"All this would be forsworn,
and I again an assinego, as your sister left me."[342] Dyce[343] would
spell the word "asinico," because it is so spelled in the old editions
of Shakespeare, and is more in accordance with the Spanish word.[344] In
"King Lear" (i. 4), the Fool alludes to AEsop's celebrated fable of the
old man and his ass: "thou borest thine ass on thy back o'er the dirt."

[342] Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 38.

[343] "Glossary to Shakespeare," 1876, p. 20.

[344] "Asinico, a little ass," Connelly's "Spanish and English
Dictionary," Madrid, 4to.

_Bat._ The bat, immortalized by Shakespeare ("The Tempest," v. 1) as the
"delicate Ariel's" steed--

"On the bat's back I do fly,"

--has generally been an object of superstitious dread, and proved to the
poet and painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror.[345] In
Scotland[346] it is still connected with witchcraft, and if, while
flying, it rise and then descend again earthwards, it is a sign that the
witches' hour is come--the hour in which they are supposed to have power
over every human being who is not specially shielded from their
influence. Thus, in "Macbeth" (iv. 1) the "wool of bat" forms an
ingredient in the witches' caldron. One of its popular names is
"rere-mouse," which occurs in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 2), where
Titania says:

"Some, war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,
To make my small elves coats."

[345] "English Folk-Lore," p. 115; cf. "Macbeth," iii. 2.

[346] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, pp.
125, 126.

This term is equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon, _hrere-mus_, from _hreran_,
to stir, agitate, and so the same as the old name "flitter-mouse."[347]
The early copies spell the word _reremise_.[348] It occurs in the
Wicliffite version of Leviticus xi. 19, and the plural in the form
"reremees" or "rere-myis" is found in Isaiah ii. 20. At Polperro,
Cornwall,[349] the village boys call it "airy-mouse," and address it in
the following rhyme:

"Airy mouse, airy mouse! fly over my head,
And you shall have a crust of bread;
And when I brew, and when I bake,
You shall have a piece of my wedding-cake."

[347] It has been speciously derived from the English word
_rear_, in the sense of being able to raise itself in the air,
but this is erroneous. Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 726.

[348] Aldis Wright's "Notes to A Midsu