Introduction, vi.—I might have mentioned that Taylor the Water-Poet cites The Hundred Merry Tales as one of the authorities employed by him in the composition of his Sir Gregory Nonsense His Newes from No Place, 1622 (Taylor's Works, 1630), and see also Epistle Dedicatory to Meredith's Eusebius, 1577.
P. 19.—This story is found in the Ducento Novelle of Celio Malespini, printed at Venice, 1609, 4o.
P. 22. Of the Woman that sayd her Woer cam too late.
"If thou be slow to speake, as one I knew,
Thou wouldst assure thy selfe my counsels true;
Hee (too late) finding her upon her knees
In Church, where yet her husbands coorse she sees,
Hearing the Sermon at his funerall,
Longing to behold his buriall,
This sutor being toucht with inward love,
Approached neare his lovely sute to move,
Then stooping downe he whispered in her eare
Saying he bore her love, as might appeare,
In that so soone he shewed his love unto her,
Before any else did app[r]och to woo her,
Alass (said she) your labour is in vaine,
Last night a husband I did entertaine."
—Uncasing of Machivils Instructions to his Sonne, 1612, Sign. C 3. Stories of this kind are of very common occurrence in the modern collections of facetiÆ.
P. 23. "When Davie Diker diggs, and dallies not,
When smithes shoo horses, as they would be shod,
When millers toll not with a golden thumbe."
—The Steel Glas, a Satyre, by George Gascoigne, Esquire (1576), Sign. H 3 verso.
A writer in the Retrospective Review, New Series, ii. 326, states that this story of the "Miller with the golden thumb" "is still (1854) a favourite in Yorkshire."
P. 30. Stumble at a Straw, &c.—This proverb is quoted in Machivils Instructions to his Sonne, 1613, p. 16.
P. 35. Of the good man that sayd to his wyfe. &c.
"Dr. South, visiting a gentleman one morning, was ask'd to stay Dinner, which he accepted of; the Gentleman stept into the next Room and told his Wife, and desired she'd provide something extraordinary. Hereupon she began to murmer and scold, and make a thousand Words; till at length, Her husband, provok'd at her Behaviour, protested, that if it was not for the Stranger in the next Room, he would kick her out of Doors. Upon which the Doctor, who heard all that passed, immediately stept out, crying, I beg, Sir, you'll make no Stranger of me."
—Complete London Jester, ed. 1771, p. 73.
P. 44. Draughthole.—See Dekker's Guls' Horn Book, 1609, ed. Nott, p. 121-2-3.
P. 47. Saynte Thomas of Acres.
"A the Austen fryers
They count us for lyers:
And at Saynt Thomas of Akers
They carpe us lyke crakers."
—Skelton's Colin Clout (Works, ed. Dyce, i. 357).
This tale is imitated in Hobson's Conceits.
P. 60. Of the gentylman, that promysed the scoler of Oxforde a sarcenet typet—Sarcenet, at the period to which this story refers, was a material which only certain persons were allowed to wear. See Nicolas' note to a passage in the Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 220. This jest is transplanted by Johnson, with very little alteration, into the Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson, 1607.
P. 78. Therefore I pray thee, teche me my Pater noster, and by my truthe, I shall therfore teche thee a songe of Robyn Hode that shall be worth xx of it!
The following passage from a poem, which has been sometimes ascribed to Skelton, is a curious illustration of this paragraph:—
Thus these sysmatickes,
And lowsy lunatickes,
With spurres and prickes
Call true men heretickes.
They finger their fidles,
And cry in quinibles,
Away these bibles,
For they be but ridles!
And give them Robyn Whode,
To red howe he stode
In mery grene wode,
When he gathered good,
Before Noyes ffloodd!
The Image of Ipocrysy, Part iii.
P. 84. Of the wyfe that bad, &c.
Of swearing between a wyfe and her husband.
"Cis, by this candle in my sleep I thought
One told me of thy body thou wert nought.
Good husband, he that told you ly'd, she said,
And swearing, laid her hand upon the bread.
Then eat the bread, quoth he, that I may deem
That fancie false, that true to me did seem.
Nay, sir, said she, the matter well to handle,
Since you swore first, you first shall eat the candle."
Wits Interpreter, the English Parnassus, By John Cotgrave, 1662, p. 286.
P. 87. Of the man that had the dome wyfe.
"A certain man, as fortune fel,
A woman tungles wedded to wive,
Whose frowning countenance perceivig by live
Til he might know what she ment he thought long,
And wished ful oft she had a tung.
The devil was redy, and appeered anon,
An aspin lefe he bid the man take,
And in her mouth should put but one,
A tung, said the devil, it shall her make;
Til he had doon his hed did ake;
Leaves he gathered, and took plentie,
And in her mouth put two or three.
Within a while the medicine wrought:
The man could tarry no longer time,
But wakened her, to the end he mought
The vertue knowe of the medicine;
The first woord she spake to him
She said: 'thou whoresonne knave and theef,
How durst thou waken me, with a mischeef!'
From that day forward she never ceased.
Her boistrous bable greeved him sore:
The devil he met, and him entreated
To make her tungles, as she was before;
'Not so,' said the devil, 'I will meddle no more.
A devil a woman to speak may constrain,
But all that in hel be, cannot let it again.'"
Schole-house of Women, 1542 (Utterson's Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, ii. 74).
P. 89. Of the Proctour of Arches that had the lytel wyfe.
"One ask'd his Friend, why he, so proper a Man himself, marry'd so small a Wyfe? Why, said he, I thought you had known, that of all evils we should chuse the least."—Complete London Jester, ed. 1771, p. 65.
P. 92. Of him that wolde gette, &c.
In the Scholehouse of Women, 1542, the same story is differently related:—
"A husband man, having good trust
His wife to him bad be agreeable,
Thought to attempt if she had be reformable,
Bad her take the pot, that sod over the fire,
And set it aboove upon the astire.
She answered him: 'I hold thee mad,
And I more fool, by Saint Martine;
Thy dinner is redy, as thou me bad,
And time it were that thou shouldst dine,
And thou wilt not, I will go to mine.'
'I bid thee (said he) vere up the pot.'
'A ha! (she said) I trow thou dote,'
Up she goeth for fear, at last,
No question mooved where it should stand
Upon his hed the pottage she cast,
And heeld the pot stil in her hand.
Said and swore, he might her trust,
She would with the pottage do what her lust."
As this story in the C. Mery Talys is defective in consequence of the mutilation of the only known copy, the foregoing extract becomes valuable, as it exhibits what was probably the sequel in the prose version, from which the author of the Scholehouse of Women was no doubt a borrower.
P. 101. If a thousande soules may dance on a mannes nayle.—This is a different form of the common saying that a thousand angels can stand on the point of the needle. "One querying another, whether a thousand angels might stand on the point of a needle, another replied, 'That was a needles point.'"—Ward's Diary, ed. 1839, p. 94.
P. 106. Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, ed. 1651, p. 191, has a story, which bears the mark of being the same as the one here entitled "Of the parson that stale the mylner's elys." The passage in Scot, which may help to supply the unfortunate lacuna in the C. Mery Talys, is as follows:—
"So it was, that a certain Sir John, with some of his company, once went abroad jetting, and in a moon-light evening, robbed a miller's weire and stole all his eeles. The poor miller made his mone to Sir John himself, who willed him to be quiet; for he would so curse the theef, and all his confederates, with bell, book, and candel, that they should have small joy of their fish. And therefore the next Sunday, Sir John got him to the pulpit, with his surplisse on his back, and his stole about his neck, and pronounced these words following in the audience of the people:—
'All you that have stolne the millers eeles,
Laudate Dominum de coelis,
And all they that have consented thereto,
Benedicamus Domino.'
Lo (saith he), there is savoe for your eeles, my masters."
P. 108. Of the parson that sayde masse of requiem, &c.—This story is also in Scoggin's Jests, 1626, and perhaps the lacunÆ may be supplied from that source. Thus (the words supplied from Scoggin's Jests are in italics):—
"Then quod the prest: tel thy mayster that he must say the Masse which doth begin with a great R. [when the boy returned, the Prest asked him whether the Parson had told him what] masse, &c."
And again, a line or two lower down, there can be no doubt, on a comparison of Scoggin's Jests, p. 74, what the missing words are. We ought to read:—"but he had me tell you it began with a great R."
