m>recherché couplets, the following attached to a gaudy print of a military drum:
"Not a rub-a-dub will come To sound the music of a drum:"
--no great authority certainly, but sufficient to give the word a greater antiquity than Dr. L. claims for it; and no doubt some of your readers will be able to furnish more dignified instances of its use.
J. EASTWOOD.
Ecclesfield.
[To this it may be added, that Dub-a-dub is found in Halliwell's Arch. Gloss. with the definition, "To beat a drum; also, the blow on the drum. 'The dub-a-dub of honour.' Woman is a weathercock, p. 21., there used metaphorically." Mr. Halliwell might also have cited the nursery rhyme:
"Sing rub-a-dub-dub, Three men in a tub."]
Quotations.--
1. "In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke."
Quoted in Much Ado about Nothing, Act I. Sc. 1.
Mr. Knight (Library Edition, ii. 379.) says this line is from Hieronymo, but gives no
