1 8 SHAKESPEARE'S [ASS. 



that be of other nations, what nation soever it be. Also 

 Aristotle saith that in a certain mountain scorpions grieve 

 no strangers ; but they sting and slay men of the country. 



Bartholomew (Bertkelet}, bk. xviii. 9. 



ASP'S sting is not curable, but only with the water of a 

 stone washed, which they take out of the sepulchre of an 

 ancient king. Batman's addition to Bartholomew, loc. cit. 



IN Egypt so great is the reverence they bear to Asps, that 

 if any in the house have need to rise in the night-time out 

 of their beds, 'they first of all give out a sign by knacking 

 of the fingers, lest they should harm the Asp, and so provoke 

 it against them ; at the hearing whereof, all the Asps get 

 them to their holes and lodgings, till the person stirring be 

 laid again in his bed. A domestical Asp had young ones ; 

 in her absence one of her young ones killed a child in the 

 house ; when the old one came again according to her 

 custom to seek her meat, the killed child was laid forth, and 

 so she understood the harm ; then went she and killed that 

 young one, and never more appeared in that house. Also 

 there was an Asp that fell in love with a little boy that 

 kept geese, whose love to the said boy was so fervent, 

 that the male of the said Asp grew jealous thereof. Where- 

 upon one day as he lay asleep, [he] set upon him to kill 

 him, but the other seeing the danger of her love, awaked and 

 delivered him. All the Asps of Nilus do thirty days before 

 the flood remove themselves and their young ones into the 

 mountains, and this is done yearly, once at the least. A 

 man carrying a bottle of vinegar was bitten by an Asp, 

 whiles by chance he trod thereupon, but as long as he 

 bore the vinegar and did not set it down, he felt no pain 

 thereby, but as often as to ease himself he set the bottle 

 out of his hand, he felt torment by the poison. 



Topsell) "History of Serpents," pp. 633-6. 



Ass. 



THE Ass is a simple beast and a slow, and therefore soon 

 overcome and subject to man's service. The elder the Ass 

 is, the fouler he waxeth from day to day, and hairy and 

 rough, and is a melancholic beast, that is cold and dry, 



