Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 | Page 5

her neighbours attribute to her having been
"overlooked" (this is the local phrase by which they designate the
baleful spell of the evil eye). An old woman in this town is supposed to
have the power of "ill-wishing" or bewitching her neighbours and their
cattle, and is looked on with much awe in consequence.
H. G. T.
"Millery! Millery! Dousty-poll!" &c.--I am told by a neighbour of a
cruel custom among the children in Somersetshire, who, when they
have caught a certain kind of large white moth, which they call a miller,
chant over it this uncouth ditty:--
"Millery! Millery! Dousty-poll! How many sacks hast thou stole?"
And then, with boyish recklessness, put the poor creature to death for
the imagined misdeeds of his human namesake.
H. G. T.
"Nettle in, Dock out."--Sometime since, turning over the leaves of
Clarke's Chaucer, I stumbled on the following passage in "Troilus and
Cressida," vol. ii. p. 104.:--
"Thou biddest me that I should love another All freshly newe, and let
Creseidé go, It li'th not in my power levé brother, And though I might,
yet would I not do so: But can'st thou playen racket to and fro, Nettle'
in Dock out, now this now that, Pandare? Now foulé fall her for thy
woe that care."
I was delighted to find the charm for a nettle sting, so familiar to my
childish ear, was as old as Chaucer's time, and exceedingly surprised to
stumble on the following note:--
"This appears to be a proverbial expression implying inconstancy; but

the origin of the phrase is unknown to all the commentators on our
poet."
If this be the case, Chaucer's commentators may as well be told that
children in Northumberland use friction by a dock-leaf as the approved
remedy for the sting of a nettle, or rather the approved charm; for the
patient, while rubbing in the dock-juice, should keep repeating,--
"Nettle in, dock out, Dock in, nettle out, Nettle in, dock out, Dock rub
nettle out."
The meaning is therefore obvious. Troilus is indignant at being
recommended to forget this Cressida for a new love, just as a child
cures a nettle-sting by a dock-leaf. I know not whether you will deem
this trifle worth a corner in your valuable and amusing "NOTES."
* * * * *
THE SCALIGERS.
"Lo primo tuo rifugio e 'l primo ostello Sarà la cortesia del gran
Lombardo, Che 'n su la Scala porta il santo uccello." Dante, Paradiso,
xvii. 70.
The Scaligers are well known, not only as having held the lordship of
Verona for some generations, but also as having been among the
friends of Dante in his exile, no mean reputation in itself; and, at a later
period, as taking very high rank among the first scholars of their day.
To which of them the passage above properly belongs--whether to Can
Grande, or his brother Bartolommeo, or even his father Alberto,
commentators are by no means agreed. The question is argued more
largely than conclusively, both in the notes to Lombardi's edition, and
also in Ugo Foscolo's Discorso nel testo di Dante.
Perhaps the following may be a contribution to the evidence in favour
of Can Grande. After {134} saying, in a letter, in which he professes to
give the history and origin of his family,--

"Prisca omnium familiarum Scaligeræ stirpis insignia sunt, aut Scala
singularis, aut Canes utrinque scalæ innitentes."
Joseph Scaliger adds--
"Denique principium Veronensium progenitores eadem habuerunt
insignia: donec in eam familiam Alboinus et Canis Magnus Aquilam
imperii cum Scala primum ab Henrico VII^o, deinde à Ludovico
Bavaro acceptam nobis reliquerunt."
Alboinus, however, who received this grant upon being made a
Lieutenant of the Empire, and having the Signory of Verona made
hereditary in his family, only bore the eagle "in quadrante scuti."
"Sed Canis Magnus, cum eidem à Cæsare Ludovico Bavaro idem
privilegium confirmatum esset, totum scutum Aquilâ occupavit,
subjectâ Alitis pedibus Scalâ."
Can Grande, then, was surely the first who carried the "santo uccello"
in su la Scala; and his epithet of Grande would also agree best with
Dante's words, as neither his father nor brothers seem to have had the
same claim to it.
I would offer a farther remark about this same title or epithet Can
Grande, and the origin of the scala or ladder as a charge upon the shield
or coat of this family. Cane would at first sight appear to be a
designation borrowed from the animal of that name. There would be
parallels enough in Italy and elsewhere, as the Ursini, Lewis the Lion
(VIII. of France), our own Coeur de Lion, and Harold Harefoot. Dante,
too, refers to him under the name "Il Veltro," Inferno, canto 1. l. 101.
But Joseph Scaliger, in the letter to which I referred before, gives the
following account