, of
Shakespeare's time, confounding _rann_, a rhyme, with _ran_, a
_roar_, fell into the error which led to the English phrase as
used by Shakespeare."--_Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer_,
1882, vol. ii. p. 9. "On Some Obscure Words and Celtic Phrases
in Shakespeare," by Charles Mackay.

Sir W. Temple, in his "Essay on Poetry," seems to derive the idea from
the Runic incantations, for, after speaking of them in various ways, he
adds, "and the proverb of rhyming rats to death, came, I suppose, from
the same root."

According to a superstitious notion of considerable antiquity, rats
leaving a ship are considered indicative of misfortune to a vessel,
probably from the same idea that crows will not build upon trees that
are likely to fall. This idea is noticed by Shakespeare in "The Tempest"
(i. 2), where Prospero, describing the vessel in which himself and
daughter had been placed, with the view to their certain destruction at
sea, says:

"they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it."

The _Shipping Gazette_ of April, 1869, contained a communication
entitled, "A Sailor's Notion about Rats," in which the following passage
occurs: "It is a well-authenticated fact that rats have often been known
to leave ships in the harbor previous to their being lost at sea. Some
of those wiseacres who want to convince us against the evidence of our
senses will call this superstition. As neither I have time, nor you
space, to cavil with such at present, I shall leave them alone in their
glory." The fact, however, as Mr. Hardwick has pointed out in his
"Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore" (1872, p. 251), that rats do
sometimes migrate from one ship to another, or from one barn or
corn-stack to another, from various causes, ought to be quite sufficient
to explain such a superstition. Indeed, a story is told of a cunning
Welsh captain who wanted to get rid of rats that infested his ship, then
lying in the Mersey, at Liverpool. Having found out that there was a
vessel laden with cheese in the basin, and getting alongside of her
about dusk, he left all his hatches open, and waited till all the rats
were in his neighbor's ship, and then moved off.

_Snail._ A common amusement among children consists in charming snails,
in order to i