18
NOTES AND QUERIES. 112 s. in. JA. e. mr.
in general, is Mrs. Elsie C. Parsons's work
among the Zuni Indians. In her ' Zuni
Inoculative Magic ' (Science, Sept. 29, 1916)
is :
" Birthmarks and malformations are accounted for by the Zuni as due to parental, for the most part paternal, carelessness during the pregnancy, the result of the expectant father taking part in a ceremonial, or hunting rabbits or prairie-dogs or other animals, or killing a snake."
Her ' A Few Zuni Death Beliefs and Prac- tices ' in the American Anthropologist, 1916, xviii., at p. 248, gives :
" On his children's account a man should at no time kill a snake, but were he to kill one during his wife's pregnancy, the child would be spotted like a snake and would die."
Analogy might be drawn between this matter and the much-disputed " couvade "
ROCKINGHAM. Boston, Mass.
BIBLE AND SALT (12 S. ii. 390, 478). Burns's example may be cited with regard to the carrying out of this observance. The incident is described by the late Principal Shairp (' Burns ' in " English Men of Let- ters, "'chap, v.) as follows :
" It was not till about the middle of 1789 that the farm-house of Ellisland was finished, and that he and his family, leaving the Isle, went to live in it. When all was ready, Burns bade his ser- vant Betty Smith take a bowl of salt, and place the Family Bible on the top of it, and, bearing these, walk first into the new house and possess it. He himself, with his wife on his arm , followed Betty and the Bible and the salt, and so they entered their new abode. Burns delighted to keep up old-world freits or usages like this."
W. B.
TINSEL PICTURES (12 S. ii. 228, 296). I knew nothing about these until last August, when I saw some at Southsea ; but tinsel portraits I have known since I was a boy, and have been and am still interested in them. Except the Jonathan King collection in the London Museum I know none. There are a few, in what I may call the Ralph Thomas collection, in the Print Boom, British Museum at the end of vol. x., I think. The collection of Mr. May, the theatrical costumier, was formerly to be seen at his shop in Covent Garden, but I do not know what has become of it. I am constantly seeing specimens in provincial towns, as at Southsea. At Farnham, Surrey, I have noticed one in the door- way of a shop, and year after year have observed the deterioration of the tinsel and the colours, the effect of its being ext>osed to the sun.
I have a few examples, but never made-
a point of collecting, chiefly because to be
kept satisfactorily they require frames, or
some device that will prevent the tin-
foil, or tinsel, being flattened by pressure.
Tinsel may have come in before, but I think
it was introduced about 1830, and its use
was eventually carried to such an extent
that no part of the print was left uncovered
with tinsel, or plain silk or satin, except
the face : even . the hands were covered with
tinsel gauntlets.
There is an interesting interview with W. G. Webb in The Pall Mall Budget for- July 28, 1889, p. 947, in which he describes the rise and fall of tinsel. I have been lately trying to get that number of the Budget with- out success.
The manufacture of tinsel has been a lost art for many years, though I believe some of the steel dies still exist. The difficulty now is the way to make the paper lining adhere to the tinfoil ; without this lining the- " dots," &c., will not stick to the paper.
RALPH THOMAS.
0n Itoohs,
Shakespeare's Handwriting. A Study by Sir Edward Mannde Thompson. (Oxford, Clarendon. Press, 10s. 6d. net.)
IN ' Shakespeare's England ' many of our readers- have already become acquainted with an essay on Shakespeare's signatures by Sir E. M. Thomp- son. Out of the researches to which that essay first gave occasion the present work has developed, and whether in the end the majority of Shake- spearian students accept or reject the conclusions here arrived at, this monograph will remain of the first importance, and of great usefulness also- for the palaeography of the period. Let us say at once that a careful perusal of it has gone far to convince us that the conclusions should be- accepted.
There is as students of English literature know a manuscript play in the British Museum by Anthony Munday, which bears additions to- the original text in five different hands. It is a pleasure to remember that the first suggestion that one of these five hands was that of Shake- speare was made in our own columns. This was in 1871 (4 S. viii. 1), in a contribution by Richard Simpson, who a year later (4 S. x. 227) received the support of James Spedding. These writers relied largely on that curious flair which enables us all to some degree, and the more experienced or better gifted in this respect to a surprising degree, to recognize the handwriting of indi- viduals, however closely conformable to a general' type or, on the other hand, blurred by accident or carelessness. Like the flair which enables small children to pick out the seedlings which are going to produce double flowers, it works somewhat inexplicably, but, more often than not, quite true : yet its decisions, in a case like that before us, certainly require the justification of;
