July 30. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



95 



claimant. Tired of this unprofitable farming, the 

 Bogie agrees to hazard his claims on a mowing- 

 match, thinking that his supernatural strength 

 would give him an easy victoi'j ; but before the 

 day of meeting, the cunning earth-tiller procures 

 a number of iron bars which he stows among the 

 grass to be mown by his opponent ; and when the 

 trial commences, the unsuspecting goblin finds his 

 progress retarded by his scythe coming into con- 

 tact with these obstacles, which he takes to be 

 some very hard — very hard — species of dock. 

 " Mortal hard docks, these," said he ; " Nation 

 hard docks ! " His blunted scythe soon brings 

 him to a stand still, and as, in such cases, it is not 

 allowed for one to sharpen without the other, he 

 turns to his antagonist, now far ahead, and in- 

 quires, in a tone of despair, "When d'ye wiffle- 

 waffle (whet), mate?" " Wafile ! " said the 

 farmer, with a well-feigned stare of amazement, 

 •" O, about noon mebby." " Then," said the de- 

 spairing spirit, " That thief of a Christian has done 

 me ; " and so saying, he disappeared and was never 

 heard of more. 



Under Nurse-tales, I include the extremely 

 puerile stories of the nursery, often (as in the 

 German ones) interlaced with rhymes. The fol- 

 lowing, from the banks of the Avon, sounds like 

 an echo from a German story-book. 



LiUle Elly. 



In the old time, a certain good king laid all the 

 ghosts, and hanged all the witches and wizards 

 save one, who fell into a bad way, and kept 

 a school in a small village. One day Little Elly 

 looked through a chink-hole, and saw him eat- 

 ing man's flesh and drinking man's blood ; but 

 Little Elly kept it all to herself, and went to school 

 as before. And when school was over the Ogee 

 fixed his eyes upon her, and said — 



" All go home but Elly, 

 And Elly come to me." 

 And when they were gone he said, " What did you 

 see me eat, Elly ? " 



" O something did I see. 

 But nothing will I tell, 

 Unto my dying day." 



_ And so he pulled off her shoes, and whipped her 

 till she bled (this repeated three days) ; and the 

 third day he took her up, and put her into a rose- 

 bush, where the rain rained, and the snow snowed, 

 and the hail hailed, and the wind blew upon her 

 all night. Quickly her tiny spirit crept out of 

 her tiny body and hovered round the bed of her 

 parents, where it sung in a mournful voice for 

 evermore — 



" Dark, weary, and cold am I, 

 Little knoweth Gammie where am I." 

 Of the Humorous stories I have already given 

 a specimen in Vol. v., p. 363. 



Any notes of legends, or suggestions of any 

 kind, forwarded to my address as below, will be 

 thankfully received and acknowledged. 



Vincent T. Steenbebg. 



15. Store Street, Bedford Square. 



SHAKSFEABE COBEESPONDENCE. 



The old Corrector on '•'■The Winter's Tale'' — 

 I am glad to find that you have another corre- 

 spondent, and a very able one too, under the sig- 

 nature of A. E. B., who takes the same view of 

 " Aristotle's checks " as I have done ; though I 

 think he might have paid me the compliment of 

 just noticing my prior remonstrance on this sub- 

 ject. It is to be lamented, that Mr. Collier 

 shoiild have hurried out his new edition of Shak- 

 speare, adopting all the sweeping emendations of 

 his newly-found commentator, without paying the 

 slightest heed to any of the suggestions which have 

 been offered to him in a friendly spirit, or afford- 

 ing time for the farther objections which are con- 

 tinually pouring in. At the risk of probably 

 wearying some of your readers, I cannot forbear 

 submitting to you a few more remarks ; but I shall 

 confine them on this occasion to one play, The 

 Winter's Tale : which contains, perhaps, as many 

 poetical beauties as any single work of our great 

 dramatic bard. With reference to the passage 

 quoted in p. 437., I can hardly believe that Shak- 

 speare ever wrote such a poor unmeaning line as ■ — 

 ** . . they are false as dead blacks.'* 



nor can I perceive any possible objection to the 

 original words "o'er dyed blacks." They may 

 either mean false mourners, putting an over dark 

 semblance of grief ; or they may allude figuratively 

 to the material of mourning, the colours of which 

 if over-dyed will not stand. In either of these 

 senses, the passage is poetical ; but there is nothing 

 like poetry in " our dead blacks." 



In p. 450. the alteration of the word " and" to 

 "heaven" may be right, though it is difficult to 

 conceive how the one can have been mistaken for 

 the other. At all events, the sense is improved 

 by the change ; but I do not see that anything is 

 gained by the substitution in the next line of 

 "dream" for "theme." Whatever the king said 

 in his ravings about Hermione, might as aptly be 

 called part of his " theme " as part of his " dream." 

 The subject of his dream was in fact his theme! 



Neither can I discover any good reason for 

 changing, in p. 452., 



" . , and one may drink, depart. 

 And yet partake no venom," 



into " drink a part." The context clearly shows 

 the author's meaning to have been, that if any one 

 departed at once after tasting of the beverage, he 

 would have no knowledge of what he had drunk ; 



