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THE CRAB, ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND ASSOCIATIONS. 
“ Thy mother took into her blameful bed 
Some stern untutor’d churl, and noble stock 
Was graft with crab-tree slip ; whose fruit thou art, 
And never of the Neville’s noble race.” 
(2 Henry VI, I/I, Sc. 2.) 
“ That was when 
Three crabbed months had sour’d themselves to death 
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand.” 
( Winter's Tale, I, Sc. 2.) 
In “ Divers Crab-tree Lectures/' &c. (1639), there is a cut representing a woman beating 
her husband with a ladle, inscribed “ Skinnington and her Husband ;” and the “ irrand Scole” is 
made to say among other exciting words in rhyme— 
“ But all shall not serve thee, 
For have at thy pate, 
My ladle of the Crabb-tree 
Shall teach thee to cogge and prate.” 
( Brand— British Antiquities by Hazlitt, vol. ii., p. 129—30./ 
Southey has in one of his Poems introduced the Crab-stick as an instrument of domestic 
discipline, which ladies in the present day would not much approve of, though unless merely uplifted 
as a show of what might be inflicted, the law has now given a remedy to a castigated wife, if she 
carries her case before a justice of the peace :— 
“ Richard Penlake a scolding would take 
’Till patience avail’d no longer ; 
Then Richard Penlake his Crab stick would take, 
And show her that he was the stronger !” 
(“St. Michael's Chair.") 
This Crab-stick discipline in households “of the baser sort,” would appear to be an old story 
or an old practice, going back most likely into savage times when the weaker sex found severe 
masters. Beaumont and Fletcher make one of their characters say— 
“ Get you to bed, drab, 
Or I’ll so crab your shoulders.” 
(“Monsieur Thomas.") 
Another simile has been adduced from the sourness of the fruit of the native Crab, which has 
passed into a proverb. Excellent Vinegar is made from the liquor of Crabs squeezed to a pulp, 
which is called Verjuice, and was formerly used to cure sprains and scalds, and was often kept by 
good housewives in the country for that purpose. It was also used to give an agreeable acidity to 
the rustic delicacy called syllabub, only now to be met with in farm houses where old-fashioned 
observances are kept up. Good Isaac Walton in his “Complete Angler,” thus offers to treat a friend. 
He says—“ When next you come this way, if you will but speak the word, I will make you a good 
