the case we have an interesting condition of affairs: in a quarter of a century the phrase came to be looked upon as a proverb.20 Nothing could attest more completely to the popularity of this picturesque expression.

What is the origin of the phrase? To William Hayley apparently belongs the credit of first attempting an elucidation, in his Essay on Old Maids (1787).21 After "many vain attempts and after consulting the "profoundest antiquarians" in England and on the continent, writes the overstrained and sentimental Hayley, "an ingenious friend" of his is "convinced that it was invented by the Monks, to lure opulent females into the cloister," there to "teach them that if they did not become the spouses either of man or god, they must expect to be united in a future world, to the most impertinent and disgusting companion."

One should, of course, like to know who this " ingenious friend" was. Though his suggestion sounds like romantic criticism, it seems to be the source of Steevens's widely quoted interpretation printed six years later in the fourth edition of the JohnsonSteevens Shakespeare (1793).22 More surprising, however, is the fact that Hayley's book appears to be the authority for the statement made by a recent writer on the subject of folklore,-Littledale, in his article on "Folklore and Superstitions" in Shakespeare's England.23 Says the latter, listing the phrase with popular superstitions respecting animals "which Shakespeare and his contemporaries accepted without demur": "To the mediæval mind, every woman's destiny was marriage. She could become the bride of man or the bride of God; and if she wilfully rejected both these alternatives, she was warned that after death her lot would be to lead apes in (or into) hell." Accordingly, after a century and a third the wheel has again come full circle: for the sug

20 Obviously not an impossibility.

21 Three vols., London, п, 156 ff. This curious work is still readable. He apparently was unaware of Shakspere's use of it. Was Hayley's " ingenious" friend Blake? On the relation of these two men see F. Damon's Blake. There is no reference to "apes in hell" in L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923.

22Mr. Bartlett Whiting looked up this point for me in the Harvard library. Malone showed his usual caution when he wrote: "I know not how the phrase came to be applied to old maids."

23 Two vols., Oxford, 1916, 1, 517.

gestion of Hayley's unknown acquaintance-made when things inexplicable were referred to the Middle Ages-meets with the approval of a well-known student of folklore to-day.

Hayley himself, it should be stated, did not accept this interpretation. He thought it injurious to his "fair friends," and ranked it with a passage in Hermes Trismegistus, which states that those who die childless are upon death tormented by demons.24 Whereupon Hayley, carried away by his subject, contributed his own fanciful conjecture: since apes have received an "affectionate adoration" in various countries,25 the destiny of woman was "not a punishment, but the reward of her continence." 26

Scholars of the nineteenth century were particularly active in tracing the proverb. Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare (1807) wrote: "It is perhaps an ill-natured, though a very common, presumption, that the single state of old maids originates either in prudery or in real aversion to the male sex, and that consequently they deserve some kind of punishment in the next world. It is therefore not a matter of wonder that some of our wagging forefathers, impressed with this idea, should have maintained that these obdurate damsels would be condemned to lead apes in the inferior regions." 27 He finds a possible parallel in Rabelais's hell, in which Alexander the Great "is condemned, for his ambition, to mend old stockings, and Cleopatra, for her pride, to cry onions." Dyce, in reply to a query by Dr. Furnivall, said with refreshing emphasis that "this phrase, which is still in common use, never has been (and never will be) satisfactorily explained." Halliwell-Phillipps, with commendable restraint, thought the remark was "possibly originally a superstition." 20 Grosart observed

29

99 28

24 Hayley omits his reference to Hermes T. A knowledge of Hermes was then the fashion; for Blake's indebtedness to this occultist-" one of the greatest sources of all occultism"-see Damon, op. cit. (index). E. C. Baldwin (P. M. L. A., XXXIII, (1918), 235 ff.) shows that Hermes was known to the English in the 17th and 18th centuries. One recalls likewise Longfellow's poem on him.

25 Prudentius (Hayley).

26 Hayley concludes his sentimental discussion with some contemporary verses by one who "seems to have wished to make amends for the insult of the injurious proverb."

27 I, 329 f.

28 B. P. Folio MS., II, 46. Dyce's italics.

29

Op. cit., 380.

34

that "the phrase has never been satisfactorily explained (meo judicio)." 20 More recently Craig has suggested a possible reference, originally, to a "flirt's enslaved or morally injured adorers.”=1 Here he seems to follow Nares: 32 "As ape occasionally meant a fool, it probably meant that those coquettes who made fools of men, and led them about without real intention of marriage, would have them still to lead against their will hereafter." The New Eng. Dict. finds no solution to the problem. Aldis Wright, apparently with Steevens in mind, says with more or less seriousness: "Perhaps it was thought fitting that having escaped the plague of children in this life, they (i. e. old maids) ought to be tormented with something disagreeably like them in the next.” 33 Skeat, in discussing Chaucer's "the priest he made his ape" " thought ape meant dupe, and added that "to lead apes in hell" meant "to lead about a train of dupes." As Professor G. C. Moore Smith notes, however,35 Skeat gives no examples, "and it is not clear if he has the phrase 'to lead apes in hell' in his mind." Professor Moore Smith prefers another interpretation: "It seems to me that if we extend Skeat's explanation to the latter phrase, we have an interpretation which is at any rate plausible, and this Mr. Wright's interpretation would hardly claim to be. The old maid is viewed as the coquette who, in Chaucer's phrase "holds " her lovers in hand, leads them on as her apes or dupes. What more suitable fate for her than to be doomed hereafter to lead apes in hell? I think it is possible to explain this phrase thus, and at the same time to suppose that in Shakespeare's time the phrase was used with little consciousness of its original meaning." Thus Moore Smith, in advancing the coquette theory, links himself with Craig and Nares.

Though the proverb is confined to the English-speaking races, interest in its origin spread to the continent of Europe. Gaidoz,

30 H. [Austin], The Scourge of Venus (1614), ed. Grosart, 1876, 47. 21 Cf. Bond The Shrew (Arden ed.), 49.

32 Nares (new ed., 1904, with new additions by Halliwell and Wright), p. 500.

33 Modern Language Quarterly (VII, 16) is cited. I have not had access to this journal.

34 Canon's Yeoman's Tale (G 1313), ed., Skeat, is cited.

36 Cf. n. 33.

a Breton scholar, of the last century, also thought that the expression referred to the punishment for women who refused to bear children. He cites a Breton legend which states that the children a woman should have had on earth follow her into the other life in the form "d'animaux immondes." 36 Gaidoz adds that he finds no parallels to the proverb outside of English. Finally, a contributor to Germania, in a paper on miscellaneous folklore, also states that the "Volksglauben " is peculiarly English.

37

No writer on Shakspere has to all appearances connected the proverbial bit with the ballad of "The Maid and the Palmer." 38 The story of the ballad runs as follows: 39 a woman is washing at the well; a palmer asks her for drink and is told she has neither cup nor can. 'If your lover came back, you'd find cups and cans.' She says she has no lover. 'Peace! You have borne nine children!' She asks if he is the good old man 40 that all the world believes upon,' and demands penance." Whereupon the palmer replies:

Penance I can giue thee none,

But 7 yeere to be a stepping stone.
Other seaven a clapper in a bell,
Other 7 to lead an ape 1 in hell.

41

The palmer concludes with,

When thou hast thy penance done,

Then thoust come a mayden home.

36 "La Stérilité Voluntaire," in Mélusine, IX, 62. Though he cites "The Maid and the Palmer as an example of a woman who kills her children, he misses the chief point (cf. infra). The notion that “whosoever is thrice betrothed, and never wedded, goes to burn in Hell" seems to be related (cf. Hunt, Peeps in Brittany, 127: this reference has been given me by Prof. F. N. Robinson, but unfortunately I have been unable to see the book). For beliefs and customs connected with spinsters among German people, particularly in Switzerland, sce Tobler, Kleine Schriften, Frauenfeld, 1897, 132 ff. Waser, according to Gaidoz, connects the idea (discussed above) with the Danaïdes and their labors.

37 Germania, XXXIII (1888), 245. Cf. Rollins ("A Pepysian Garland," op. cit., 132) who cites Kittredge.

38 Child, No. 21 (1. 228 f.). Gaidoz and Rollins refer to Shakspere. Child connected it with "The Cruel Mother (p. 230).

39 Gummere, The Popular Ballad, 1907, 226.

40 I. e. Jesus.

41 But one ape is indicated. For penalty in European variants see Child.

Here plainly the leading of apes is a punishment for unchastity ; and, in the Scriptural sense, adultery."2

43

Obviously, there must be some connection between the phrase as used by the balladist and by Elizabethan writers. Now the ballad is probably an old one. Its serious tone certainly suggests pre-Renaissance days. Accordingly, it now becomes necessary to discuss the ape of The Maid, since the reference to adultery undoubtedly antedates Elizabethan days.

In two Latin dictionaries, printed in 1487 and 1497,** we learn that adulterers and homicides 45 were formerly compelled as a punishment to lead an ape by the neck "with their mouths affixed in a very unseemly manner to the animal's tail." 46 Though the opprobrious punishment was to take place in this world, it would seem that here is the ultimate source of the ballad allusion. In that case the ape of The Maid-since the forms of penalty in the ballad and in Elizabethan literature are not unlike is some sort of missing link between the punishment on earth for adulterers and the humorous reference in Shakspere to the fine for unmarried women after death.

But can a closer connection be established? Apparently. About 1560 there appeared a Book of Fortune,-probably a manual for fortune tellers." This volume was obviously intended for the uneducated—a simple public. The subjects treated are love and marriage, helps on "how to be successful" (which recall in a

42 Child calls this "a burlesque variation of the portership (in hell)" (cf. op. cit., 230). Adultery in the biblical sense of unchastity in general is found in Wycliffe (cf. N. E. D.); Dante's well-known phrase—“ superbo strupo" (Inferno, vII, 12)—may also be noted. Child observed (1, 228) that the story of "The Maid" is beset with confusion. On adultery see further Ency. Religion and Ethics, ed. Hastings, 1, 132 f.

43 Cf. Pound, Poetic Origins and the Ballad, 1921, 168n. Neither Child, Gummere nor Kittredge discusses the date. The variants (in Child) indicate age.

44 Vocabularius Breviloquus (1487) and Catholicon by Balbus (1497). Both have been verified for me by Mr. Whiting in the Harvard library. 45 For punishment of matricides see Grimm (J.), Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, 4th ed., 1899, II, 279. To Prof. G. L. Hamilton I owe this reference. 40 Cf. Douce, op. cit., 330. Cf. n. 9.

47 Cf. Stopes, Shakespeare's Industry, 1916, 181 ff. (expansion of an article in The Athenaeum, May 19, 1900, 625). Cf. further London Times Lit. Supplement, Feb. 28, 1924, 128; ibid., March 13, 160; ibid., April 10,