Volume 1

A glossary, or, Collection of words, phrases, names, and allusions to customs, proverbs, etc., which have been thought to require illustration, in the works of English authors, particularly Shakespeare, and his contemporaries / [Robert Nares].

  • Robert Nares
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A glossary, or, Collection of words, phrases, names, and allusions to customs, proverbs, etc., which have been thought to require illustration, in the works of English authors, particularly Shakespeare, and his contemporaries / [Robert Nares]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    When men, without cloaths, »o naked and have, And cuckolds forget to march to Horn-fair; When an old face shall please as well as a new, Wives, husbands, and lovers will ever he true. Newest Acad,, of Compliments. Nowr in small time conies on Horn-fair, Your horns and ladles how prepare ; While some that go to see the sport. Come home with broken noddles for’t. Poor Rohin, 1730. Now' weddings are in season, and may be had with- out a licence, if you cause sufficient notice to be given; but before that is done, both partys ought to be agreed, and lie well satisfied that they love one another ; for if the woman love not the man as well as he loves her, it will be but half a wedding, and perhaps the worst half too; for in that case,although she may consent to take water with him at Union- stairs to be married, yet she may afterwards fall down and land him at Cuckold’s-point, and make him take his next night’s lodging at Horn-fair, with a breakfast after it that may ride upon his crop as long as he lives, or at least as long as they both live together. Poor Robin, 1733. HORN-THUMB. A nick-name for a pick-pocket. This quaint term has been well illustrated by Mr. Gifford, from whose edition of Ben Jonson the following illustrations of it are taken. It alludes to an old expedient of pick-pockets, or cut- purses, who were said to place a case or thimble of horn on their thumbs, to resist the edge of their knife, in the act of cutting purses. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe of booty, boy, a cut-purse. Bart. Fair, act ii, p. 413. But cosin, bicause to that office ye may not come. Frequent your exercises :—a home on your thuvnbe, A quick eye, a sharp knight. Cambises, 0. PI. We also give for our arms three whetstones in gules, with no difference, and upon our creste, a left hand, with a home upon the thunibe, and a knife in the liande. Moral Dialogue, by W. Bulleyn. HOROLOGE. A clock; from the Latin horologium. He’ll watch the horologe a double set* If drink rock not his cradle. Othello, ii, 3. The cock, the country horologe, that rings The chearful warning to the sun’s awake. Missing the dawning scantles in bis wings. And to his roost doth sadly him betake. Drayton’s Moses, B. ii, p. 1594. HORSE-COURSER, properly HORSE- SCOURSER. A horse-dealer. See Scourse. Equorum mango. Coles. Junius was wrong in deriving it from the Scotch word cose; it is from the English word scorse, to exchange, and means literally a horse-changer. See Scorse. Hence Coles has also horse-coursing, equorum jpermutatio. Abr. Fleming thus defines it: “Man- go equorum, a horse scorser; he that buyeth horses, and putteth them awav again by chopping and chang- ing.” Nomencl., p. 514, a. The horse-courser in Ben Jonson’s Bar- tholomew Fair, and that described in Overbury’s Characters (51), are evi- dently horse-dealers, and nothing else. From Whalley’s note on Barth. Fair, act iii, sc. 4, it appears that the word was familiar to him in this sense, though now quite disused. See Johnson, who instances the word from Wiseman and L’Estrange. He that lights upon ahorse, in this place [Smithfield], from an old horse-courser, sound both in wind and limb, may light of an honest wife in the stews. D. Lupton’s London, Harl. Misc., ix, p. 317. Their provender, though divers horse-coursers, that live by sale of horse, do feed them with sodden rie, or beanemeale sod, pampering them up, that they may be the fairer to the eie; yet it is not good foode to labour with B. Googe on Husbandry, B. iii, 120, b. HORSELEECH; from leech, in the sense of surgeon. A horse-doctor or farrier. Or if the horseleach would adventure to minister a potion to a sicke patient, in that hee hath knowledge to give a drench to a diseased horse, he would make himself an asse. Fuphues, Epist. Ded., A 2, b. HORSE-LOAVES,andHORSE-BREAD. A peculiar sort of bread, made for feeding horses. It appears to have been formerly much more common than at present to give bread to horses; for which reason we often read of horse-loaves, &c. The receipts for making these loaves are given in various books on hunting. Thus in G. Markham’s book on the hunting- horse : The next food, which is somewhat stronger and better is bread thus made: take two bushels of'good clean beans and one bushel of wheat, and grind them together; then, through a fine range, holt out the quantity of two pecks of pure meal, and bake it in two or three loaves by itself; and the rest sift through a meal sive, and knead it with water, and good store of barme, and so bake it in great loaves, and with the courser bread feed your horse in his rest, and with the finer against the days of sore labour. Book i, p. 52. Another receipt is in the Gentleman’s Recreation, on the hunting-horse, p. 49, which is also made of one part wheat and two parts beans, and directed to be made into “great household peck loaves—to avoid crust.” So also the Northumberland Household Book. This kind of food is particularly re- commended to strengthen the animal, which effect is still attributed to com- mon bread : On that I were in my oat-tub, with a horse-loaf. Something to hearten me. B. and FI. Night Walker, v, 1.