Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853, page 9 by Various Authors
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n at first; but, on second {376} thoughts, referred it to venery, with which Mr. Dyce consents: both erroneously. Several instances are adduced by the latter, in his Critique of Knight and Collier's Shakspeare; any one of which, besides the passage in The Merchant of Venice, should have confuted that origin of the phrase. The hip of a chase is no term of woodman's craft: the haunch is. Moreover, what a marvellous expression, to say, A hound has a chase on the hip, instead of by. Still more prodigious to say, that a hound gets a chase on the hip. One would be loth to impute to the only judicious dramatic commentator of the day, a love of contradiction as the motive for quarrelling with Mr. Collier's note on this idiom. To the examples alleged by Mr. Dyce, the three following may be added; whereof the last, after the opinion of Sir John Harington, rightly refers the origin of the metaphor to wrestling:
"The Divell hath them on the hip, he may easily bring them to anything."--Michael and the Dragon, by D. Dike, p. 328. (Workes, London, 1635).
"If he have us at the advantage, on the hip as we say, it is no great matter then to get service at our hands."--Andrewes, "A Sermon preached before the King's Majesty at Whitehall, 1617," Library of Ang.-Cath. Theology, vol. iv. p. 365.
"Full oft the valiant knight his hold doth shift, And with much prettie sleight, the same doth slippe; In fine he doth applie one speciall drift, Which was to get the Pagan on the hippe: And hauing caught him right, he doth him lift, By nimble sleight, and in such wise doth trippe: That downe he threw him, and his fall was such, His head-piece was the first that ground did tuch." Sir John Harington's Translation of Orlando Furioso, Booke xlvi. Stanza 117.
In some editions, the fourth line is printed "namely to get," &c., with other variations in the spelling of the rest of the sta