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THE " KUSSET-PATED CHOUGH" OF SHAKESPEAEE. 

 By H. A. Evans. 



Ever since I learnt from the late F. A. Marshall's note on 

 this passage, in the * Henry Irving Shakespeare' (vol. ii. p. 377), 

 that there was authority for interpreting the word russet as 

 = gray, I had ceased to feel any misgivings about the " russet- 

 pated Chough," believing that the question was thus settled in 

 favour of the Jackdaw. Everj T other consideration, as I shall 

 attempt to show, is strongly in favour of this identification, and 

 though I do not think that Professor Newton has proved his 

 point in the last number of 'The Zoologist' (p. 368), I admit 

 that he touches the weakest point in his opponent's case when 

 he challenges proof that in Shakespeare's time gray was one of 

 the accepted meanings of this word russet. 



(1). There can be no doubt that the commonest meaning of the 

 word in Elizabethan literature is its etymological one, i. e. reddish, 

 or reddish-brown ; see, for instance, Gerard's use of it — a writer 

 whose special business it was to be exact in his descriptions of 

 colour. But, from the frequent mention of gray russet, we may 

 infer that the colour of the coarse woollen cloth, which at least as 

 early as ' Piers the Plowman ' (" Thus robed in russett ich romede 

 a-boute," Passus, xi. 1) formed the ordinary dress of the peasantry, 

 though possibly sometimes brownish, as the name implies, was as 

 a matter of fact most commonly gray ; and I think the Editor 

 has found the key to the difficulty when he suggests (September 

 number, p. 334) "that many probably derived ther sense of the 

 colour termed ' russet ' from the material." The word would thus 

 come to be used alone to denote a gray colour, just as we now-a- 

 days may talk of " chocolate cloth," " olive morocco," " orange 

 velvet," instead of " chocolate-brown," " olive-green." If this be 

 so, Shakespeare, in using the term "russet," may habitually have 

 associated it with the gray material, rather than that of any another 

 colour. Unfortunately our evidence on this point is of the scantiest: 

 he uses the word only thrice; once of the stuff figuratively — a 

 passage which does not help us, once in the passage under dis- 

 cussion, and once in ' Hamlet' (Act i. sc. 1) : — 



11 But, look, the morn in russet mantle clad, 

 Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill." 



