FOLK LORE.
"Nettle in Dock out" (Vol. iii., p. 133.).—If your correspondent will refer to The Literary Gazette, March 24, 1849, No. 1679., he will find that I gave precisely the same explanation of that obscure passage of Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide, lib. iv., in a paper which I contributed to the British Archæological Association.
Fras. Crossley.
[We will add two further illustrations of this passage of Chaucer, and the popular rhyme on which it is founded. The first is from Mr. Akerman's Glossary of Provincial Words and Phrases in Use in Wiltshire, where we read—
"When a child is stung, he plucks a dock-leaf, and laying it on the part affected, sings—
'Out 'ettle
In dock
Dock shall ha a new smock;
'Ettle zhant
Ha' narrun.'"
Then follows a reference by Mr. Akerman to the passage in Troilus and Creseide.—Our second illustration is from Chaucer himself, who, in his Testament of Love (p. 482 ed. Urry), has the following passage:
"Ye wete well Ladie eke (quoth I), that I have not plaid raket, Nettle in, Docke out, and with the weathercocke waved."
Mr. Akerman's work was, we believe, published in
1846; and, at all events, attention was called to these passages in the Athenæum of the l2th September in that year, No. 985.]