[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR. "] SIR, —" Vacuns Viafor "
gives a story with reference to Sir Joseph Banks and a rain-shower which is of considerably older date. In " Joe Miller's Jest-Book" it is told of Sir Isaac Newton. In " Scoggins' Jests," 1796, " How Scogin gave a cowheard forty shillings to teach him his cunning in the weather," gives the same story. But the story is a good deal older than that. In Shakespeare's " Jest-Book " (" The Hundred Mery Tales," Much Ado About Nothing, Scene 1,
Act Tale 84, " Of the herdman that sayd ryde apace ye shall have rayn," tells how " a skoler of Oxenford whiche had
stndyed ye judycyals of Astronomy "—met with Sir Joseph Banks' and Sir Isaac Newton's fate, predicted by a herdman. " The skoler profferyd hym xr, shyllyngs to teche hym that connynge." " The herde man after that he had recered his money, sayde thus, Syr, se you not Oder dun a kow,* with the whyte face.'—' Yes, quod the skoler.'—' Surely, quod ye herdmit, whe she dal-meth, and holdyth up her tayle, it shal have a showre of rayne within halfe an howre after." Most of the hundred tales have a moral, and the moral to this one is,—" By this ye may see yt the conyng of herdmen and shepardes as touching alteracyos of weders is more sure than ye judycyallys [sic] of Astronomy." This is not the only story fathered on later wits which is to be found in this curious but not very savoury collection of stories.—I am,
Previous page
