¹ To the making of this collection the University of Michigan, the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Oxford University Press, and the Philological Society of England have all contributed.

² Bk. iii, c. xv., ed. Montague Summers (London, 1930), p. 37.

³ DNB, s.v. Robert Parsons.

⁴ A Briefe Apologie (1601), p. 91 (quoted here from the transcript of Mr. Powell). His research on the career of Father Parsons brought an enquiry to Professor Fries as to “dycing fly” (see LTLS June 27 and August 1, 1935).

⁵ Foley, Henry, S. J., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London, 1880), vi, 677 ff. Mr. Powell cites other editions in Andrews' Orthodox Journal, ii, 123; and Catholic Record Society, ii, (1906), 38 (ed. J. H. Pollen).

⁶ This is misread as “fey” in all three editions, as Mr. Powell discovered.

⁷ Vide the accounts of his leaving Balliol cited in the DNB (where judgment on the conflicting accounts is suspended).

⁸ Athenæ Oxonienses (London, 1691), i, 740.

⁹ Shepherd's Calender, ed. W. L. Renwick (London, 1930), p. 201. I owe this fact to Professor Tilley, who also directed me to the discussion of the “dicing fly” in The Alchemist (not recognizable from the abbreviated citation in OD, s.v. fly).

¹⁰ Hazlitt-Dodsley, Old English Plays, 4th ed. (London, 1875), xii, 249 (ex. edit., 1651).

¹¹ I cite the edition of The Alchemist in Yale Studies, ed. C. M. Hathaway (New York, 1903). For a possible relation of Jonson's plot to the scandal of Squier's “fly,” cf. a contemporary letter from a fellow of Christ Church which seems to describe (bitterly) a performance of the play as taking place at Oxford in the autumn of 1610. It is said to have been once hissed; see Hathaway, p. 246.

¹² Mr. Powell points out, in notes on this subject, sent for our use, that these lines show that “the buyer got something visible for his money-presumedly something in the nature of our modern mascots.” In this connection he cites The Knave of Clubs, by S. Rowlands, brought to his attention by Mr. Percy Simpson (who kindly looked up his as yet unpublished commentary on the Alchemist):

A craftier knaue then he (of late) An artificiali flie of silke,

Had got him on the hip, (a devili with a pox)

Which sould him a familier sprite, For this my Gull giues twenty pound.

A devili in a box, (Sig-D_z^v)

I cite the reprint of the edition of 1609 (Hunterian Club, 1872). Cf. also Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchie of the blessed Angells (London, 1635), p. 475: “These kindes of familiar Spirits are such as they include or keepe in Rings hallowed, in Viols, Boxes, and Caskets.”

¹³ Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, 1929), p. 179.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 180; Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), Works, ed. McKerrow, R. B., (London, 1904), ii, 233.

¹⁵ See p. 499, n. 55. For many cases of an insect as familiar or as associated with bewitching, cf. the records of prosecutions in Suffolk, 1645 (Ewen, C. L'Estrange, Witch-Hunting and Witch Trials, [London, 1929], pp. 291 ff.). It is characteristic of the selective character of the quotations from the vast material for witchcraft, used by different authors, that Miss M. A. Murray, who offers as consecutive an account of familiars as any, gives no reference to insect forms for such. See The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford, 1921). All sorts of other small creatures are pictured amongst the “imps” of a witch in pictures from a manuscript of 1621 reproduced by Mr. Ewen (op. cit.). For insect-familiars see also Professor Notestein, History of Witchcraft in England, Amer. Hist. Assn. (1901), pp. 175, 263, etc.

¹⁶ See Latham, M. W., The Elizabethan Fairies (New York, 1930), pp. 176 ff.

¹⁷ Berdan, J. M., The Poems of John Cleveland, (New Haven, 1911), p. 65. The italics are mine. This poem was first printed 1651 (ibid., p. 201).

¹⁸ Moxon, J., Mechanick Exercises (1683), ed. DeVinne, Theo. L., (1896), p. 373.

¹⁹ Audrey, J., Remaines of Gentilisme … (1686–87), Folk-Lore Society (1881), p. 202, where the custom is derived from classical examples (v. infra). Sir E. K. Chambers interprets this ceremony otherwise in The English Folk-Play (Oxford, 1933), p. 37. The present discussion would surely confirm Andrey's own explanation.

²⁰ Treatise of Spirits (London, 1705), p. 273. For the association of sorcery with Lapland, v. OD, s.v. Lapland.

²¹ Cf. Harper's Latin Dictionary, Littré, Dict. de la langue Fr.

²² Vide Spargo, J. W., Virgil the Necromancer, Harvard Studies, (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 69–73, 345 (pointed out by Dr. Hull.) Mr. Montague Summers writes: “… when the demon, under whatsoever guise or name he might be adored, had received those divine honours he ever covets … he withdraws his emissaries the tormenting flies who are often his imps in the form of insects” (The Vampire [London, 1928], p. 199). An easy connection with such ideas can be made for the fact that the witch is accused of sending lice, caterpillars, etc.—Possibly Virgil's “fly-talisman” was imitated: Ducange quoted (s.v. musco) a reference from English sources to a “golden fly beautifully adorned with jewels.” There were quantities of antique gems in England during the Middle Ages (for seals incorporating antique intaglios see Birch, W. de G., Catalogue of Seals in the Department of MSS., British Museum [London, 1887], passim, etc.). For the “visible fly” (demon), cf. supra, n. 12. Sir J. G. Frazer gives brilliant discussions of the propitiation of vermin in folk rites in England, and elsewhere, Pausanias's Description of Greece (London, 1898), iii, 558–559; The Golden Bough, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (London, 1919), ii, 274 ff.

²³ V.DNB, s.v. Moffett. He dedicated to his patroness, Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, his only English work, a poem on the silkworm (1599).

²⁴ Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum, olim ab Edoardo Wottono, Conrado Gesnero, Thomaque Pennio inchoatum, Tandem Tho. Movfeti Londonatis opera sumptibusque … perfectum, London, 1634. This work was quoted by the OD from the English translation by Dr. J. Rowland, affixed (under the name of “Moffet”) to Topsell's Historie of foure-footed beastes, new edition, (London, 1658); but in a very few cases (none of those here cited) they used the English glosses found in the Latin edition of 1634. We wish to thank Professor Gaige of the University of Michigan for the use of his copy of the latter, and other aid. The glosses (all found in Sl. MS. 4014) allow us to carry back a large number of entomological names.

²⁵ Theater of Insects, Bk. i, c. xii, p. 951. In the original, Moufet introduces the verses: “forte item ad ilium allusit Plautus cum diceret” (p. 79).

²⁶ “… muscost meus pater, nil potest clam illum haberi, Inéc sacrum nec tam profanum quicquam est, quin ibi ilico adsit” (Leo, F., Plauti Comædiæ [Berlin, 1895], i, 450).

²⁷ Harper's Latin Dictionary, s.v. musca.

²⁸ Insectorum … theatrum, Bk. i, c. x, p. 56 (Rowland, p. 932). The italics are mine.

²⁹ For this confusion, see OD, s.v. Beelzebub. Cf. also Spargo, and Summers, loc. cit. The commentaries on Exodus viii, 24 make clear that it was commonly taken for granted that the fly sucked blood, hence making an easy connection with the familiar spirit, who was fed from the veins of the witch. Cf. Bishop Symon, Patrick, (of Ely), Commentary upon the Historical Books of the Old Testament, 5th ed. (London, 1738), i, 206; Fuller, T., Wounded Conscience, 1647 (London, 1841), p. 282. Professor Bredvold points out an allusion in Swift's Battle of the Books: the spider “swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies,” when he felt his cobweb fall, feared “that Beelzebub, with all his legions, was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects” See Nichols, J., Works of Jonathan Swift (New York, 1812), iii, 211–212.

³⁰ Cf. supra, p. 11. The persistence of these ideas makes it possible that fly, sb. 5a may be the origin of fly, adj., as Professor Fries points out to me (see LTLS, loc. cit.).

³¹ Kittredge, op. cit., p. 339 ff.

³² Chambers, R., The Book of Days (Edinburgh, 1864), ii, 722 (s.v. Dec. 20). From a German source Professor Stith Thompson cites the following: “Flies on the Ark. Noah tries to keep them out. Devil says that either the flies go in or he does. Noah chooses the lesser of two evils. Later the devil slips in nevertheless.” See Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, i, 191, Indiana University Studies, vol. xix (1932). Such legends give the background to the following statement regarding Martin Luther (pointed out by Professor E. S. McCartney): “'The flies which lighted upon his body, the rats which kept him awake at night, he believed to be devils;” see White, A. D., A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York, 1896), ii, 114. A supernatural association with flies may be indicated by the superstition “If you kill a fly or a blackbeetle, twenty flies or blackbeetles will come to the funeral”; see N. and Q., 5th Ser., x (1878), 205. It is said that among Greenock deepsea fishermen it is lucky to have a fly fall into your glass (ibid., 1st Ser., xii, 488). Among theologians the notion of the fly as the follower of Beelzebub continued to be known. Mr. G. W. Noyes points out that J. H. Noyes humorously announced a campaign against flies in the Oneida Community as a “raid into the Dominions of Baal Zebub” (The Circular, Mount Tom, Wallingford, Ct., New Ser., Vol. i. Sept. 19, 1864).

³³ The separation of bug into two words (found in OD) is here retained for convenience.

³⁴ Only four examples are in the files for the period 1650–1700. When, in 1695, Settle revised Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, he substituted for “bugs” “'boasts,' conceiving that 'bugs' was here equivalent to ‘bugs-words’.” See Dyce, A., ed. Beaumont and Fletcher, Works (1843), i, 203, 217.

³⁵ Furness, H. H., The Winter's Tale, Variorum edition (Philadelphia, 1900), p. 125.

³⁶ Of these, some were compounds, cited by OD under the other element. The immensity of the materials collected for the OD made it possible for only a small portion to be accessible to the editors at once.

³⁷ Insectorum … theatrum; vide, n. 24. Of these, OD printed one s.v. dungbeetle.

³⁸ Bk. iii, Furnivall, F. J., Shakspere's England, Pt. ii, p. 38, New Shakspere Soc., Ser. vi (1878). The OD noted the use of turd in ancient and modern Teutonic languages (including OE) in combination with a form of weevil, to mean dung-beetle; cf. infra.

³⁹ Also in Sl. MS. 4014, fols. 142, 146 (Bk. i, c. xxi).

⁴⁰ See OD, s.v. beetle: blattis (a. 800, a. 1000), mordiculus (c. 1000), buboscus (c. 1440), carembes (c. 1450); Wright-Wülcker, Vocabularies (London, 1884), II (v. index, s.v. scarabæus, scarabeus, scarabius, scarabo). On the sources of the Latin words used in such glosses, see Mayhew, A. L., Promptorium Parvulorum, EETS, Extra Ser., 102, pp. xvii ff. The wide range of names for the dung-beetle in our period is significant: cf. OD. s.v. scarabæus, scarabee, scarab, clock, dor, dung-beetle, shard-borne beetle, sharn-bud, sharn-bug and (supra) turd-bug. An American name is “tumble-bug” (v. OD).

⁴¹ Wright-Wülcker, i, 609.

⁴² From the reproduction made for the EMnED, sig. A^6r (Bk. xii, c. 4). In Wynkyn's edition “buds” appears as “birds”. The relation of both words to bug will be discussed in a later note.

⁴³ From the reproduction made for the EMnED, fol. 178^v.

⁴⁴ South and East Countrey Words, ed. Skeat, W. W., English Dialect Soc. (1874), p. 81.

⁴⁵ Two slips may be compared here: “1579 Gosson Sch. Abuse (Arb.) 19. The Scarabe flies ouer many a sweete flower, and lightes in a cowshard”; “1580 Lyly Euphues (Arb.) 240. … The fly that shunneth the Rose, to light in a cowshard” (both authors echo an idea ascribed by Bartholomeus, in the passage just cited, to Isidore).

⁴⁶ De Diis Syris, Opera, 1726, ii, c. vi, pp. 346–347 (pointed out to me by Dr. Hull); cf. also what is evidently a veiled reference to Beelzebub in Aldous Huxley's The Cicadas and Other Poems (New York, 1931), p. 37: “… the shitten Lord of Flies … the Learned Lord of Dung” (pointed out to me by Mrs. Constance Robertson). The dung-beetle's habit of flying at nightfull might also appear sinister: cf. OD, s.v. dor (sb. ¹), 2a, and the following: “1687 Dryden Hind & Panther l. 321. Such souls as shards produce, such beetle things As only buzz to heaven with ev'ning wings” (a citation which shows our special sense of beetle as still active).

⁴⁷ Mrs. H. M. Snyder points out the interesting studies of the insect by Fabre, collected in the volume The Sacred Beetle, transl. de Mattos, A. T. (New York, 1918). What may be modern survivals of the special association of bug with dung will be mentioned in a later note. Cf. supra, n. 32, for a modern superstition connecting flies with blackbeetles.

⁴⁸ Falk und Torp, Norwegisch-Dänisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg, 1911), ii (Germanische Bibliothek, iv, I), 1272–73.

⁴⁹ For primitive myth and ritual, in Melanesia, Indonesia, and Burma, arising from the “general resemblance of the coco-nut to the human head,” see The Mythology of All Races, Archaeological Institute of America (Boston, 1928), ix, 56, xii, 344 f. Possibly coco was suggested as a name for the nut by the first explorers from native superstition, if not native nomenclature.

⁵⁰ Auto da Barca do Purgatorio, Obras (Coimbra, 1907), i, 138, cited by J. Cornu, in a note on coco, giving also the very interesting similar use (1554) by Lazarillo de Tormes (to be later discussed). This was pointed out to me by Professor Bredvold in the English translation of 1586, where it is rendered “the bugge” (Percy Reprints, Oxford, No. vii, 1924, p. 8). For a valuable note carrying Cornu's discussion further, see Michaëlis, Kritischer Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der Romanischen Philologie, ed. K. Vollmöller, iv, Erlangen, i, pp. 346–347, which concludes: “Es erübrigt Côco coca=Fratz Popanz in Texten vor 1497 nachzuweisen.” Dr. Michaëlis here uses all the resources of Portuguese literature and scholarship. For Cornu's note see Romania, xi, 119.

⁵¹ See Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages, Velasquez, new edition, Gray E., and Iribas J. L. (New York, 1900); Pagés A. de, etc, Gran Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana (Barcelona, 1905) (from the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy, with citations, the pioneer Covarruvias, Tesoro de la lengua Castellana o Espanola (Madrid, 1674–73) (pointed out to me by Professor Wagner), etc. In both senses there are interesting derivatives of coco.—In Spanish, as in English (v. OD), cacodemon occurs, which might, conceivably, have influenced, or even originated, coco. Can the latter have been the influence responsible for the medieval forms of crocodile (q.v. OD) with coco-?

⁵² The continuity of European custom may appear in the case of tarasca, cited as an equivalent for coco, etc. It has been described as “Figura de sierpe monstruosa, con una boca muy grande” (Gran Diccionario, where it is also cited, from Costa Rica and Chile, in the sense of “coca grande”). Cf. OD, s.v. bogle, for the boggle-bo in England (1678): “an ugly wide-mouthed picture carried around in Maygames,” and Minsheu, s.v. tarasca (to be discussed later); also, Körting, Lat.-rom. Wörtenbuch (Paderborn, 1891), s.v. coco: “im Frz. bedeutet coco auch Gurgel, Schlund, ohne dass sich sagen liesse, wie diese Bedtg. sich entwickelt hat.” The influence on vocabulary of the dramatic representations of demonology will be discussed later. Since Galicia, where pilgrims from all over Europe went on pilgrimage to St. James, is the district where the “Teufelsdrache der Maiprocession” (Michaëlis) is called coca, etc., a widely spread influence from this representation is likely. The name tarasca is however derived (Gran Diccionario) from Tarascon, where the custom should also be investigated (cf. Littré, s.v. tarasque).