Chapter Foible to Foot-breadth of F by Brewer's Readers Handbook

neck and head, with a belt at the extreme end. The hood was blue edged with yellow and scalloped, the doublet red edged with yellow, the girdle yellow, the hose of one leg yellow and of the other blue, shoes red. (See Morrisdance.)

Fool of Quality (The), a novel by Henry Brooke (1766).

Fools. Pays de Fous. Gheel, in Belgium, is so called, because it has been for many years the Bedlam of Belgium.

Battersea is also a pays de fous, from a pun. Simples used to be grown there largely for the London apothecaries, and hence the expression, You must go to Battersea to get your simples cut.

Bœotia was considered by the Athenians the pays de fous of Greece. Arcadia was also a folly-land; hence Arcades ambo (“both noodles alike”).

Fools, Jesters, and Mirthmen. In the following list, those in italics were mirthmen, but not licensed fools or jesters.

Adelsburn (Burkard Kaspar), jester to George I. He was not only a fun-maker, but also a ghostly adviser of the Hanoverian.

Aksakoff, the fool of czarina Elizabeth of Russia (mother of Peter II.). He was a stolid brute, fond of practical jokes.

Angely (L.), jester to Louis XIV., and last of the licensed fools of France. He is mentioned by Boileau in Satires i. and viii.

Aopi (Monsignore), who succeeded Soglia as the merryman of Pope Gregory XVI.

Armstrong (Archie), jester in the courts of James I. and Charles I. One of the characters in Scott’s novel The Fortunes of Nigel. Being condemned to death by king James for sheep-stealing, Archie implored that he might live till he had read his Bible through for his soul’s weal. This was granted, and Archie rejoined, with a sly look, “Then de’il tak’ me ’gin I ever read a word on’t!”

Berdic, “joculator” to William the Conqueror. Three towns and five caracutes in Gloucestershire were given him by the king.

Bluet D’Arberes (seventeenth century), fool to the duke, of Mantua. During a pestilence, he conceived the idea of offering his life as a ransom for his countrymen, and actually starved himself to death to stay the plague.

Bonny (Patrick), jester to the regent Morton.

Borde (Andrew), usually called “Merry Andrew,” physician to Henry VIII. (1500–1549).

Brusquet. Of this court fool Brantôme says, “He never had his equal in repartee” (1512–1563).

Caillet (Guillaume), who flourished about 1490. His likeness is given in the frontispiece of the Ship of Fools (1497).

Chicot, jester of Henri III. and Henri IV. Alexandre Dumas has a novel called Chicot the Jester (1553–1591).

Colquhoun (Jemmy), predecessor of James Geddes, jester in the court of Mary queen of Scots.

Coryat, “prince of non-official jesters and coxcombs.” Kept by prince Henry, brother of Charles I.