282 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2«"> S. VII. April 2. '69. 



"THE RIDDLE. 



(2°^ S. vii. 200.) 



" The Riddle. 



" S-ball's have a Game at Put, to pass away the time? 

 X-pect no foul-play ; though I do play the Knave 

 1-have a King at hand, j^ea, that I have : 

 C-Cards be true, then the Game is mine. 

 R-ejoj'ce my heart, to see thee then repine. 

 A-that's lost, that's Cuckold's luck. 

 T-rej' comes like Quarter, to pull down the Buck." 



This " riddle," or acrostic, seems to have been 

 written by a royalist, in the thrilling interval be- 

 tween the resignation of Richard Cromwell and 

 the restoration of Charles II. ; and to express in 

 enigmatical terms the designs and hopes of the 

 King's adherents, under colour of describing a 

 game of " put." 



"Put," it appears, is usually played by two 

 persons with six cards, each hand containing 

 three. The initial letters of the seven verses are 

 an anagram, and indicate the number of the cards 

 employed. S, X, I, C, R, A, T, make SIX CART, 

 or six cartes (six cards). Six cards, also, are ex- 

 pressly mentioned in the riddle itself; namely, 

 "the Knave" (line 2.), "a King" (3.), "Heart" 

 (5.), " Trey," " Quarter," or quatre, and " the 

 Buck" (7.): — "the Buck," probably one of the 

 picture-cards, or the ace, inferior to "Trey," which 

 is the best card in the game of put ; therefore 

 " Trey " comes " to pull doivn the Buck." 



" Shall's have a game of put, to pass aivay the 

 time?" i.e. during the weary and anxious period 

 of waiting for the King's arrival. The political al- 

 lusions are obvious throughout,'and could hardly 

 fail to be understood by persons then living. 

 " Though I do play the Knave, I have a King at 

 Aawc?;"-r-Though I dissemble, and conceal my 

 designs (as did Monk, &c.), the King is not far 

 off. He was on the opposite shore of the Channel, 

 preparing to embark for England. " Cards, be ye 

 true," &c. : — Some of the professed royalists had 

 been false. "The Game is mine. Rejoice, my 

 heart, to see thee then repine :" — Great will be our 

 joy to see the vexation of the opposite party when 

 we have won. "Ah, that's lost!" — A temporary 

 check ; the failure about that time of an ill-con- 

 certed effort to restore the royal cause ; Sir G. 

 Booth defeated by Lambert, Aug. 19, 1659, in 

 consequence of which the King deferred his em- 

 barkation. Yet the King's friends little heeded 

 this transient disaster, as is evident from the un- 

 concerned and jeering tenour of line 6. : " Ah ! 

 That's lost! That's Cuckold's luck;" q.d. your 

 luck. 



"Trey" being the highest card in put, and 

 quatre the lowest, some difficulty may be found 

 in the expression, " Trey comes like Quarter, to 

 pull down," &c., which looks like assimilating the 

 greater to the less. But ^^ like Quarter" is a 

 French phrase Anglicised, "Trey comes comme 



quatre" energetically, vehemently; "faire du bruit 

 comme quatre." 



"The Buck" is an old English synonym for 

 the coarse appellation in the preceding verse, in- 

 tended, no doubt, for a Puritan, or for the Puri- 

 tan party. " Pulling down the Buck " is also an 

 allusion to hunting. ^* 



HANGING THE BROOM AT THE HEAD OF THE 

 MAST. 



(1" S. iv. 76.) 



In reading this article of Mr. James Cornish, 

 I felt, as did the cook of the Prince de Conde, 

 the great Vatel, when he tasted his pudding " b, 

 la Chipolata," of which he knew the ingredients, 

 but not the quantities. " C'est bien (ja, mais ce 

 n'est pas 9a," quoth he ; " la liaison n'y est pas." 

 I felt, and could not tell why, that Mr. Cornish 

 had not quite done justice to Tromp (not Van 

 Tromp). Wagenaur, in his Nederlandsche His- 

 toric ; Bilderdijk, in his Oeschiedenis des Vader- 

 lands; Kok, Woordenboch, not even allude to 

 the broom. Mr. J. C. de Jonge only. Over het 

 Nederlandsche Zeewezen, says, Eerste deel (p. 40.) : 



" De inwoners der steden Lubeck, Hamburg .... 

 gemeenlijk onder den naam van Oosterlingen in de 



geschiedenis bekend sluiten, omtrent den jaro 



1438 een verbond, aan hetwelk Denemarken, Holsteiu, 

 Pommeren en Pruissen, de Spanjaarden en de Vene- 

 tianen deel nemen. Zij tastcn gezamenlijk op het onver- 



hoeds de Nederl. schepen aan en brengen den 



Nederl. handel zoodanige gevoelige verliezen toe, dat 



Dan, nu ook ontvlamt de toorn en ontwaakt de 



moed van de ingezetenen worden alle schepen, 



welke voor den oorlog geschikt geacht worden, uitgerust 

 en gewapend. Met deze zoeken de Nederlanders hxmne 

 vijanden op ; zij vallen moedig derselver bodems aan, 

 verovercn en vernielen een groot aantal van dezelve, en 

 vervolgen en verdrijven de Oosterlingen met zulk eenen 

 ijver, dat zij weldra geheel meester van de zee zijn, en 

 tot teeken daarvan een besem uit den mast steken." 



Farther the same author, " tweede deel, eerste 

 stuk " (p. 77.), says : — 



" Bijaldien men de verhalen van geachte Engelsche 

 schrijvers moet gelooven, zou het, na desen Zeeslag (Dec. 

 1652), geweest zijn, dat Tromp, toen Blake met zijne vioot 

 in den Teems gevlugt was, volgens aloude Holiandsche 

 gewoonte, den besem uit den mast zoude gestoken 

 hebben." 



Hume (History of England) says, at the end 

 of 1652 : — 



" In this action the Dutch had the advantage 



and night came opportunely to save the English fleet. 

 After this victory, Tromp, in a bravado, fixed a broom to 

 his mainmast." 



The two quotations of De Jonge tend to show 

 that, after a signalised victory, the hoisting of a 

 broom at the mast was not something new, but 

 already in practice since two centuries ; and 

 Hume also says that it was done after the vic- 

 tory. 



