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Lord Wharton, in the church of Kirkby Stephen in Westmoreland, the crest of whose arms was a bull's head: "The consideration of horns, generally used upon the crest, seemeth to account for what hath hitherto by no author or other person ever been accounted for; namely the connexion betwixt horns and cuckolds. The notion of cuckolds wearing horns prevails through all the modern European languages, and is of four or five hundred years' standing. The particular estimation of badges and distinction of arms began in the time of the Crusades, being then more especially necessary to distinguish the several nations of which the armies were composed. Horns upon the crest, according to that of Silius Italicus,

'Casside cornigera dependens insula,'

were erected in terrorem: and after the husband had been absent three or four years, and came home in his regimental accoutrements, it might be no impossible supposition that the man who wore the horns was a cuckold. And this accounts, also, why no author at that time, when the droll notion was started, hath ventured to explain the connexion; for woe be to the man in those days that should have made a joke of the Holy War, which indeed, in consideration of the expense of blood and treasure attending it, was a very serious affair."

There is a great parade of learning on the subject of this very serious jest in a foreign work in Latin, printed at Brussels in 1661, in folio, and entitled the Paradise of Pleasant Questions. The various opinions of the learned are given in this curious collection, but I much doubt if any of them will be thought satisfactory. In one of them "cornutus" is most forcibly derived from nudus and corde, as meaning a pitiful fellow, such an one as he must needs be who can sit tamely down under so great an injury. Such kind of etymology merits no serious confutation. In another, Cælius Rhodoginus is introduced as wishing to derive it from an insensibility peculiar, as he says, to the he-goat, who will stand looking on while another is possessing his female. As writers on natural history do not admit the truth of the assertion, this too will, of course, fall to the ground.'

In the Blazon of Jealousie, 1615, p. 57, we are told a very different story of a swan. "The tale of the swanne about Windsor finding a strange cocke with his mate, and how far he swam after the other to kill

Another conjecture is, that some mean husbands, availing themselves of their wives' beauty, have turned it to account by prostituting them, obtaining by this means the horn of Amalthea, the cornu copia, which by licentious wits has since been called, in the language of modern gallantry, tipping the horns with gold. The fact is too notorious to be doubted; but as this only accounts for a single horn, perhaps we must lay no great stress upon the probability of this surmise.

Pancirollus, on the other hand, derives it from a custom of the debauched Emperor Andronicus, who used to hang up in a frolic in the porticos of the forum, the stag's horns he had taken in hunting, intending, as he says, by this new kind of insignia, to denote at once the manners of the city, the lasciviousness of the wives he had debauched, and the size of the animals he had made his prey, and that from hence the sarcasm spread abroad, that the husband of an adulterous wife bare horns. I cannot satisfy myself with this account; for what Andronicus did seems to have been only a continuation, not the origin, of this custom. In Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, ii. 3, the following occurs :

"Under your patience, gentle empress,

'Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning.

Jove shield your husband from his hounds to-day!
'Tis pity they should take him for a stag."

The following is extracted from the Gentleman's Magazine for December 1786, p. 1020: "The woman who is false to her husband is said to plant horns on his head. I know not how far back the idea of giving his head this ornament may be traced, but it may be met with in Artemidorus (lib. ii.), and I believe we must have recourse to a Greek epigram for an illustration:1

* Όστις εσω πυρους καταλαμβάνει ουκ ανοράζων,
Κείνον Αμαλθειας ἡ γυνή εστι κερς.”

Antholog. lib. ii.

it, and then, returning backe, slew his hen also (this being a certain truth, and not many yeers done upon this our Thames), is so well knowne to many gentlemen, and to most watermen of this river, as it were needlesse to use any more words about the same.'

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1 "The lightness of his wife shines through it, and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lantern to light him." Shaks. This joke seems evidently to have been taken from that of Plautus: "Quò ambulas tu,

Shakespeare and Ben Jonson seem both to have considered the horns in this light: "Well, he may sleep in security, for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it; and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lantern to light him." Second Part of King Henry IV., act i. sc. 2. "What! never sigh;

Be of good cheer, man, for thou art a cuckold.

'Tis done, 'tis done! nay, when such flowing store,
Plenty itself falls in my wife's lap,

The cornu copiæ will be mine, I know."

Every Man in his Humour, a. iii. sc. 6.

Steevens, on the above passage in 2 Henry IV. has these additions: "So in Pasquil's Night-Cap, 1612, p. 43.

"But chiefly citizens, upon whose crowne

Fortune her blessings most did tumble downe;
And in whose eares (as all the world doth know)
The horne of great aboundance still doth blow."

The same thought occurs in the Two Maids of Moreclacke, 1609:

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Armstrong, in his History of the Island of Minorca, 1756, p. 170, says the inhabitants bear hatred to the sight and name of a horn; " for they never mention it but in anger, and then they curse with it, saying cuerno, as they would diablo."

[It was formerly a common notion that the unfaithfulness of a woman to her husband was always guided by a destiny which no human power could avert. In Grange's Garden, 1577, we have an allusion to this:

"And playing thus with wanton toyes, the cuckow bad good morow; Alas, thought I, a token 'tis for me to live in sorrow:

Cuckow sang he, Cuckow sayd I, what destiny is this?
Who so it heares, he well may thinke it is no sacred blisse.

qui Vulcanum in cornu conclusum geris?" (Amph. act i. sc. 1), and much improved. We need not doubt that a joke was here intended by Plautus; for the proverbial term of horns for cuckoldom is very ancient, as appears by Artemidorus, who says: “ Προειπεῖν αὐτῷ ὅτι ἡ γυνή σου πορνεύσει, καὶ τὸ λεγόμενον, κέρατα αυτῷ ποιήσει, καὶ ὄντως ἀπέβη.” Ονειροι. lib. ii. cap. 12. And he copied from those before him.

Alas, quoth she, what cann have you, as yet thus for to say

In cuckow time few have a charme to cause his tongue to stay;
Wherefore,

Content yourselfe as well as I, let reason rule your minde,

As cuckolds come by destiny, so cuckowes sing by kinde."

Compare also Nicolls's poem on the Cuckoo, 1607, p. 12:
"Meanetime Dan Cuckow, knowing that his voice
Had no varietie, no change, no choice:

But through the wesand pipe of his harsh throate,
Cri'd only Cuckow, that prodigious note!"]

In the Horne Exalted, 1661, I find several conjectures on the subject, but such light and superficial ones as I think ought not much to be depended upon. One of them derives the etymology from bulls; asserting that such husbands as regarded not their wives were called bulls, because it is said that that animal, when satiated with his females, will not even feed with them, but removes as far off as he can. Hence the woman in Aristophanes, complaining of the absence and slights of her husband, says: "Must I in house without Bull stay

alone?" On which account those husbands have been called bulls, who by abandoning their wives occasioned their proving unchaste, and consequently were mocked with horns. By another the word horns, or cornuto, is thought to have been taken from the injured and angry moon, which is all one with Venus, from whence generation. Another conjecture, playing on the Italian word beccho, which signifies a cuckold or goat, derives it from Bacchus, whom Orpheus calls the god with two horns. Thus drunkenness causing men, by neglecting them, to have wanton wives, they are said to have horns, to show to the world the occasion of their shame; and that by ossing the horn (meaning the drinking-horns) so much to their heads, they are said to have horns, fixing them at last to heir foreheads. Another derives the word horns from the infamy, for which, as in other public matters, they sound and blow horns in the streets, and supposes horns are only a public opinion and scattering of this infamy of the husband about, as proclamations are made known by sound of trumpets. There is, lastly, a conjecture that the beginning of horns came from the Indians (it will be thought a far-fetched one), whose women had a custom that, when any lover presented his mistress with an elephant, the last favour might be granted him

without prejudice to her name or honesty; that it even became matter of praise to her, not objected to even by her husband, who preserved the horns as the better part of the elephant, in order to show them to the world as trophies of his wife's beauty. What a pity it is to spoil such a surmise, by suggesting that these reputed horns are really the elephant's teeth!

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There used formerly (and I believe it is still now and then retained) to be a kind of ignominious procession in the north of England, called "Riding the Stang," when, as the glossary to Douglas's Virgil informs us, one is made to ride on a pole for his neighbour's wife's fault." Staung Eboracensibus est lignum ablongum. Contus bajulorum."-Hickes. This custom bids fair not to be of much longer continuance in the north, for I find, by the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Courant for August 3d, 1793, that at the assizes at Durham, in the preceding week, "Thomas Jameson, Matthew Marrington, Geo. Ball, Jos. Rowntree, Simon Emmerson, Robert Parkin, and Francis Wardell, for violently assaulting Nicholas Lowes, of Bishop Wearmouth, and carrying him on a stang, were sentenced to be imprisoned two years in Durham gaol, and find sureties for their good behaviour for three years." The law taking such cognisance of the practice, it must of course terminate very shortly.

This custom is represented in a plate in the Costume of Yorkshire, 1814, p. 63. The letter-press says, "This ancient provincial custom is still occasionally observed in some parts of Yorkshire, though by no means so frequently as it was formerly. It is no doubt intended to expose and ridicule any violent quarrel between man and wife, and more particularly in instances where the pusillanimous husband has suffered himself to be beaten by his virago of a partner. A case of this description is here represented, and a party of boys, assuming the office of public censors, are riding the stang. This is a pole, supported on the shoulders of two or more of the lads, across which one of them is mounted, beating an old kettle or pan with a stick. He at the same time repeats a speech, or what they term a nominy, which, for the sake of detailing the whole ceremony, is here subjoined:

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