relating to Edmund Spenser (in the Number dated March 26.). The Mr. F. F. Spenser mentioned therein was related to me, being my late father's half-brother. I regret to say that he died very suddenly at Manchester, Nov. 2, 1852. During his lifetime, he took much pains to clear up the doubts about the locality of the poet's retirement, and his relatives in the North; and has made out a very clear case, I imagine. On a visit to Yorkshire in 1851, I spent a few days with him, and took occasion to urge the necessity of arranging the mass of information he had accumulated on the subject; which I have no doubt he would have done, had not his sudden death occurred to prevent it. These facts may be of some interest to biographers of the poet, and with this object I have ventured to trouble you with this communication.
J. B. Spencer.
11. Montpellier Road, Blackheath.
[ THROWING OLD SHOES FOR LUCK.]
(Vol. ii., p. 196.; Vol. v., p. 413.; Vol. vii., pp. 193. 288.)
I do not know whether you will permit me to occupy a small portion of your valuable space in an attempt to suggest an origin of the custom of throwing an old shoe after a newly married bride.
Your correspondents assume that the old shoe was thrown after the bride for luck, and for luck only. I doubt whether it was so in its origin.
Among barbarous nations, all transfers of property, all assertions and relinquishments of rights of dominion, were marked by some external ceremony or rite; by which, in the absence of written documents, the memory of the vulgar might be impressed. When, among Scandinavian nations, land was bought or sold, a turf was delivered by the trader to the purchaser: and among the Jews, and probably among other oriental nations, a shoe answered the same purpose.
In Psalm lx., beginning with "O God, thou hast cast me off," there occurs the phrase, "Moab is my washpot, over Edom have I cast out my shoe." Immediately after it occurs the exclamation, "O God! who has cast us off!" A similar passage occurs in Psalm cix.