Chapter Glasgow Magistrate to Glenco'e of G by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Glasgow Magistrate to Glenco'e

Glasgow Magistrate (A). A salt herring. When George IV. visited Glasgow some wag placed a salt herring on the iron guard of the carriage of a well-known magistrate who formed one of the deputation to receive him. I remember a similar joke played on a magistrate, because he said, during a time of great scarcity, he wondered why the poor did not eat salt herrings, which he himself found very appetising.

Glass is from the Celtic glas (bluish-green), the colour produced by the woad employed by the ancient Britons in dyeing their bodies. Pliny calls it glastrum, and Cæsar vitrum.

Glass Breaker (A). A wine-bibber. To crack a bottle is to drink up its contents and throw away the empty bottle. A glass breaker is one who drinks what is in the glass, and flings the glass under the table. In the early part of the nineteenth century it was by no means unusual with topers to break off the stand of their wineglass, so that they might not be able to set it down, but were compelled to drink it clean off, without heel-taps.

"Troth, ye're nae glass-breaker; and neither am I, unless it be a screed wi' the neighbours, or when I'm on a ramble." - Sir W. Scott: Gay Mannering, chap. 45.

"We never were glass-breakers in this house, Mr. Lovel." - Sir W. Scott: The Antiquary, chap. ix.

Glass- eye A blind eye, not an eye made of glass, but the Danish glas-oie (wall-eye).

Glass Houses Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. When, on the union of the two crowns, London was inundated with Scotchmen, Buckingham was a chief instigator of the movement against them, and parties used nightly to go about breaking their windows. In retaliation, a party of Scotchmen smashed the windows of the Duke's mansion, which stood in St. Martin's Fields, and had so many windows that it went by the name of the "Glass-house." The court favourite appealed to the king, and the British Solomon replied, "Steenie, Steenie, those wha live in glass housen should be carefu' how they fling stanes."
    This was not an original remark of the English Solomon, but only the application of an existing proverb: "El que tiene tejados de vidro, no tire piedras al de su vezino." (Nunez de Guzman: Proverbios.) (See also Chaucer's Troylus, ii.)

"Qui a sa maison de verre,
Sur le voisin ne jette pierre."
Proverbes en Rimes (1664).

Glass Slipper (of Cinderella). A curious blunder of the translator, who has mistaken vair (sable) for verre (glass). Sable was worn only by kings and princes, so the fairy gave royal slippers to her favourite. Hamlet says he shall discard his mourning and resume "his suit of sables" (iii. 2).

Glasse (Mrs. Hannah), a name immortalised by the reputed saying in a cookery book, "First catch your hare," then cook it according to the directions given. This, like many other smart sayings, evidently grew. The word in the cookery-book is "cast" (i.e. flay). "Take your hare, and when it is cast" (or cased), do so and so. (See Case, Catch your Hare.)

"We'll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him." - Shakespeare: All's Well, etc., iii. 6.

"Some of them knew me,
Else had they cased me like a cony."
Beaumont and Fletcher: Love's Pilgrimage, ii. 3.

    First scotch your hare (though not in Mrs. Glasse) is the East Anglian word scatch (flay), and might suggest the play of words. Mrs. Glasse is the pseudonym which Dr. John Hill appended to his Cook's Oracle.

Glassite (A). A Sandemanian; a follower of John Glass (eighteenth century). Members of this Scotch sect are admitted by a "holy kiss," and abstain from all animal food which has not been well drained of blood. John Glass condemned all national establishments of religion, and maintained the Congregational system. Robert Sandeman was one of his disciples.

Glastonbury in Arthurian legend, was where king Arthur was buried. Selden, in his Illustrations of Drayton, says the tomb was "betwixt two pillars," and he adds, "Henry II. gave command to Henry de Blois, the abbot, to make great search for the body, which was found in a wooden coffin some sixteen