a The title comes from the nineteenth stanza of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751); madding means “frenzied.”
†The Cornhill Magazine serialized the novel between January and December 1874.
‡The British Elementary Education Act of 1870 established the beginnings of a national school system for all children.
§In 1066; “Wessex” was originally the name of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in southwestern England.
b The seven kingdoms allegedly created by the Angles and Saxons in early Britain.
†This is no longer the case [Hardy’s note (1912)].
d See the Bible, Revelation 3:14—16; Saint John the Divine reproaches the Laodicean church for being lukewarm in spirit.
†Statement of Christian beliefs dating from the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) and recited at Anglican communion service.
‡Moralist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709—1784), whose first biographer, James Boswell, noted his subject’s capacious coat pockets.
e Small pocket to hold a watch.
f Wagon with springs to cushion the ride.
g The constellation Ursa Major, known in America as the Big Dipper.
† The so-called “dog star” and brightest star in the heavens, in the constellation Canis Major.
‡Capella, Aldebaran, and Betelgueux (or Betelgeuse) are the brightest stars in the constellations Auriga (the Wagoner), Taurus (the Bull), and Orion, respectively.
h The mountain on which Noah’s ark came to rest; see the Bible, Genesis 8:4.
i An envious Satan, disguised as a cormorant, secretly viewed the newly created Eden from the top of the Tree of Life in Milton’s Paradise Lost (book 4, lines 178—196).
j Roman goddess of childbirth, sometimes associated with Juno.
†saddle for women allowing them to sit with both legs on the same side.
k According to the classical ideal of proportion, the head should constitute one-eighth of the body’s total height.
l Names of varieties of roses that range from pink to reddish-purple in color.
m Female sheep giving birth.
n When the heroic Samson roused himself from sleep, he discovered that his hair was shorn and thus his strength destroyed by Delilah; see the Bible, Judges 16:17-22.
o From Shakespeare’s Macbeth (act 5, scene 5): Macbeth’s despairing description of life’s meaninglessness.
p Guano is bird excrement used as fertilizer; Roman cement combines clay, chalk, sand, and lime.
†Part of the Anglican Ash Wednesday service in which divine curses are invoked on sinners.
q Small, two-wheeled, horse-drawn cart that at the time cost £ 10.
r Old Testament book preaching the vanity of all earthly achievements and desires.
s J. M. W Turner (1775-1851) was a leading English Romantic painter known for his iridescent, impressionistic coloration.
t Cotton, wool, or flax fibers graded according to length and fineness.
u Sheep about to give birth.
†In England’s Dorset region, a traditional shepherd’s call, possibly derived from the Latin word for sheep (ovis).
v The emperor Napoleon (1769-1821) spent his last six years in exile on the bleak island of St. Helena, located in the South Atlantic 1, 200 miles west of Africa.
w Manager of a farm or estate.
†See the Bible, Genesis 14:10; the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah during battle fell into the “slimepits” (tarpits) in the Valley of Siddim on the south shore of the Dead Sea.
x Eighteenth-century folk song with lyrics describing Jockey and his companion, Jenny, running away to a fair.
†Arcadia was a legendary realm of pastoral happiness in the central Peloponnese of ancient Greece.
y Morpheus, classical god of sleep and dreams.
z Stacks of hay, wheat, barley, or other grain.
aa Cereal grains such as wheat, oats, barley, and rye; not American corn (known in England as maize).
ab Stones placed under the platform holding ricks to protect them from moisture and rats.
†The process by which straw for thatched roofs was drawn through a frame to comb it out.
ac Pitch-and-toss was a money-tossing game; sovereigns were worth 480 halfpence.
ad Fertility goddess worshiped by the ancient Canaanites; see the Bible, 1 Kings 11:1—5.
ae Malthouse: building devoted to the manufacture of malt for brewing, where dampened barley or wheat was sprouted and roasted in ovens; snap: a snack.
af See the Bible, Acts 13:6-12; Elymas the sorcerer was struck blind by Saint Paul for opposing the spread of Christianity and so had to grope his way through the world.
ag Purification Day: Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, February 2; use money: annual interest from charitable investments.
ah French social philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was an important pioneer of “utopian” social reforms.
ai Circus involving tumbling or equestrian displays.
†That is, bawdy; lewd.
aj Mead, a liquor of fermented honey and spices.
†The Apostle’s Creed.
‡“Dearly Beloved Brethren” and ”Saying After Me” are the opening and closing words of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer in the Church of England.
ak The day after Whitsunday or Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter.
al Drink.
†Six score, or 120.
am The Seventh Commandment prohibits adultery; see the Bible, Deuteronomy 5:18.
an The parish clerk was a layman who assisted the regular clergyman in leading responses to prayers and in other duties.
†“Let your light so shine” is a phrase from the Bible, Matthew 5:16, repeated at the beginning of the Offertory of the Anglican communion service; come-by-chance children are illegitimate.
‡This phrase is a conjectural emendation of the unintelligible expression, “as the Devil said to the Owl,” used by the natives [Hardy’s note (1912)]. The general meaning is “like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
ao Doubled over in three parts of his body.
ap Another name for the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, celebrated on February 2.
aq Folksong about a woman with five female and five male servants.
ar Roman goddess of wisdom, who allegedly invented the flute but was ridiculed by Juno and Venus for the distortion of her features when she played it.
as Flew.
†Confidentially.
at A ringing in the ear and the sight of a single magpie both portended bad news.
†Coroner’s.
au Architectural style of late-sixteenth-century England in which classical and Gothic motifs were intermixed.
†Shallow projecting columns with vertical grooves, common in classical architecture.
‡Small ornamental projections on gable ends, characteristic of Gothic architecture.
§Houseleek: fleshy Old World plant thought to protect buildings from evil spirits; sengreen: herb with pink flowers.
av Markings resembling the form or tracks of worms.
†Gerard Terburg or Terborch (1617-1681) and Gerard Douw (1613-1675) were Dutch Baroque portrait and genre painters known for their subtlety of coloration.
aw Yellow apple.
†Contrary, perverse.
ax Settled, steady, grave.
†Confusion, disorder.
‡Isolated and out of place; see the Bible, Psalm 102:6.
ay Transparent, tubular, free-swimming oceanic tunicates that reproduce by budding from within, forming long chains or clusters.
†Russia duck and drabbet are two types of coarse linen fabric.
‡Overshoes with wooden soles worn as protection from water and mud.
§Uncultivated individuals; an ironic reference to the Bible, Judges 16:9, in which Delilah, an agent of the enemy Philistines, seems to warn her victim, Samson, of their approach.
az Twisting hay into ropes with a special tool for the purpose, a wimble.
†Planting two varieties of potatoes (Early Flourballs and Thompson’s Wonderfuls) with a dibble, or pointed tool.
ba Stupid, awkward.
†Temporary platform.
‡See the Bible, Genesis 4:1—5.
bb See the Bible, Deuteronomy 5:9.
†Beginning with the early Greek poets Homer and Hesiod, the gods of Greek mythology inhabited Mount Olympus; many later Greek and Roman poets had the gods inhabit the heavens.
bc Cavalry troops originally named because their muskets emitted fire like dragons.
†See the Bible, 1 Thessalonians 5:2; the “Route” is the unit’s official orders.
‡Prostitutes.
bd One of six junior chief magistrates or lawgivers in ancient Athens.
be Carts or vans used for transporting goods and people in rural areas.
†The banns were official notice of the intent to marry announced on three successive Sundays in the parishes of both bride and groom; a license could circumvent this procedure.
bf Market for cereal grains.
bh Oracle of the holy scriptures, or divination using the Bible.
bi Sheet of paper measuring about 6 x 9 inches, suitable for posting.
†See the Bible, Daniel 6:10-14; the Hebrew prophet Daniel continued to pray to his God, facing toward Jerusalem, in defiance of the orders of his Babylonian captors.
bj The first sign of a previously unknown continent to the west during Columbus’s first voyage in 1492.
bl Earthenware pot.
†Sudden frost or cold weather.
bm Twilled woolen cloth named after the Suffolk town of Kersey.
†Judas Iscariot, Christ’s betrayer.
‡Travail, distress.
bn Intermission; pause between acts of a play.
bo Closed.
†The Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, when quarterly rents were due and labor contracts were entered into or renewed.
‡Sexagesima Sunday, the second Sunday before Lent (“sexagesima” refers to the sixtieth day after Christmas).
bp Uprooted.
†Kiss and cuddle.
bq The god of thunder in Norse mythology
br Small mechanical figure that strikes the quarter hours.
bs See the Bible, Genesis 2:21-22; God created Eve as a companion for Adam out of one of his ribs while Adam was asleep.
bt Member of the Royal Academy of Arts, founded in 1768.
†from Milton’s Paradise Lost (book 5, lines 449-450).
bu Horseshoe-shaped arch.
†Compartment in a stable where an animal can move freely.
‡Areas in a monastery for the distribution of alms and for religious meditation, respectively.
bv Minor goddesses of trees and woods in Greek mythology.
bw From Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (act 1, scene 3).
†Mystery secret.
bx In Greek mythology, Cyclopses were uncouth one-eyed giants living as herdsmen and inhabiting a remote region thought to be the island of Sicily
by Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) of England and Mary Stuart (1542-1587) of Scotland; the former was known for her hard-headed statesmanship, the latter for her turbulent personal life.
†Rasping.
‡Greek name for Cupid, the juvenile god of love.
bz Ixion, king of Thessaly, was chained to an eternally revolving wheel of fire for trying to seduce Hera, the wife of Zeus.
ca Either Francis Danby (1793-1861) or his son James Danby (1816-1875), both landscape artists known for their sunrise and sunset scenes.
cb See the Bible, Exodus 10:28-29: Pharaoh refused Moses’ request that he free the Jewish slaves of Egypt, with catastrophic results for the Egyptians.
cc Bloated with gas from eating too much clover.
cd The New Testament.
†From Milton’s pastoral elegy Lycidas (line 126); the diseased sheep in the poem are Christians misled by faulty doctrine.
ce Names of fields and pastures on Bathsheba’s farm.
cf A pale-faced Morton announced the death of Henry Percy (Hotspur) in the battle of Shrewsbury to his father, the Earl of Northumberland, in Shakespeare’s The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth (act 1, scene 1).
†Warrant of arrest or imprisonment from the King of France.
cg The first of a sheep’s four stomach compartments.
†Referring to Edmund Burke’s definition of delight in his Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757; part 1, section 4).
ch A spring tide is the highest; a neap tide is the lowest.
ci Belonging to a convent or monastery.
†Narrow windows with sharply pointed arches.
cj Narrow, with pointed arches.
†Beveled corners.
ck Opposing areas in the central hall of a cross-shaped church; locations for the congregation and the altar, respectively.
cl From Shakespeare’s Hamlet (act 2, scene 2).
†Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, was born from the foam of the sea.
cm Shearling: a sheep that had been sheared once; hog: one that had never been sheared.
†Board on which sheep were laid while being sheared.
cn Hornless, long-wooled breed of sheep.
co John St. John Long (1798-1834) was a quack Irish doctor who died of tuberculosis (consumption) after peddling cures for the disease.
tA mixen is a manure pile; the expression signifies that it is better to marry a neighbor than a stranger.
‡Perverse or willfully contrary.
cp Place where reeds grow.
†See the Bible, Luke 18:11; the Pharisee thanked God that he was not “as other men are.”
‡Might.
§Scoff.
cq Coarse cloth made of linen and wool.
†Poussin was a French painter (1594—1665) known for his classical landscapes.
‡See the Bible, Ecclesiastes 7:26.
cr Tripod used as a stand for pots or kettles in a fire.
†dried winter apples.
cs Coggan’s song is from the traditional ballad “The Sprig of Thyme.”
†Ballad.
ct Poorgrass’s allegedly original song is actually a traditional ballad, “The Seeds of Love.”
†In Virgil’s sixth Eclogue, these two shepherds made the drunken satyr Silenus sing a long mythological song for them, as he had promised.
cu The lines are from a ballad by novelist, dramatist, and poet Matthew G. (“Monk”) Lewis (1775—1818); set to music by C. E. Horn (1786—1840).
cv Reference to John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819; lines 5—6).
cw See the Bible, Exodus 10:22.
cx The presiding spirit of a place.
†Trimming.
‡Small wheel with sharp points attached to a spur, which was used to goad a horse’s flanks.
cy Insignia of the rank of sergeant.
†Tiny; alluding to the inhabitants of the island of Lilliput in book 1 of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels ( 17 2 6) .
cz Allusion to the poem “How Delicious Is the Winning,” by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844).
da Dandy; impressive-looking fellow.
db In ancient Greece, Cretans were proverbially held to be liars.
†Retailer.
‡Pleasure-lover.
dc Forward sword thrust.
†Yellow cotton cloth originally from Nanking, China.
dd Cocks: conical heaps of hay; windrows: raked lines of hay waiting to be made into cocks.
de Mark Antony’s self-deprecating words in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (act 3, scene 2).
df The Third Commandment forbids taking the Lord’s name in vain (Troy may have meant the Second, which forbids idolatry), and the Ninth Commandment forbids lying; see the Bible, Exodus 20:1-17.
dg Hell; originally a “hearth” in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem where children were sacrificed to Baal and Molech; see the Bible, 2 Kings 23:10, Isaiah 30:33, and Jeremiah 7:31.
dh The austere Scottish Protestant reformer John Knox (c.1514—1572) chastised the pleasure-loving Catholic Mary Queen of Scots (1542—1587) in Edinburgh in the early 1560s.
di See the Bible, 2 Samuel 12:3; the prophet Nathan used the parable of a rich man who unfairly devotes to his own use a poor man’s only ewe lamb to denounce King David for his injustice to Uriah following the king’s adulterous affair with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba.
dj From Ovid’s Remedia Amoris (Remedies for Love) 1.144.
dl Two types of apple trees.
dm Swaggering; “guards” are positions of defense.
†Forward thrusts.
dn The single-edged broadsword replaced the older two-edged sword in the eighteenth century.
do A play on aurora borealis, or “northern lights”; Troy’s sword creates a dawn-like sheen of light.
dp See the Bible, Exodus 17:6: Moses struck a rock on Mount Horeb (Sinai) and water miraculously streamed forth.
dq Eros (Cupid) inspired love by shooting his arrows at his victims; lymph is plasma-like fluid derived from bodily tissues and used in early vaccines.
†Originally a collection of ten households; here, a small rural district.
dr She didn’t follow her own advice; adapted from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (act 1, scene 3).
†The Greek physician Hippocrates (c.460-c.377 B.C.) wrote that when two pains occur together, the greater obscures the lesser.
dt Agitated state of mind.
†Workhouse for paupers created by unions of parishes, brought into existence by the Poor Law of 1834.
du A maker of cattle pens and portable barriers (hurdles) for confining sheep.
dv Fickleness; the act of constantly changing one’s mind.
dw Small details of conduct.
†Fishing.
dy A repeater watch chimed at specific intervals of time, from every minute to once an hour, depending on the watch; pinchbeck was a cheap metal made to look like gold and consisting of five parts copper and one part zinc.
dz An allusion to William Cowper’s comic ballad “The Diverting History of John Gilpin” (1782), about the title subject’s long exhausting ride on an unruly horse; a “rig” is an escapade.
†August 1; an ancient harvest festival or “loaf mass.”
‡Having “tresses,” or flexible stalks.
ea Infection in a finger or toe.
tA whitlow is an inflammation of the tissue in a finger or toe; All-Fours is a card game.
eb See the Bible, Matthew 5:15 ; Christ advises believers not to hide their light under a bushel.
†Christ’s Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes, or “calendar of the blessed”; see the Bible, Matthew 5:3-11.
ed Studded with hobnails, which have large heads to protect the leather soles of boots.
†Batty-cakes were small cakes; a penneth was a pennyworth; stales were stale cakes.
‡Shallow tub in which dough was mixed.
ee The two Hebrew patriarchs and brothers were often shown in Christian art with long beards.
†High Church denotes the widespread contemporary movement within the Anglican Church in favor of sacramental rituals and ecclesiastical authority; High Chapel (or more properly chapel) denotes the nonconformist sects of dissenters such as Baptists and Methodists.
ef See the Bible, Matthew 21:44.
†See the Bible, 2 Samuel 16:5-13; Shimei of the house of Saul cursed King David with impunity when the latter fled Jerusalem during Absalom’s revolt.
eg Gold coins worth £1; 50 sovereigns in mid-Victorian England would be the equivalent of several thousand dollars today.
eh Individual deputized by a bishop to issue a marriage license without publishing the “banns,” or announcement of intent to marry.
†Terms from swordsmanship; “fort” refers to the stronger part of the blade near the hilt, “feeble” to the weaker part near the tip.
ei River in the Greek underworld over which the ferryman Charon carried the souls or “shades” of the dead, who could cross only if their bodies had been properly buried; see Virgil’s Aeneid 6.403-447.
ek See the Bible, Mark 2:22; Christ advised against putting new wine in old bottles.
el Sydenham’s chorea, a nervous disorder causing jerky movements.
en English form of the classical Magna Mater, or Cybele, the goddess of natural fecundity; Mother Nature.
eo With deep indentations, as found in the portraits of the Flemish painter Sir Anthony Van Dyke (1599-1641).
†Parchment from which writing has been erased to create space for other writing.
ep A thatching beetle is a heavy mallet used for wedging thatch; a rick stick combs the thatch; spars are U-shaped sticks for securing it.
eq Lazy, idle.
†Pitchfork.
er Italian pottery glazed with white enamel and decorated with metallic colors.
es Valley south of Jerusalem, notorious as a place of pagan idolatry and the site of Tophet, where a sacrificial “hearth” was located (“Tophet” became synonymous with “hell”); see note on p. 184.
et Allusion to a drawing by John Flaxman (1755-1826) entitled “Mercury Conducting the Souls of the Suitors to the Infernal Regions”; the Greek hero Odysseus killed all his wife’s suitors upon his return home to Ithaca from the Trojan War.
eu Boldwood is comparing himself to the prophet Jonah in Nineveh; see the Bible, Jonah 4:6-8.
ev Workhouse for paupers. See footnote on p. 210.
ew Binding together small branches for fuel.
†Pierre Jacquet-Droz (1721-1790), a Swiss watchmaker and inventor of wind-up mechanical figures.
ex Hindu god Vishnu, whose image was annually drawn through the streets of India in a large cart (the car of the Juggernaut), which was erroneously believed by Europeans to crush worshipers.
ey Contrary to logic; derived from the Latin phrase lucus non lucendo (“a grove does not shine”), a proverbial example of contradictory logic.
ez Roman goddess of the hunt and female chastity.
fc Laurustinus, or laurustine (Viburnum tinus), box (Buxus), yew (Taxus), and boy’s love or southernwood (Artemisia abrotanum) are all evergreen shrubs.
fe Gate in the Tower of London, opening on the Thames; state prisoners were transported through this gate.
†English version of the French song “Malbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre,” sung to the tune of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
‡Coarse cotton cloth.
ff Rushes or reeds growing in moist areas.
fg Early morning drink or meal.
fh A shilling to have the church bell rung and a half-crown to have the grave dug, respectively.
fi Member of a dissenting sect; also known as nonconformists, dissenters rejected many of the doctrines or practices of the Church of England.
†Skittish horse.
fl See the story of Noah’s ark, in the Bible, beginning at Genesis 6:13; “King” is an anachronistic title here.
fm See the Bible (Esther, chapters 1-2); Esther, a Jew, displaced Vashti in the affections of the Persian King Ahasuerus.
fn See Exodus 21:25; in the Bible, the word used is “stripe” (lash), not “strife.”
fo “It is finished,” the dying words of Christ on the cross, as given in the Bible, John 19:30.
fp From Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ode to the West Wind” (1820; lines 2-3).
fq A psalter is a book of psalms and prayers; a collect is a collection of short prayers repeated at communion service.
fr Bedstead without posts.
†That is, Shakespeare’s Othello.
fs Ornamented.
†Stone border.
‡Crumbling.
ft Variant of “gargoyle”; a stone rainspout carved into the shape of a grotesque figure.
fu Jacob van Ruysdael, or Ruisdael (1628-1682) and Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709), Dutch landscape painters.
fv See the Bible, Revelation 22:11; the formulaic phrase in the Bible uses the words “unjust” and then “filthy” not “accursed.”
fw The local tower and churchyard do not answer precisely to the foregoing description [Hardy’s note (1912)].
fx The Spaniard Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c.1475-1517) was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean, in 1513.
fy In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the old councilor Gonzalo remarks in the midst of shipwreck, “I would fain die a dry death” (act 1, scene 1).
†Butterfly stroke.
fz Four-wheeled open carriage drawn by two horses.
ga Allusion to Robert Browning’s poem, “The Statue and the Bust” (1855; lines 218-219); the poem narrates the story of lovers who delay eloping until their passion fades.
gb Stocky workhorse.
†Hobnail, a short nail with a large head used to protect the soles of work boots.
gc Parsimonious, tight.
†See the Bible, Matthew 17:20; according to Christ, a mustard seed of faith could move mountains.
gd From the poem “She Was a Phantom of Delight”: “A creature not too bright or good/ For human nature’s daily food,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
ge See the Bible, Genesis 29:15-28; Jacob served his uncle Laban as a shepherd for seven years in order to marry his cousin Rachel, but he was then tricked into serving another seven years before finally marrying her.
gf Nizhny Novgorod, Russian city (called Gorky from 1932 to 1991) famous in the nineteenth century for its late-summer agricultural fair.
gg Dick Turpin (1706-1739) was a celebrated highwayman famous for his legendary twelve-hour ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess.
†An echo of biblical language; see Matthew 11:7 and Luke 7:24.
gi Tom King was a highwayman accidentally killed by his partner, the infamous Dick Turpin (see the footnote to “Black Bess” on p. 350).
gj Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was famous for his use of chiaroscuro, a painting technique that contrasts light and shade.
gk Innermost part of a temple or shrine.
gl Three Hebrews who survived their punishment in a fiery furnace for refusing to worship an idol of Nebuchadnezzar during the Babylonian captivity; see the Bible, Daniel 3:13-30.
gm Always.
†Clumsy, slouching.
gn Puny.
†Heaved.
‡Pomace, pulp left after making apple cider.
go In the style of Noah; suitable for foul weather.
gp The Latin translates as “The battle begins—in a moment,” from Horace’s Satires (book I, satire 1, lines 7-8); the full sentence reads: “The battle begins and in a moment comes sudden death or the joy of victory.”
gs Amaurosis, a form of blindness in which the eye is physically unchanged.
gu Men carrying pikes or lances to escort a visiting judge on circuit duty.
gv See the Bible, Daniel 5 : 2 7.
gx From Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion (1808; canto 3, stanza 31); yode means “went.”
gy From “The Pillar of the Cloud,” a poem by John Henry Newman (1801-1890), set to music as a hymn (“Lead, Kindly Light”) by John B. Dykes in the 1860s.
gz See the Bible, Matthew 26:56 and Mark 14:50; Christ was deserted by his disciples previous to his arrest.
†feast of the Annunciation, March 25; on this day labor contracts were renewed.
ha From “Woak Hill,” by Dorset poet, linguist, and educatorWilliam Barnes (1801-1886).
hb Allusion to the Bible, Song of Solomon 8:6—7
hc A marriage license would avoid the unwanted publicity of the banns (see the note to “banns or license” on p. 96).
he From “Patty Morgan the Milkmaid’s Story,” in R. H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends (1840—1847).
†From John Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes” (1820; line 243).
hf Serpent: an antique bass wind instrument with a long convoluted tube; hautboy: an oboe.
†John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), famous for his victories against the French in the early eighteenth century.
hg From the Bible, Hosea 4:17; the prophet Hosea is denouncing the idolatry of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.