Sunday, January 26, 2003

The Woman Question -- by Stephen Leacock (1916)


They were speaking of the war.


" No, indeed," chorused all the others.




It seemed a gloomy world.  


" No,"  I said, " leave me.  I am going to write an article on the Woman Question.  The time has come when it has got to be taken up and solved."
 So I set myself to write it.

The woman problem may be stated somewhat after this fashion.  The great majority of the women of to-day find themselves without any means of support of their own.  I refer of course to the civilised white women.  The gay savage in her jungle, attired in a cocoanut leaf, armed with a club and adorned with the neck of a soda-water bottle, is all right.  Trouble hasn't reached her yet. Like all savages, she has a far better time--more varied, more interesting, more worthy of a human being--than falls to the lot of the rank and file of civilised men and women.  Very few of us recognise this great truth.  We have a mean little vanity over our civilisation.  We are touchy about it.   We do not realise that so far we have done little but increase the burden of work and multiply the means of death.  But for the hope of better things to come, our civilisation would not seem worth while.

But this is a digression.  Let us go back.  The great majority of women have no means of support of their own.  This is true also of men.  But the men can acquire means of support.  They can hire themselves out and work.  Better still, by the industrious process of intrigue rightly called " busyness," or business, they may presently get hold of enough of other people's things to live without working.  Or again, men can, with a fair prospect of success, enter the criminal class, either in its lower ranks as a housebreaker, or in its upper ranks, through politics.  Take it all in all a man has a certain chance to get along in life.

A woman, on the other hand, has little or none. The world's work is open to her, but she cannot do it.  She lacks the physical strength for laying bricks or digging coal.  If put to work on a steel beam a hundred feet above the ground, she would fall off.  For the pursuit of business her head is all wrong.  Figures confuse her.  She lacks sustained attention and in point of morals the average woman is, even for business, too crooked.

This last point is one that will merit a little emphasis.  Men are queer creatures.  They are able to set up a code of rules or a standard, often quite an artificial one and stick to it.  They have acquired the art of playing the game.  Eleven men can put on white flannel trousers and call themselves a cricket team, on which an entirely new set of obligations, almost a new set of personalities, are wrapped about them.  Women could never be a team of anything.

So it is in business.  Men are able to maintain a sort of rough-and-ready code which prescribes the particular amount of cheating that a man may do under the rules.  This is called business honesty, and many men adhere to it with dog-like tenacity, growing old in it, till it is stamped on their grizzled faces, visibly.  They can feel it inside them like a virtue.  So much will they cheat and no more. Hence men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.

With women it is entirely different.  They bring to business an unimpaired vision.  They see it as it is.  It would be impossible to trust them.  They refuse to play fair.

Thus it comes about that woman is excluded, to a great extent, from the world's work and the world's pay.

There is nothing really open to her except one thing--marriage.  She must find a man who will be willing, in return for her society, to give her half of everything he has, allow her the sole use of his house during the daytime, pay her taxes, and provide her clothes.

This was, formerly and for many centuries, not such a bad solution of the question.  The women did fairly well out of it.  It was the habit to marry early and often.  The " house and home " was an important place.  The great majority of people, high and low, lived on the land.  The work of the wife and the work of the husband ran closely together.  The two were complementary and fitted into one another.  A woman who had to superintend the baking of bread and the brewing of beer, the spinning of yarn and the weaving of clothes, could not complain that her life was incomplete.

Then came the modern age, beginning let us say about a hundred and fifty years ago.  The distinguishing marks of it have been machinery and the modern city.  The age of invention swept the people off the land.  It herded them into factories, creating out of each man a poor miserable atom divorced from hereditary ties, with no rights, no duties, and no place in the world except what his wages contract may confer on him.  Every man for himself, and sink or swim, became the order of the day.  It was nicknamed " industrial freedom." The world's production increased enormously.  It is doubtful  if the poor profited much.  They obtained the modern city--full of light and noise and excitement, lively with crime and gay with politics--and the free school where they learned to read and write, by which means they might hold a mirror to their poverty and take a good look at it. They lost the quiet of the country-side, the murmur of the brook and the inspiration of the open sky. These are unconscious things, but the peasant who has been reared among them, for all his unconsciousness, pines and dies without them.  It is doubtful if the poor have gained.  The chaw-bacon rustic who trimmed a hedge in the reign of George I, compared well with the pale slum-rat of the reign of George V.

But if the machine age has profoundly altered the position of the working man, it has done still more with woman.  It has dispossessed her.  Her work has been taken away.  The machine does it. It makes the clothes and brews the beer.  The roar of the vacuum cleaner has hushed the sound of the broom.  The proud proportions of the old-time cook are dwindled to the slim outline of the gas- stove expert operating on a beefsteak with the aid of a thermometer.  And at the close of day the machine, wound with a little key, sings the modern infant to its sleep, with the faultless lullaby of the Victrola.  The home has passed, or at least is passing out of existence.  In place of it is the " apartment "--an incomplete thing, a mere part of something, where children are an intrusion, where hospitality is done through a caterer, and where Christmas is only the twenty-fifth of December.

All this the machine age did for woman.  For a time she suffered--the one thing she had learned, in the course of centuries, to do with admirable fitness.  With each succeeding decade of the modern age things grew worse instead of better.  The age for marriage shifted.  A wife instead of being a helpmate had become a burden that must be carried.  It was no longer true that two could live on less than one.  The prudent youth waited till he could " afford " a wife.  Love itself grew timid. Little Cupid exchanged his bow and arrow for a book on arithmetic and studied money sums.  The schoolgirl who flew to Gretna Green 3 in a green and yellow cabriolet beside a peach-faced youth-- angrily pursued by an ancient father of thirty-eight --all this drifted into the pictures of the past, romantic but quite impossible.

Thus the unmarried woman, a quite distinct thing from the " old maid " of ancient times, came into existence, and multiplied and increased till there were millions of her.

Then there rose up in our own time, or within call of it, a deliverer.  It was the Awful Woman with the Spectacles, and the doctrine that she preached was Woman's Rights.  She came as a new thing, a hatchet in her hand, breaking glass.  But in reality she was no new thing at all, and had her lineal descent in history from age to age.  The Romans knew her as a sibyl and shuddered at her. The Middle Ages called her a witch and burnt her. The ancient law of England named her a scold and ducked her in a pond.  But the men of the modern age, living indoors and losing something of their ruder fibre, grew afraid of her.  The Awful Woman --meddlesome, vociferous, intrusive--came into her own.

Her softer sisters followed her.  She became the leader of her sex.  " Things are all wrong," she screamed, " with the status of women."  Therein she was quite right.  " The remedy for it all," she howled, " is to make women ' free,' to give women the vote.  When once women are ' free ' everything will be all right."  Therein the woman with the spectacles was, and is, utterly wrong.

The women's vote, when they get it, will leave women much as they were before.

Let it be admitted quite frankly that women are going to get the vote.  Within a very short time all over the British Isles and North America-- in the States and the nine provinces of Canada-- woman suffrage will soon be an accomplished fact. It is a coming event which casts its shadow, or its illumination, in front of it.  The woman's vote and total prohibition are two things that are moving across the map with gigantic strides.  Whether they are good or bad things is another question.  They are coming.  As for the women's vote, it has largely come.  And as for prohibition, it is going to be recorded as one of the results of the European War, foreseen by nobody.  When the King of England decided that the way in which he could best help the country was by giving up drinking, the admission was fatal.  It will stand as one of the landmarks of British history comparable only to such things as the signing of the Magna Charta by King John, or the serving out of rum and water instead of pure rum in the British Navy under George III.

So the woman's vote and prohibition are coming. A few rare spots--such as Louisiana, and the City of New York--will remain and offer here and there a wet oasis in the desert of dry virtue.  Even that cannot endure.  Before many years are past, all over this continent women with a vote and men without a drink will stand looking at one another and wondering, what next ?

For when the vote is reached the woman question will not be solved but only begun.  In and of itself, a vote is nothing.  It neither warms the skin nor fills  the  stomach.  Very often the privilege of a vote confers nothing but the right to express one's opinion as to which of two crooks is the crookeder.
But after the women have obtained the vote the question is, what are they going to do with it ? The answer is, nothing, or at any rate nothing that men would not do without them.  Their only visible use of it will be to elect men into office, Fortunately for us all they will not elect women. Here and there perhaps at the outset, it will be done as the result of a sort of spite, a kind of sex antagonism bred by the controversy itself.  But, speaking broadly, the women's vote will not be used to elect women to office.  Women do not think enough of one another to do that.  If they want a lawyer they consult a man, and those who can afford it have their clothes made by men, and their cooking done by a chef.  As for their money, no woman would entrust that to another woman's keeping.  They are far too wise for that.

So the woman's vote will not result in the setting up of female prime ministers and of parliaments in which the occupants of the treasury bench cast languishing eyes across at the flushed faces of the opposition.  From the utter ruin involved in such an attempt at mixed government, the women themselves will save us.  They will elect men. They may even pick some good ones.  It is a nice question and will stand thinking about.

But what else, or what further can they do, by means of their vote and their representatives to '' emancipate " and  " liberate "  their sex ?

Many feminists would tell us at once that if women had the vote they would, first and foremost, throw everything open to women on the same terms as men.  Whole speeches are made on this point, and a fine fury thrown into it, often very beautiful to behold.

The entire idea is a delusion.  Practically all of the world's work is open to women now, wide open.
The only trouble is that they can't do it.  There is nothing to prevent a woman from managing a bank, or organising a company, or running a department store, or floating a merger, or building a railway-- except the simple fact that she can't.  Here and there an odd woman does such things, but she is only the exception  that proves the rule.  Such women are merely--and here I am speaking in the most  decorous  biological  sense--" sports."  The ordinary woman cannot do the ordinary man's work.  She never has and never will.  The reasons why she can't are so many, that is, she " can't " in so many different ways, that it is not worth while to try to name them.

Here and there it is true there are things closed to women, not by their own inability but by the law. This is a gross injustice.  There is no defence for it. The province in which I live, for example, refuses to allow women to practise as lawyers.  This is wrong.  Women have just as good a right to fail at being lawyers as they have at anything else.  But even if all these legal disabilities, where they exist, were removed (as they will be under a woman's vote) the difference to women at large will be infinitesimal.  A few gifted " sports " will earn a handsome livelihood, but the woman question in the larger sense will not move one inch nearer to solution.

The feminists, in fact, are haunted by the idea that it is possible for the average woman to have a life patterned after that of the ordinary man. They imagine her as having a career, a profession, a vocation--something which will be her " life work "--just as selling coal is the life work of the coal merchant.

If this were so, the whole question would be solved. Women and men would become equal and independent.  It is thus indeed that the feminist sees them, through the roseate mist created by imagination.  Husband and wife appear as a couple of honourable partners who share a house together. Each is off to business in the morning.  The husband is, let us say, a stockbroker:  the wife manufactures iron and steel.  The wife is a Liberal, the husband a Conservative.  At their dinner they have animated discussion over the tariff till it is time for them to go to their clubs.

These two impossible creatures haunt the brain of the feminist and disport them in the pages of the up-to-date novel;

The whole thing is mere fiction.  It is quite impossible for women--the average and ordinary women--to go in for having a career.  Nature has forbidden it.  The average woman must necessarily have--I can only give the figures roughly--about three and a quarter children.  She must replace in the population herself and her husband with something over to allow for the people who never marry and for the children that do not reach maturity.  If she fails to do this the population comes to an end.  Any scheme of social life must allow for these three and a quarter children and for the years of care that must be devoted to them. The vacuum cleaner can take the place of the housewife.  It cannot replace the mother.  No man ever said his prayers at the knees of a vacuum cleaner, or drew his first lessons in manliness and worth from the sweet old-fashioned stories that a vacuum cleaner told.  Feminists of the enraged kind may talk as they will of the paid attendant and the expert baby-minder.  Fiddlesticks !  These things are a mere supplement, useful enough but as far away from the realities of motherhood as the vacuum cleaner itself.  But the point is one that need not be laboured.  Sensible people understand it as soon as said.  With fools it is not worth while to argue. But, it may be urged, there are, even as it is, a great many women who are working.  The wages that they receive are extremely low.  They are lower in most cases than the wages for the same, or similar work, done by men.  Cannot the woman's vote at least remedy this ?

Here is something that deserves thinking about and that is far more nearly within the realm of what is actual and possible than wild talk of equalising and revolutionising the sexes.

It is quite true that women's work is underpaid. But this is only a part of a larger social injustice. The case stands somewhat as follows: Women get low wages because low wages are all that they are worth.  Taken by itself this is a brutal and misleading statement.  What is meant is this. The rewards and punishments in the unequal and ill-adjusted world in which we live are most unfair. The price of anything--sugar, potatoes, labour, or anything else--varies according to the supply and demand : if many people want it and few can supply it the price goes up:  if the contrary it goes down. If enough cabbages are brought to market they will not bring a cent a piece, no matter what it cost to raise them.

On these terms each of us sells his labour.  The lucky ones, with some rare gift, or trained capacity, or some ability that by mere circumstance happens to be in a great demand, can sell high.  If there were only one night plumber in a great city, and the water pipes in a dozen homes of a dozen millionaires should burst all at once, he might charge a fee like that of a consulting lawyer.

On the other hand the unlucky sellers whose numbers are greater than the demand--the mass of common labourers--get a mere pittance.  To say that their wage represents all that they produce is to argue in a circle.  It is the mere pious quietism with which the well-to-do man who is afraid to think boldly on social questions drugs his conscience to sleep.

So it stands with women's wages.  It is the sheer numbers of the women themselves, crowding after the few jobs that they can do, that brings them down.  It has nothing to do with the attitude of men collectively towards women in the lump.  It cannot be remedied by any form of woman's freedom.  Its remedy is bound up with the general removal of social injustice, the general abolition of poverty, which is to prove the great question of the century before us.  The question of women's wages is a part of the wages' question.

To my thinking the whole idea of making women free and equal (politically) with men as a way of improving their status, starts from a wrong basis and proceeds in a wrong direction.
Women need not more freedom but less.  Social policy should proceed from the fundamental truth that women are and must be dependent.  If they cannot be looked after by an individual (a thing on which they took their chance in earlier days) they must be looked after by the State.  To expect a woman, for example, if left by the death of her husband with young children without support to maintain herself by her own efforts, is the most absurd mockery of freedom ever devised.  Earlier generations of mankind, for all that they lived in the jungle and wore cocoanut leaves, knew nothing of it. To turn a girl loose in the world to work for herself, when there is no work to be had, or none at a price that will support life, is a social crime.

I am not attempting to show in what way the principle of woman's dependence should be worked out in detail in legislation.  Nothing short of a book could deal with it.  All that the present essay attempts is the presentation of a point of view.

I have noticed that my clerical friends, on the rare occasions when they are privileged to preach to me, have a way of closing their sermons by "leaving their congregations with a thought."  It is a good scheme.  It suggests an inexhaustible fund of reserve thought not yet tapped.  It keeps the congregation, let us hope, in a state of trembling eagerness for the next instalment.

With the readers of this essay I do the same.  I leave them with the thought that perhaps in the modern age it is not the increased freedom of woman that is needed but the increased recognition of  their dependence.  Let the reader remain agonised over that till I write something else.

Leacock, Stephen.  Essays and Literary Studies, The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, Great Britain, 1916.

Saturday, January 25, 2003

Woman's Fickleness -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- by T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"Ladies, like variegated tulips, show
'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe."
POPE'S Moral Essays, Ep. ii.

"Maids are May when they are maids,
But the sky changes when they are wives."



"Caeneus, a woman once, and once a man,
But ending in the sex she first began."

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water." This failing has been made the subject of frequent comment and ridicule, and Pope tells us how--

"Papillia, wedded to her amorous spark,
A park is purchas'd, but the fair he sees




"Souvent femme varie,
Bien fou qui s'y fic."

"Ho water ploughs, and soweth in the sand,
And hopes the flickering wind with net to hold,
Who hath his hopes laid on a woman's hand."

Consents, retracts, advances, and then flies."

"Whene'er a woman vows to love you
In fortune's spite;
Make protestations that would prove you
Her sou's delight;
Swears that no other shall win her
By passion stirr'd;
Believe her not;--the charming sinner
Will break her word;"

"A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, stateman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking."

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Local Allusions to Women -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- by T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"He that will not merry be,
With a pretty girl by the fire,
I wish he was atop of Dartemoor
A-stugged in the mire."
Devonshire Folk-Rhyme.
MANY of our old towns and villages throughout the country have long been famous for certain characteristics, and some of these which pay special honour to the fair sex are embodied in local rhymes, which, if not in all respects quite complimentary, are generally quaint and goodhumoured.
A popular folk-rhyme informs us:--
"Oxford for learning, London for a wit,
Hull for women, and York for a tit."
The downs in the vicinity of Sutton, Banstead, and Epsom, in addition to being noted for their sheep, which have given rise to various rhymes, have been in other ways equally famous, if we are to believe the following:--
"Sutton for good mutton,
Cheam for juicy beef,
Croydon for a pretty girl,
And Mitcham for a thief."
But these are not the only places, as other folk-rhymes tell us, that can lay claim to producing pretty girls; for, under Oxfordshire, in Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England," these lines are given:--
"King's Sutton is a pretty town,
And lies all in a valley;
It has a pretty rng of bells,
Besides a bowling alley;
Wine in liquor in good store,
Pretty maidens plenty,
Can a man desire more?
There ain't such a town in twenty;"
with which may be compared a similar rhyme on Middlewych, in Cheshire:--
"Middlewych is a pretty town,
Seated in a valley,
With a church and market cross,
And eke a bowling alley.
All the men are loyal there,
Pretty girls are plenty,
Church and King, and down with the Rump--
There's not such a town in twenty."
Chambers, in his "Popular Rhymes of Scotland," quotes an old rhyme descriptive of places in the parishes of Bunkle and Chirnside; "but, alas," he says, "five of these little firm towns no longer exist, their lands being now included in large possessions:--
"Little Billy, Billy Mill,
Billy Mains, and Billy Hill,
Ashfield and Auchencraw,
Bullerhead and Pefferlaw,
There's bonny lasses in them a'."
The term, "Lancashire fair women," has long age become proverbial, in connection with which we may quote this note by Ray: "Whether the women of this county be indeed fairer than their neighboirs I know not, but that the inhabitants of some counties may be, and are, generally fairer than those of others, is most certain; the reason whereof is to be attributed partly to the temperature of the air, partly to the condition of the soil, and partly to their manner of food. The hotter the climate, generally the blacker the inhabitants, and the colder, the fairer; the colder, I say, to a certain degree, for in extreme cold countries the inhabitants are of dusky complexions. But in the same climate, that in some places the inhabitants should be fairer than in others, proceeds from the diversity of the situation--either high or low, maritime or far from sea--or of the soil and manner of living, which we see have so much influence upon hearts, as to alter in them bigness, shape, and colour; and why it may not have the like on men I see not."
Another folk-rhyme tells us:--
"Barton under Needwood,
Dunstall in the Dale;
Sitenhill for a pretty girl,
And Burton for good ale;"
which is similar to one told of the hamlets of Pulverbatch, in Shropshire:--
"Cothercot up o' the hill,
Wilderley down i' the dale,
Churton for pretty girls,
And Powtherbitch for good ale."
"Suffolk fair maids" is another popular proverbial expression, an allusion to which we find in Greene's "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" (Works, Edit. 1861, p. 153):--
"A bonnier wench all Suffolk cannot yield.
All Suffolk! Nay, all England holds none such;"
and Ray remarks on this expression: "It seems the God of Nature hath been bountiful in giving them beautiful complexions; which I am willing to believe, so far forth as it fixeth not a comparative disparagement on the same sex in other places."

On the other hand, we occasionally find a place mentioned as possessing no pretty girls, as in the following:--
"Halifax is made of wax,
And Heptonstall of stone;
In Halifax there's many a pretty girl,
In Heptonstall there's none."
A humorous rhyme on Camberwell runs thus:--
"All the maides in Camberwell,
May daunce in an egge shell,
For there are no maydes in that well;"
to which one, who, it has been suggested, was doubtless a Camberwellian, answered in clumsy doggerel:--
"All the maides in Camberwell towne,
Cannot daunce in an acre of ground."
It is proverbially said, too:--
"Castleford women must needs be fair,
Because they wash both in Calder and Aire."
In short, in accordance with an old adage, "England's the Paradise of Women," upon which Ray has this note: "And well it may be called so, as might easily be demonstrated in many particulars, were not all the world therein satisfied. Hence it has been said that if a bridge were made over the narrow seas, all the women in Europe would come over hither. Yet it is worth the noting, that though in no country in the world the men are so fond of, so much governed by, so wedded to their wives, yet hath no language so many proverbial invectives against women."

Some places have enjoyed the unenviable notoriety of possessing loose women, if we are to put reliance in folk-rhymes like the subjoined:--
"Beccles for a puritan, Bungay for the poor,
Halesworth for a drunkard, and Bilborough for a whore."
According to a Leicestershire saying, "There are more whores in Hose, than honest women in Long Clawton;" the humour of this proverb, as Ray says, 'turning on the word hose, which is here meant to signify stockings, and is the name of a small village adjoining Long Clawton, which is comparatively very populous." A proverbial couplet current in Essex informs us:--
"Braintree for the pure, and Bocking for the poor;
Cogshall for the jeering town, and Kelvedon for the whore."
And to give a further instance, a Surrey folk-rhyme is to this effect:--
"Sutton for mutton, Carshalton for beeves,
Epsom for whores, and Ewel for thieves."
At one time, too, it was a common saying, "Who goes to Westminster for a wife, to Paul's for a man, and to Smithfield for a horse, may meet with a whore, a knave, and a jade;" with which may be compared the following old folk-rhyme on the Inns of Court:--
"The Inner Temple rich,
The Middle Temple poor;
Lincoln's Inn for law,
And Gray's lnn for a whore."
Herefordshire has long been famous for its four W's--its wine (cider), its wood (its sylvan scenery), its women, and its water (the river Wye), whence the saying, "Wine, wood, women, and water;" and a popular couplet speaks of:--
"Oxford knives,
London wives";
which, according to Grose, would seem to imply that "the Oxford knives were better to look at than to cut with; and that the London wives had more beauty and good breeding than housewifely qualities," with which may be compared a similar folk-rhyme:--
"Hutton for auld wives,
Broadmeadows for swine;
Paxton for drunken wives,
And salmon sae fine."
Cheshire people when referring to a girl noted for her good looks are wont to describe her as being "As fair as Lady Done," a phrase which is thus explained by Pennant, in his "Journey from Chester to London," 1793:--"Sir John Done, Knight, hereditary forester and keeper of the forest of Delamere, Cheshire, died in 1629. When James I. made a progress in the year 1607, he was entertained by this gentleman at Utkinton, etc. He married Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Wilbraham, Esq., of Woodhey, who left behind her so admirable a character, that to this day, when a Cheshire man would express some excellency in one of the fair sex, he would say, 'There is Lady Done for you.'"

Ray, also, tells us that, "The Dones were a great family in Cheshire, living it Utkinton, by the forest side. Nurses use there to call their children so, if girls; if boys, Earls of Derby."

It is also commonly said in Cheshire, "Better wed over the mixen than over the moor"--a proverbial adage which Ray thus explains: "That is, hard by, or at home--the mixon being that heap of compost which lies in the yards of good husbandmen--than far off, or from London. The road from Chester leading to London over some part of the moorlands in Staffordshire, the meaning is, that gentry in Cheshire find it more profitable to match within their own county, than to bring a bride out of other shires: (1) Because better acquainted with her birth and breeding. (2) Because though her portion may chance to be less to maintain her, such inter-marriages in this county have been observed both a prolonger of worshipful families and the preserver of amity between them."

We find the same proverb in Scotland, "Better over the midden than over the muir;" and it has also found its way to the Continent, for to a young person about to marry in Germany this advice is given, "Marry over the mixon, and you will know who and what she is;" with which may be compared the Italian admonitlon, "Your wife and your nag get from a neighbour."
A couplet popular in Wem, Shropshire, runs thus:--
"The women of Wem, and a few musketeers,
Beat Lord Capel, and all his caveliers."
Wem was the first town in Shropshire to declare for the Parliament. The story told--which gave rise to this rhyme--is that in 1643, Lord Capel, the King's lieutenant-general in Wales and the border counties, attempted to seize it from Shrewsbury before the completion of the fortifications, but he was repulsed from Wem by about forty troopers, with the aid of the townspeople. A smart piece of deception, it is said, was adopted, for old women in red cloaks were posted at carefully-selected spots, thus scaring the enemy, who took them for soldiers.

Another Cheshire adage tells us, "When the daughter is stolen, shut Pepper Gate," which Grose thus explains--"Pepper Gate was a postern on the east side of the city of Chester. The mayor ot the city having his daughter stolen away by a young man through that gate, whilst she was playing at ball with the other maidens, his worship, out of revenge, caused it to be closed up."

There are numerous items of folk-lore of a similar character; and the Scotch, when speaking of a changeable woman, remark, "Ye're as fu' o' maggots as the bride of Preston, wha stopt half-way as she gaed to the kirk;" on which adage, Henderson writes: "We have not been able to learn who the bride of Preston really was, but we have frequently heard the saying applied to young women who are capricious and changeable:--
"The bride took a maggot, it was but a maggot,
She wadna gang by the west mains to be married."
Another common expression is, "Take a seat on Maggy Shaw's Crocky," which is a broad, flat stone, near to the brink of a precipice, overhanging the seashore, about a mile to the north of Eyemouth. Tradition says this stone was placed over the remains of an old woman who had hanged herself, and who is said frequently to be seen at night resting upon it, in the shape of a white sea-mew, sitting lonely on the--
"Glitty stane,
Green with the dow o' the jauping main."
Sometimes one may hear a Scotch peasant use the phrase, "Ye breed o' Lady Mary, when you're gude, ye're ower gude," which Kelly thus explains: "A drunken man one day begged Lady Mary to help him on his horse, and having made many attempts to no purpose, he always reiterated the same position; at length he jumped quite over. 'O, Lady Mary,' said he, 'when thou art good, thou art over good.'" Another common phrase is, "Gae kiss yourlucky--she lives in Leith," which Allan Ramsay thus explains: "A cant phrase, from what rise I know not, but it is made use of when persons think it is not worth while to give a distinct answer, or think themselves foolishly accused."

It is commonly said in Buckinghamshire, in reference to a marriage of unequal age, "An old man who marries a buxom young maiden bids fair to become a freeman of Buckingham," that is, a cuckold. A Shropshire proverb, in which there does not seem to be much point, says, "He that fetches a wife from Shrewsbury must carry her into Staffordshire, or else he shall live in Cumberland," with which may be compared the following old rhyme:--
"Women are born in Wiltshire,
Brought up in Cumberland,
Lead their lives in Bedfordshire,
Bring their husbands to Buckingham,
And die in Shrewsbury."
On the Kentish coast the white clouds which commonly bring rain are nicknamed "Folke Stone Washerwomen;" and in Cornwall we find the expression, "Grained like a Wellcombe woman;"--Wellcombe is about three miles from Morwenstow, the women in this neighbourhood being remarkably dark. At the present day, too, one may often hear the Sussex peasantry use the phrase, "Lithe as a lass of Kent," and in Northamptonshire a current expression used to be, "She is quite an Amy Florence."

Another old proverbial phrase which, at one time or another, has given rise to much discussion is, "As long as Meg of Westminster," which, says Ray, "is applied to persons very tall, especially if they have hopple height wanting breadth proportionately. But that there ever was," he adds, "such a giant woman cannot be proved by any good witness. I pass not for a late lying pamphlet, entitled, 'Story of a monstrous tall Virago called "Long Megg of Westminster,"' the writer of which thinks it might relate to a great gun lying in the Tower, called Long Megg, in troublesome times brought to Westminster, where for some time it continued."

Fuller, writing in 1662, says, "The large gravestone shown on the south side of the cloister in Westminster Abbey, said to cover her body, was placed over a number of monks who died of the plague, and were all buried in one grave."

Turning once more to Scotland, there is a small village named Ecclesmagirdle situated "under the northern slope of the Ochil Hills, and for some considerable part of the year untouched by the solar rays." Hence the following rhyme:--
"The lasses o' Exmagirdle
May very weel be dun;
For frae Michaelmas till Whitsunday,
They never see the sun."
Corncairn, situated in Banffshire, is an extensive and fertile district, adjacent to Cornhill, where the well-known Cornhill markets are held. It was long noted for the industry of its inhabitants and the thrift of its women, which seems to have given rise to the following folk-rhyme:--
"A' the wives o' Corncairn,
Drilling up their harn yarn;
They hae corn, they hae kye,
They have webs o' claith, for bye."
In Gilburn, Linlithgowshire, there is current a curious traditionary couplet. The story goes that an unfortunate lady lived with a Duke of Hamilton, very many years ago, at Kinneil House. She is said to have put an end to her existence by throwing herself from the walls of the castle into the deep ravine below, through which the Gilburn descends. Her spirit is supposed to haunt this glen; and it has long been customary for the children in the neibourhood, on dark and stormy nights, to say:--
"Lady, Lady Lilburn,
Hunts in the Gilburn."
But, it has been suggested, it is far more likely that Lady Lilburn was the wife of the celebrated Cromwellian colonel, who for a time occupied Kinneil House.

Similarly, a dishonest milk-woman at Shrewsbury, who is condemned to wander up and down Lady Studeley's Diche, in the Raven Meadow--now the Smithfield--is said to repeat this couplet:--
"Weight and measure sold I never,
Milk and water sold I ever";
which at Burslem, in the Stafford-shire, has been associated with an old witch, locally known as "Old Molly Lee."

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Red Haired Girls -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- by T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"The gold and topaz of the sun on snow
Are shade by the bright hair above those eyes."
WHY red hair has been at a discount in all ages has perplexed many a chronicler of fashion. Although, it is true, artists have more chivalrously depicted its beauty, the reverse is the case in literature. What poet, it may be asked, has ventured to sing of "the fair one with the ruddy ringlets" in the same way as the charms of the dark-haired maiden have been so often described?

Whereas the jetty ringlet or flaxen plait has won a thousand admirers, the red-haired girl has found herself persistently passed by. However good and attractive her features, and however graceful her gait may be, she has rarely found her praises acknowledged. Fashion, hitherto, has boycotted in a most unrelenting manner the girl with hair of reddish hue; and, despite the fact that in years gone by many beautiful women possessed tresses of this unaristocratic colour, it still remains unpopular.

It is useless to urge in its favour that Queen Elizabeth considered herself to make the best appearance when wearing a red wig, and that others, counting themselves stars of fashion, have been of the same opinion; for there is a deep-rooted and unaccountable prejudice against this much-abused shade of colour, which it is quite possible some unexpected freak of fashion may one day change. Indeed, from time immemorial, the girl so endowed by Nature has been, in most places, open to sarcasm, and rude unsympathetic passers-by have contemptuously spoken of "carrots" by way of a joke. An old epigram running thus:--

"Why scorn red hair? The Greeks, we know
(I note it here in Charity),
Had taste in beauty, and with them
The Graces were all 'Charital.'"
For years past barbers have advertised various compositions for altering the red shade of the hair, and some time ago a high German doctor and astrologer informed the public that he was blessed with a wife "who could make red hair as white as a lily."

A lady whose lover had an unconquerable antipathy to red hair once applied to a noted quack for help in her emergency, who politely answered:--"This is no business of mine, but my wife's, who'll soon redress your grievances and furnish you with a leaden comb, and my anti-Erythraean unguent, which after two or three applications will make you as fair, or as brown, as you please." According to an American newspaper paragraph, twenty-one men in Cincinnati, who had married red-haired women, were found to be colour blind, thus mistaking red for black.

But, going back to the antecedent history of this strange prejudice, it may be traced to a very early period. The Ancient Egyptians, for instance, seem to have been pre-eminent among all nations for their aversion to red-haired people. According to early authorities they were in the habit of annually performing the ceremony of burning alive an unfortunate individual whose only crime was the colour of his hair. "Fancy," as it has been remarked, "the state of mind into which every possessor of the obnoxious shade must have been thrown at the approach of the dreaded ceremony, each not knowing who might be selected as the victim."

From the epithets "red-haired barbarians" and "red-haired devils," with which the Chinese were formerly in the habit of designating the English, it is evident that with them a similar strong antipathy prevailed to this unfortunate, and ill-omened, colour of the hair.

On the other hand, the Romans, from the days of Nero to the present, have been unstinted in their praise of red hair--with the old Romans the colour more esteemed being a dark red, almost brown. Modern Romans, it is said, inherit "the tastes of their ancestors in this respect; and nowhere else on the face of the earth are so many red-haired women to be found as among the patrician families of Rome and Florence. The same liking exists among modern Greeks, who strive to accentuate the burnished effect of their reddish tresses by the wearing of dull gold ornaments."

The Laura whom Petrarch has immortalised attracted him by the colour of her tresses. He first saw her in church clad in a mantle of green, over which her golden red hair fell, which inspired him to write these lines:--

"The snare was set amidst those threads of gold
To which Love bound me fast,"
and in another of his songs he says of his lady-love's hair--

"The gold and topaz of the sun on snow
Are shade by the bright hair above those eyes."
Spanish artists look with no favour on a redhaired woman, and for two reasons. First, because red hair is in direct opposition to that of the Castilian women, who form the class ideal of feminine beauty to the people of that country. The second reason may be attributed to the old tradition which has led them always to portray Judas as a man with red hair. The same prejudice prevails in France, and Thiers, in his "Histoire des Perruques," gives this as one of the reasons for wearing a wig:--"Les rousseaux porterent des perruques pour cacher la couleur de leur cheveux, qui sont en horreur a tout le monde, parceque Judas, a ce qu'on prétend étoit rousseau." Hence there is an old French adage to this effect:--

"Homme roux et femme barbe,
Da trente pas loin le salue,
Avecques trois pierres au poing,
Pour t'en aider a ton besoign."
In our own country, the literature of past years contains many similar allusions. In "As You Like It," Rosalind, speaking of Orlando, says "His very hair is of the dissembling colour;" whereupon Celia replies, "Something browner than Judas's." Southey, in his "Vision of the Maid of Orleans," after having taken the poor girl to a number of unpleasant places, introduces her to the following disagreeable personage:--

"From thence they came
Where, in the next ward, a most wretched band
Groaned underneath the bitter tyranny
Of a fierce demon. His coarse hair was red,
Pale grey his eyes, and bloodshot, and his face
Wrinkled with such a smile as malice wears
In ecstasy."
This demon, of course, is Cruelty, into whose charge are committed all those who have been guilty of cruelty in their lifetime. Shirley, in his "Doubtful Heir," expresses the same idea, as also does Dryden, in his play of "Amboyna." Middleton, too, in his "Chaste Maid of Cheapside," has a similar allusion, showing how popular and widespread was the prejudice to this unfortunate colour; indeed, so much so, that there is some raason to think that the devil himself had occasionally this attribute bestowed upon him.

The Brahmins were forbidden to marry a red-haired woman; and, as it has been remarked, "the populace of most countries, confounding moral with aesthetic impressions, accuses red-haired people of various shortcomings." Hence, superstition has assigned to hair of a coppery tinge, when it adorns a woman's head, the worst traits; and "all the petty vices, all the lamentable shortcomings to which femininity is heir have been laid to the charge of the reddish crown." Of course this is only prejudice; and as the author of the "Ugly Girl Papers" writes, "I have seen a most obnoxious head of colour so changed by a few years' care that it became the admiration of the owner's friends, and could hardly be recognised as the withered, fiery locks once worn." At the same time there seems some truth in the common opinion that a red-haired girl is invariably self-conscious; for she knows that her hair, although it may not be of a fiery carrot colour, is the subject of daily comment.

Referring to the colour of the hair in folk-lore, we may note that from time immemorial there has been a strong antipathy to red hair, which, according to some antiquarians, originated in a tradition that Judas had hair of this colour. One reason, it has been suggested, why the dislike to it arose was that it was considered ugly and unfashionable, and on this account a person with red hair would soon be regarded with contempt. It has been conjectured, too, that the odiuu took its rise from the aversion to the red-haired Danes.

Yellow hair was, also, in years gone by, regarded with ill-favour, and almost esteemed a deformity, allusions to which prejudice are of constant occurrence; and, it may be added, that hair was often used metaphorically for the colour, complexion, or nature of a thing, as in Beaumont and Fletcher's "The Nice Valour"--

"A lady of my hair cannot want pitying."

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Woman's Secrets -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- by T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"Search not to find what lies too deeply hid,
Nor to know things whose knowledge is forbid.:
"TO a woman and a magpie tell what you would speak in the market-place," runs the Spanish proverb--the reason being that "a woman only keeps a secret what she does not know;" and therefore an old Latin maxim solemnly enjoins us "not to trust a woman even when dead." Thus Hotspur tells his wife in "I Henry IV." (act ii. sc. 3):--

"Constant you are,
But yet a woman, and for secrecy
No lady closer; for I well believe
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know,
And so far I will trust thee, gentle Kate;"
which, in other words, is equivalent to the well-known German adage, "A woman can't keep a secret, nor let any one else do it." But this maxim cannot be applied only to women, for, as it has been often remarked of secrets, both political and social, they are only too frequently made to be revealed, a truth illustrated by Bell Jonson's words in "The Case is Unaltered," wherein we find this passage:--

"A secret in his mouth
Is like a wild bird put into a cage,
Whose door no sooner opens but 'tis out."
But, whatever dependence is to be placed on a woman's reliability to keep to herself what is told in confidence, it has often been remarked that she can at least keep her own secret, a proof of which will be quickly found if any one question her on the subject of her age.

Apart from this exception, a secret in the keeping of a woman soon becomes what the Spanish are accustomed to call, "The Secret of Anchuelos," that is, one which is known to every one. The town of that name is situated in a gorge between two steep hills, on one of which a shepherd tended his flock, on the other a shepherdess. This pair kept up all amorous converse by bawling from hill to hill, but always with many mutual strict injunctions of secrecy.

The inability of a woman to keep silent what is told her in confidence--even where her husband be concerned--is exemplified in the once popular "He that tells his wife is but lately married"--her indiscretion in disclosing information entrusted to her only too frequently causing serious mischief; with which be compared the Tamil proverb, "Do not disclose your secret to your wife, nor trust your enemy at any time."

But "A wise woman hath a close mouth," which has its equivalent in the French saying, "Le plus sage se tait." According to another popular adage, "Discreet women have neither eyes nor ears," which also has its French parallel, "La femme de bien n'a ny yeux ny orelles."

A piece of proverbial lore which applies to each sex is this: "Tell your secret to your servant and you make him your master"--a maxim which may be traced to an early period when, says Kelly, "it was the policy of the Greek adventurers in Rome to worm out the secrets of the house, and so make themselves feared." Juvenal has referred to this practice:--

"Poor simple Corydon! do you suppose
Aught is kept secret that a rich man does?
If servants hold their tongues, the beasts will blab,
The dog, the door-posts, and the marble-slab."
Similarly, we find the same proverb on the Continent, "To whom you tell your secret you surrender your freedom;" or, according to another version, "Tell your friend your secret, and he will set his foot on your throat." And it may be remembered Dryden has introduced the same idea:--

"He who trusts a secret to his servant,
Makes his own man his master."
African folk-lore, too, introduces the same idea, and a popular proverb says, "If a man tells his secrets to his wife, she will bring him into the way of Satan," which, it has been remarked, is rather a strong contrast to the English proverb, "He who would thrive must ask his wife." And again, it is said, "Trust your dog to the end, a woman till the first opportunity."

As might be supposed, folk-lore, at one time or another, has made good use of the value attaching to secrets; and stories of the supernatural in romantic fiction have shown how the fair sex, under the influence of magical influences, have unknowingly revealed the most sacred secrets. But the moral of most of these tales is the same--and may be applied to either sex--the lesson conveyed being not to trust any one; for, as the French say, "the disclosure of a secret is the fault of him who first disclosed it"--a truth, indeed, which is only too constantly verified in daily life by mistaken trust in another.

Women, it is said, forget the important fact that as soon as a secret becomes the property of three persons it is all the world's, which is summed up in a common Spanish adage, "What three knows every creature knows;" whereas according to the French proverb, "The secret of two is God's secret." The same idea also exists in West Africa, where this proverb is current:" Trust not a woman; she will tell thee what she has just told her companion," and "Whatever be thy intimacy, never give thy heart to a woman."

Turning to some of the numerous folk-tales and legendary stories, in which "the secret" plays the important part, there is the famous one of Melusine, which has been told in many ways. Raymond, Count of Lusignan, was one day hunting the boar in the forest of Poitou, when, whilst wandering in the forest at nightfall through his boar having outstripped his train, he saw Melusine with her sisters, dancing by a fountain in the moonlight. Smitten with her beauty, he asked her to marry him, to which proposal she consented on condition that he would allow her to remain secret and unseen every Sunday. They were married, and her secret was kept until one of his friends suggested that she only desired privacy in order to indulge an adulterous passage.

Raymond thereupon burst into her secret chamber and discovered that she was doomed to have the lower part of her body transformed to that of a serpent every Saturday. The secret broken, she was compelled, henceforth, to leave her husband for ever, and to be totally transformed to a serpent. But her spirit continued to haunt the Castle of Lusignan before the death of any of the lords of that race.

Sometimes, on the other hand, the wife is the transgressor. In a North German story a wizard keeps a young girl by force as his wife. One day, accidentally, he lets out the secret that his soul resides in a bird, which is locked up in a church in a desert place, and that, until the bird is killed, he cannot die. The bird is killed by the girl's lover, and the wizard dies--a similar story being found in the "Arabian Nights."

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Love Tests -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- by T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"'Twas the maiden's matchless beauty
That drew my heart a-nigh;
Not the fern-root potion,
But the glance in her blue eye."
IT has been remarked that one of the grandest musical works in existence would never have been written had not Tristram and Ysonde drank the magic potion, which was so strong that it united them even after death; for from his grave there grew an eglantine, which twined about Ysonde's statue above, and, though three times they cut it down, it grew again, and ever wound its arms round the image of the fair Ysonde.

As a means of inspiring and securing love, amatory potions and love charms of all kinds have been much in request amongst the fair sex; and even, at the present day, cases occur now and again of persons being fined for either selling, or persuading lovesick damsels to purchase, various mysterious compounds for influencing the affections of others. Going back to early times, it is well known that the Roman poet Lucretius took his life in an amorous fit caused by a love potion, and Lucullus lost his reason in the same way. In the Middle Ages love-powders were advertised for sale, the pernicious effects of which became a matter of serious comment.

Shakespeare has represented Othello as winning Desdemona by such means--

"She is abused, stolen from me, and corrupted
By spells of medicines bought of mountebanks."
Formerly the village apothecary kept love-philtres among his stock of drugs; and Gay, in his "Shepherds' Week," tells how Hobnelia was guilty of resorting to this questionable practice:--

"As I was wont, I trudged, last market-day,
To town with new-laid eggs, preserved in hay;
I made my market long before 'twas night,
My purse grew heavy, and my basket light.
Straight to the 'pothecary shop I went,
And in love-powder all my money spent.
Behap what will, next Sunday, after prayers,
When to the ale-house Lubberkin repairs,
These golden flies into his mug I'll throw,
And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow."
Similarly, in the "Character or a Quack Astrologer," published in the year 1673, we are told how "He induces a young heiress to run away with a footman by persuading a young girl 'tis her destiny, and sells the old and ugly philtres and love-powder to procure them sweethearts."

In the preparation of the love-philtre, much importance has been attached to the ingredients used in its composition, certain plants and animals having been supposed to be specially adapted for such a purpose. Italian girls, for instance, still practise the following method: A lizard is caught, drowned in wine, dried in the sun, and reduced to powder, some of which is thrown on the obdurate man, who thenceforth is hers for evermore. A favourite Slavonic device with a lovesick girl, writes Mr. Fizick, in his "Romantic Love and Personal Beauty," "is to cut the finger, let a few drops of her blood run into a glass of beer, and make the adored man drink it unknowingly. The same method is current in Hesse and Oldenburg; and in Bohemia, the girl who is afraid to wound her finger may substitute a few drops of bat's blood."

Another form of this mode of procedure practised by girls on the Continent is this: "Take a holy wafer, but which has not yet been consecrated, write on it certain words from the ring-finger, and then let a priest say five masses over it; divide the wafer into two equal parts, of which keep one, and give the other to the person whose love you desire to gain."

Flowers have been much in request as love-philtres, a favourite one having been the pansy. Oberon tells Puck to place a pansy on the eyes of Titania in order that on awaking she may fall in love with the first object she meets:--

"Fetch me that flower--the herb I showed thee once;
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid
Will make a man, or woman, madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees."
Vervain has long been in repute as a love-producer, and in many rural districts has the reputation amongst the fair sex of securing affection from those who take it to those who administer it. Another ingredient of the amatory potion once highly prized was cumin-seed. It is still popular with country lasses in Italy, who endeavour to make their sweethearts swallow it in order to insure their continued attachment and fidelity. Or if the lover is going to serve as a soldier, or has obtained employment in a distant part of the country, his lady-love gives him a newly-made loaf seasoned with cumin, or some wine in which cumin has been previously powdered and mixed.

Another mystic plant is the basil, which in Moldavia is said to stop the wandering youth on his way, and to make him love the maiden whose hand he happens to accept a sprig. Indeed, rarely does the Italian girl pay a visit to her sweetheart without wearing behind her ear a sprig of this favourite plant. The Mandrake, which is still worn in France as a love-charm, was formerly in demand by English girls for the same purpose, because, writes Gerarde, "It hath been thought that the root hereof serveth to win love." He also speaks of the carrot as "Serving for love matters," and adds that the root of the wild species is more effectual than that of the garden.

The root of the male-fern was, in days gone by, much sought for in the preparation of love-philtres, and hence the following allusion:--

"'Twas the maiden's matchless beauty
That drew my heart a-night;
Not the fern-rood potion,
But the glance of her blue eye."
With Indian women the mango is a favourite plant in love matters. Tradition tells how once upon a time a young girl plucked one of its blossoms, and offered it to Cupid, uttering these words:--

"God of the bow, who with spring's choicest flowers
Dost point the five unerring shafts; to thee
I dedicate this blossom; let it serve
To barb thy truest arrow; be its mark
Some youthful heart that pines to be beloved."
The jasmine, too, is reputed to be all potent in love matters; and it may be remembered how Moore represents the enchantress Namouna, who was skilled in all manner of charms and talismans, instructing Nourmahal to gather at midnight certain blossoms which would have the effect, when twined into a wreath, of recalling her Selim's love. Accordingly, the flowers having been duly gathered as directed, the enchantress Namouna, whilst singing the following invocatory lines, weaves the mystic chaplet which is to have such wondrous influence:--

"The image of love, that nightly flies
To visit the bashful maid,
Steals from the jasmine flower, that sighs
Its soul, like hers, in the shade.
The dream of a future, or happier, hour
That alights on misery's brow,
Springs out of the almond silvery flower,
That blooms on a leafless bough."
Beans, again, are said to have been accounted efficacious by women as love-producers. An amusing case is recorded of an old woman who was scourged through the streets of Cremona for having endeavoured to conciliate the affections of a young man through the medium of some beans over which mass had been said. In short, all kinds of ingredients appear to have been used in the preparation of these amatory spells, and it is recorded how a young woman, in the seventeenth century, was indicted by the legal authorities of Leipsic for administering a love-philtre composed of bread, hair, and nails to a man whom it seriously affected.

Occasionally confidence was reposed in the power of written charms which were administered in drink, or food, to the person whose love it was desired to secure. Thus the story is told how a young man, passionately enamoured of a damsel of Gaza, having failed in the usual amatory charms, repaired to the priests of Aesculapius, at Memphis, from whom he acquired mystic powers. On returning after a year's absence, he introduced certain magical words and figures cut on Cyprian brass beneath the lady's door. The contrivance had the desired effect, for soon she began to rave on his name, "to wander with uncovered head, and dishevelled hair, for she had become distracted through the vehemence of love."

But cases of this kind were not always attended with the same success. We are told, for instance, how a Norwegian peasant, whose suit had been rejected, sought to inspire the lady he loved with corresponding affection by mystical means. So he carved Runic characters on pieces of wood; but not being sufficiently skilful in this mode of talismanic science, instead of furthering his purpose he threw the damsel into a dangerous illness. Fortunately, a Northern Chief witnessing his sufferings, and, hearing that Runic characters had been carved, sculptured those that he considered more appropriate, which, being placed beneath her pillow, soon restored her again to convalescence.

It is clear that there have been no lack of expedients either for inspiring or dispelling love, many an amusing instance being given in our old romances and folk-tales. It is a Basque superstition that yellow hair in a man is irresistible with a woman; hence every woman who set eyes on Ezkabi Fidel, the golden-haired, fell in love with him. We may compare a curious Irish piece of folk-lore which has long been practised. If a lover will run a hair of the object he loved through the fleshy part of a dead man's leg, the person from whom the hair is taken will go mad with love.

Such a practice may seem ludicrous, but it cannot be forgotten how great a hold it has on the female mind. How far this was originally due to the stories circulated is a matter of uncertainty; but it is generally admitted that tales dealing with the mystic powers of love, and handed down with every semblance of truth, have, in times past, largely helped to propagate a piece of folly which has been productive of so many mischievous effects.

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Woman's Hate -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"Not even the soldiers' fury, raised in war,
The rage of tyrants when defiance stings 'em!
The pride of priests, so bloodless when in power,
Are half so dreadful as a woman's vengeance."





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Woman's Love -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"There is no paradise on earth equal to the union of love and innocence."--ROUSSEAU.

ACCORDING to Lord Byron, "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'tis woman's whole existence;" and under a thousand images the poets of all ages have depicted her as a mysterious mixture of joy and sadness, of agony and delight. But the truth of the well-known apothegm cannot be denied, "'Tis love, 'tis love that makes the world go round," for:--

"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love."
It is only natural that much should have been written on woman's love--that inexhaustible theme which will continue to hold its sway till the end of time; for, as it was long ago said, "A woman will dare anything when she loves or hates." And yet, strange to say, it must be acknowledged the love of woman has always been more or less enigmatical in the eyes of man, on account of its only too often eccentric and contradictory nature. Thus Middleton speaks of love's strange antics:--

"Love is ever sick, and yet is never dying,
Love is ever true, and yet is ever lying;
Love does doat in liking, and is mad in loathing:
Love, indeed, is anything; yet, indeed, is nothing."
Southwell describes a woman's loving looks as "murdering darts," and elsewhere he says:--

"She offereth joy, but bringeth grier,
A kiss--where she doth kill."
The hesitancy with which a woman furtively, and oftentimes playfully, tries to conceal her love by a slight cough, has from an early period been humorously recognised in proverbial love, as in the old adage, "Love and a cough cannot be hid," the Latin equivalent of which is, "Amor tussis que non celantur," versions of which are to be met with in French and Italian proverbs. Similarly we may compare the proverb:--

"When a musician hath forgot his note,
He makes as though a crumb stuck in his throat."
Thackeray has described "the delights and tortures, the jealousy and wakefulness, the longing and raptures, the frantic despair and elation, attendant upon the passion of love;" and, indeed, volumes might be written illustrative of the mysterious workings of woman's love, although Alphonse Karr went so far as to affirm: "Women for the most part do not love us. They do not choose a man because they love him, but because it pleases them to be loved by him." But, whatever may have been written descriptive of love, its influence is indisputable, and as the Scotch say, "Love is as warm amang cottars as courtiers;" and, as it has been truly said:--

"The rose blooms gay on shairney brae,
As weel's in briken shaw;
And love will lowe in cottage low,
As weel's in lofty ha';"
with which may be compared the English equivalent, "Love lives in cottages as well as in courts."
Proverbial literature naturally has much to say on the power of a woman's love, and, according to a popular French adage, "Love subdues all but the ruffian's heart;" and history abounds in illustrations of this maxim, which under a variety of forms is found all over the world, one of the best-known versions being, "Love rules his kingdom without a sword."

And yet it is agreed that woman's love is only too frequently far from kind, for, as it was proverbially said by our forefathers, "Love is a sweet tyranny, because the lover endureth his torments willingly." The French have a proverb to the same effect: "He who has love in his heart has spurs in his sides," the chief reason for this being the anxiety of the fair sex to show their mastery over man; for, like St. Augustine, they have always been of opinion that "he that is not jealous is not in love." Hence a woman is fond of testing her lover's faith by kindling his jealousy, adhering to the time-honoured proverb, "There is no love without jealousy." On the other hand, we are told that "Love expels jealousy," and, according to an Italian belief, "It is better to have a husband without love than with jealousy," which calls to mind Iago's words ("Othello," act iii. sc. 3):--

"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy,
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on."
But jealousy is not confined to either sex, for--

"The venom clamours of a jealous woman
Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth."
But it is generally agreed that there is nothing worse than a jealous woman, and a piece of African proverbial wisdom tells us that "a jealous woman has no flesh upon her breast; for, however much she may feed upon jealousy, she will never have enough."

And yet, although French romance is full of the tortures which lovers have experienced from the fair sex, it is said:--

"Amour, tous les autres plaisirs
Ne valent pas tes peines,"
Which has been translated thus: "O Love, thy pains are worth more than all other pleasures"--a statement which is much open to doubt.

Again, woman's love when it "comes apace" is to be avoided as untrustworthy and likely as suddenly to wane; on which account it is commonly said, "Hasty love is iron hot and iron cold." In "Ralph Roister Doister," written about the year 1550, Christian Custance says: "Gay love, God save it! So soon hot, so soon cold." But the love which lasts is that recommended in one of Heywood's proverbs, "Love me little, love me long," which Hazlitt mentions as the title of an old ballad licensed to W. Griffith in 1569-1570.

Woman's love has ever been open to reproach as being fickle and unstable, and Southey, quoting the popular sentiment, says:--

"There are three things a wise man will not trust,
The wind, the sunshine of an April day,
And woman's plighted faith;"
further instances of which trait of character will be found elsewhere, where we have dealt with the fickleness of the fair sex. But the swain who is disheartened by his lady-love's coquetry, and is afraid of losing her through excessive wooing, folk-lore admonishes him thus:--

"Follow love and it will flee;
Flee love, and it will follow thee."
Indeed satirists have long since told us, in most countries, the folly of believing in a woman's expression of love, as "the last suitor wins the maid"--an adage which has also been expressed in this proverbial couplet:--

"The love of a woman and a bottle of wine,
Are sweet for a season and last for a time."
and it has been suggested that it was owing to woman's fickleness that the saying originated, "Happy is the wooing that is not long in doing"--the prudent man thereby not giving her the opportunity of changing her mind.

But fickle and unstable as a woman's love probably may be, there is no gainsaying its power, and in China it is said of a woman who captivates a man, "With one smile she overthrows a city; with another a kingdom." According to the popular tradition this proverb originated in the following circumstance:--A certain lady named Hsi-Shih, the concubine of Fu Cha, King of the ancient State of Wu. She was eminently beautiful, and her beauty so captivated her lord that for her sake he neglected the affairs of his kingdom, which in consequence fell into disorder and ruin.

Whatever the value either of a woman's love or beauty, the folk-tales of most countries agree in one respect--the exacting conditions demanded of the suitor, as a price for gaining his heart's desire, although, under a variety of forms, the subjoined couplet is no doubt founded on the experience of womanhood:--

"Lads' love is lassies' delight,
And if lads don't love, lasses will flite [scold]."
And yet, according to a common piece of West African wisdom, "If thou givest thy heart to a woman she will kill thee." Wanting in chivalry, as many such proverbs are, there is one current in China, the truth and wisdom of which most persons will endorse: "Where true love exists between husbands and wives, they're happily joined to the end of their lives."

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Bad Women -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"A worthless woman! Mere cold clay
As false things are! but so fair,
She takes the breath of man away
Who gaze upon her unaware."
Bianca among the Nightingales.
ACCORDING to the trite old adage, "Man, woman, and the devil are the three degrees of comparison," for it has long been agreed that when a woman is bad she far excels man in evil, a maxim which has been upheld by the proverb lore of most countries; a Chinese proverb affirming that "there is no such poison in the green snake's mouth, of the hornet's sting, as in a woman's heart;" and the Italians say that "it is better to irritate a dog than a bad woman," which is similar to the German sayng, "An ill-tempered woman is the devil's door-nail." According to a familiar adage:--

"A wicked woman and an evil
Is three-halfpence worse than the devil,"
which is to the same effect as the oft-quoted proverb, "A woman and her servant, acting in accord, would outwit a dozen devils;" or, as another version has it, "A woman is some nine points worse than the devil," being much to the same purport as the Italian proverb, "Women know a point more than the devil;" and to Congreve's adaptation of Ovid's lines:--

"Would you increase the craft of womankind,
Teach them new wiles and arts? As well you may
Instruct a snake to bite or wolf to prey;"
all of which may be supplemented by Victor Hugo's words, "Men are women's playthings, women are the devil's;" for as our own proverb says, "She-devils are hard to turn."

In the "Hitopadesa,"--one of the choice treasure-houses of Sanskrit wisdom, it is declared that, "Infidelity, violence, deceit, envy, extreme avariciousness, a total want of qualities, with impurity, are the innate faults of womankind;" with which may be compared Goethe's views, "When we speed to the devil's house woman takes the lead by a thousand steps;" and there is a Sinhalese adage, "If you want to go to the gallows without the aid of a ladder, you can go by the aid of a woman."

There is a proverbial saying in Leicestershire, "Shay's as nasty as a devil unknobbed," i.e., a devil who has either never had any knobs fastened on his horns, or else has succeeded in getting rid of them; the phrase illustrating the bovine character of the popular devil; all of which statements recall the passage in Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of Monsieur Thomas (act iii. sc. 1):--

"Oh, woman, perfect woman! what distraction
Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!
What an inviting hell invented."
According to Hindustani proverbial lore, "the elder sister-in-law is the devil's wand, when you see her she stands as straight as an arrow," the meaning being that she is the chief disturber of the family peace; and by a well-known Oriental adage a very bad woman is spoken of as "the devil's aunt." Marathi proverbial wisdom says that "in one fair woman there are seventy-two hidden vices," and that when she has had her fill of wickedness she takes to religion, and we may quote the Sindhi proverb, "Women, land, and money are all three homes of death"--In other words, they are the causes of many murders. An old Latin proverb goes so far as to say that "when a woman is openly bad she is then at her best;" another one illustrating the same idea in a different wording, "A wicked woman is a magazine of evils." It is further said that "it is better to dwell with a dragon than with a wicked woman and there is some truth in this warning if the subjoined couplet be correct:--

"For woman's soul when once plunged in
Knows no stopping place in sin."
Alexander Dumas puts into the mouth of an officer of the Paris detective force the well-known expression, "Cherchez la femme"--"Search for the women"--which corresponds with our saying, "Wherever there is anything wrong there is generally a woman in the case," or as Richardson says, "A plot must have a woman in it." Sardou, it may be remembered, introduces the phrase in his drama "Ferréol and George Ebers ("Uarda," vol. ii. cap. 14) says:--

"You forget that there is a woman in this.
That is so all the world over, replied Ameni."
Sometimes the expression takes the form of, "Ou est la femme?"--"Where is the woman? Where is she? What is her name?"

Again, it is said, "Women are saints in the church, angels in the street, devils in the kitchen, and apes in bed," a saying which, says Hazlitt, "is rather elaborately illustrated in Jacques Olivier's work entitled 'L'Alphabet de l'Imperfection des Femmes,' which was first published about the year 1617;" and which reminds us of the adage, "Women are demons who make us enter hell through the gates of Paradise." There are many proverbs to the same purport, some of which are couched in stronger language than others. Thus one much used, in days gone by, amongst the peasantry throughout the country says:--

"A woman that is wilful is a plague of the worst;
As well live in hell as with a wit that is curst."
And, owing to the fact that the fair sex have from the earliest period been regarded as mischievous, we find them styled "the devil's tools" and "the devil's nets"--a host of other uncomplimentary epithets having been applied to them for which, it must be acknowledged, there is little or no warranty. Pope says, "Every woman is at heart a rake," and Lord Lytton in his "Lady of Lyons":--

"Thou art the author
Of such a book of follies in a man,
That it would need the tears of all the angels,
To blot the record out!"
with which may be compared the popular saying, "When a woman thinks by herself she thinks of evil," and with the Italian saying, "It is vain to watch a really bad woman." There can be no doubt, however, that in many of the allusions of this kind relating to women justice has not been done to them, and there is some reason in the proverb of the Italian sisterhood, "In men every mortal sin is venial; in women every venial sin is mortal."
Amongst some of the bad qualities condemned in women, and against which man is warned in our proverbial literature, may be mentioned intemperance, and loose morals. According to one folk-rhyme--

"Women and wine, game, and deceit,
Make the wealth small, and the wants great"--
which is told in various ways. In an old manuscript of the fifteenth century five evils to be avoided are thus summed up:--

"A young man a ruler, reckless;
An old man a lecher, loveless;
A poor man a waster, good-less;
A rich man a thief, needless;
A woman a ribald, shameless:
These five shall never thrive blameless."
Another version evidently of this old proverbial maxim communicated to Current Notes for December, 1853, runs thus:--

"A wife that is unchaste is like a filthy sow;
An old man a lecher nothing more to be hated;
A woman unshamefast, a child unchastised,
Is worse than gall, where poison is undesired."
Similarly one of Heywood's proverbs tells us how--

"Gaming, women, and wine,
While they laugh, they make men pine;"
with which may be compared the adage, "Play, women, and wine undo men laughing;" or, as another version has it, "Women, money, and wine, have their good and their pine." But the illustrations already given show that some of the most severe strictures passed on women are those which relate to unchastity, one or two further instances of which we subjoin:--

"An unchaste wife, working mischief still,
Is oft compared to a foul dunghill."

"A woman that spins in vice
Has her smock full of lice."
Again, we are told that "A fair woman without virtue is like palled wine;" an Arabian version being, "An immodest woman is food without bait;" or, as it is thus said in some country villages, "A fair woman with foul conditions is like a sumptuous sepulchre, full of corruption;" and further, "She that loseth her modesty and honesty hath nothing else worth losing;" reminding us of the warning often given to those about to get married, "A fair face may be a foul bargain," inasmuch as--

"There cannot be a greater clog to man,
Than to be weary of a wanton woman."
The Scotch say, "Ye may drive the deil into a wife, but ye'll ne'er ding him oot o' her," implying that when a woman is once bad there is no chance of reclaiming her; and hence we cannot be surprised at the German proverb, "A bag of fleas is easier to keep guard over than a woman."

But, whether we regard women as good or bad, it is generally agreed they surpass man in either case, for, as the French say, "Women, ever in extremes, are always either better or worse than men," with which may be compared the following lines in Lord Tennyson's "Idylls," "Merlin and Vivien":--

"For men at most differ as Heaven and Earth,
But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell."
Occasionally old local rhymes allude in somewhat uncomplimentary language to the bad qualities of the fair sex. The island of Iona is separated from Mull by a strait about a mile long. An islet close to the Mull shore opposite the ruins of Iona is designated "The Woman's Island," owing to a tradition of Columba that he would not allow a woman or a cow to remain on his own island. The reason assigned for this ungracious command is embodied in an old folk-rhyme:--

"Where there is a cow,
There will be a woman;
And where there is a woman,
There will be mischief"--
a saying which, we are told, is in certain parts of Scotland repeated as a good-humoured satire on women.

It has long been admitted, even by those who disparage women's virtues, that her memory is excellent when she is anxious to keep anything in mind, and hence it is said that "if a woman has any malicious mischief to do her memory is immortal." Proverbial wisdom, again, tells how worthless and unprincipled women often amuse themselves by dissimulation, even going so far as to feign love: an apt illustration of such sham love from Hindustani proverb runs thus, "I'll love him and I'll caress him and I'll put fire under him; if it burn him what can I do?" and there is a well-known Arabic adage which warns us that, " omen's immorality and monks' wiles are to be dreaded."

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Woman's Goodness -- The Folk-Lore of Women -- by T.F. Thistelton-Dyer

"And whether coldness, pride, or virtue dignify
A woman, so's she's good what does it signify!"
BYRON, Don Juan.
IF we are to believe an old German proverb, "there are only two good women in the world: one of them is dead, and the other is not to be found"--a statement which probably even few disparagers of the fair sex would be ready to accept, although it may be supplemented by an equally ungallant French saying which asserts that "a man of straw is worth a woman of gold."

But it must be remembered that, in formulating maxims of this kind, individual prejudice has in only too many cases been responsible for originating them, and, despite their having in the course of years passed into proverbs, they must not always be regarded as expressive of the consensus of opinion of the country to which they belong. Thus, going back to an early period, Ovid was of opinion that "it is easy for a woman to be good when all that hinders her from being so is removed;" and, although an old English proverb says, "All women are good," it qualifies this assertion by cautiously adding, "good for something, or good for nothing;" but the Hindu proverb declares that "oil and the pure woman will both rise."

With all due deference to the fair sex, it must unfortunately be acknowledged that much of the proverbial lore under this heading relating to them is far from being of a complimentary nature, as who, for instance, has not heard of the familiar adage:--

"If a woman were as little as she is good,
A peascod would make her a gown and a hood;"
and, "She's a good maid, but for thought, word, and deed." And this estimate of woman's worth has been largely endorsed by those who have generally been credited with having possessed some knowledge of human life. Thus Pope says:--

"Shouldst thou search the spacious world around,
Yet one good woman is not to be found;"
and Massinger speaks in the same strain:--

"How sweetly sounds the voice of a good woman.
It is so seldom heard that, when it speaks,
It ravishes all senses."
But, confining ourselves more especially to the proverbial lore of the subject, the Spanish warn a man to "beware of a bad woman, and to put no trust in a good one;" and according to an African proverb, "a woman never brings a man into the right way." Plautus, too, was of the same opinion, remarking, "He that can avoid women, let him do so, so as to take care each day not to do what he may regret on the morrow."
The scarcity of good women is often illustrated by such adages as the following:--

"A good woman is worth--if she were sold--
The fairest crown that's made of pure gold"
--the idea, of course, being that such a woman is not to be found; with which may be compared the couplet:--

"Show me a man without a spot,
And I'll show you a maid without a blot."
Again, the familiar couplet:--

"A spaniel, a woman, and a walnut tree,
The more they're beaten the better they be,"
may be traced back as far as Martial. There are several versions of this time-honoured maxim, one of which is furnished by Moor in his "Suffolk Words" (p. 465):--

"Three things by beating better prove--
A nut, an ass, a woman:
The cudgel from their back remove,
And they'll be good for no man."
Webster, in his "White Devil" (1612, act iv. sc. 4), had the same proverb in mind when he made Flamineo say:--

"Why do you kick her, say?
Do you think that she's like a walnut tree?
Must she be cudgell'd ere she bear good fruit?"
And at the present day the Italians are wont to affirm, "Women, asses, and nuts require rough hands;" with which may be compared the Chinese adage, "Nothing will frighten a wilful wife but a beating." Such chastisement of women was really carried into effect in the so-called days of chivalry, as may be inferred from the precepts of the knightly orders which directed that ladies should be treated respectfully and tenderly. And yet, on the other hand, as it has been pointed out, "the social annals of our Anglo-Saxon period comprise revolting stories of the barbarity of mistresses to their slaves; and in later times the lady of a castle or manorial seat was accustomed to rule her children and domestics with a severity surpassing that of the lord whom she obeyed with fear." But happily woman no longer lives under the lash as in the days of long ago, and, no matter how bad her character may be--

"The man who lays his hand upon a woman,
Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch,
Whom 'twere gross flattery to name a coward."
Indeed, he would be a bold man who, nowadays, would think to follow out with impunity the spirit of the old proverbial philosophy, and, under the impression that he was making his wife a good woman, put into practice the following admonition:--

"The crab of the wood is sauce very good
For the crab of the sea;
But the wood of the crab is sauce for a drab
That will not her huband obey."
The same idea is embodied in numerous other items of proverbial lore, such as "A ship and a woman want always trimming;" or, as another version has it, "Women are ships and must be manned." But this apparently does not always answer, for, as an old folk-rhyme reminds us:--

"To talk well with some women doth as much good
As a sick man to eat up a load of greenwood."
And, a propos of the subject, we may quote the case of the young girl who, on receiving an offer of marriage which she wished to accept, submitted the matter to her father, who advised her against matrimony, using as an argument St. Paul's words, "They who marry do well; but they who do not, do better." "Well," replied the damsel, "I love to do well; let those do better who can."

The Scotch would appear to be more gallant in their opinion of the fair sex, if we can place reliance on the following adage:--

"A' are gude lasses, but where do the ill wives come frae?" --a saying which has its equivalent in Spain, where there is a proverb, "All are good maids, but whence come the bad wives?"

Even the good woman is warned against the contaminating influence of her own sex, for, as an Eastern piece of proverbial lore tells us, "A good woman, beset by evil women, is like the chaste mimosa surrounded by poisonous herbs"--Illustrations of which maxim under a variety of forms are to be met with in most countries; a popular Oriental adage warning us that "bad company is friendship with a snake fencing with a sword." But it has been generally held that "as the woman, so her friends," an Osmandi proverb reminding us that "the life of a good woman is shown by her companions."

Equivocal as many of the proverbial sayings are when speaking of woman's goodness, it may be noted that the reverse is invariably the case in the folk-tales and legends which have immortalised in a hundred and one ways their deeds of bravery and self-denial. At Lilliard's Edge, for instance, in Roxburghshire, was fought, in 1545, the battle of Ancrum Moor, in which, according to tradition, a female warrior named Lilliard, when covered with wounds, continued to fight on the Scotch side, in the name of Squire Witherington. Buried on the field of victory, a stone was raised to her good memory, on which were written these words:--

"Fair Maiden Lilliard lies under the stane,
Little was her stature, but great was her fame;
Upon the English loons she laid mony thumps,
And when her legs were cuttit off, she fought upon her stumps."
Folk-lore can boast of numerous historic rhymes of this class, and elsewhere we have alluded to some of the old Church builder's legends which owe their origin to the marvellous efforts of noble and good women. Thus, to give one example, a pretty legend is told of the building of Linton Church, which is situated on a little knoll of fine, compact sand, without any admixture of stone, even pebbles, and widely different from the soil of the neighbouring heights. The sand has, however, hardened into stone, yet the particles are so coherent that the sides of ready-made graves appear smooth as a wall to the depth of fifteen feet. This singular phenomenon is thus accounted for by the local tradition: Many, many years ago a young man killed a priest, and was condemned to death for murder and sacrilege. By the intervention of two good women--his two sisters--his life was spared on condition that they should sift as much sand as would form a mound on which to build a church.

The maidens undertook the task, but on their brother's liberation at the completion of the church one of them died immediately "either from the effects of past fatigue, or overpowering joy."

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