[Footnote 1: Jack and Gill were measures. "Wherefore," says
Grumio, "be the Jacks fair within and the Gills fair without,"
meaning the leathern jacks clean within, and the metal gills
polished without.]
[Footnote 2: His character has suffered by antiquarian
research, which tells us that the song was made on a Colonel
Horner, intrusted by the last Abbot of Wells with a pie,
containing the title-deeds of the abbey, which he was to
deliver to Henry VIII., and that he abstracted one for his own
purposes, whereupon the abbot was hanged.]
[Footnote 3: The old name for pancakes. Slap-_jacks_ is their
present name in America.]
[Footnote 4: The figure which struck the hour, as on the old
clocks of St. Dunstan's, and of Carfax in Oxford.]
* * * * *