OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 016

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Groaning-cheese - Cheese provided on the occasion of child-birth. It was the practice to cut the groaning-cheese in the middle, and by degrees to form it into a large kind of ring, through which the child was passed on the day of christening.

Rat-rhyme - To repeat from memory without attaching any meaning to the words; anything repeated by rote.  The fanciful idea that rats where commonly rhymed to death in Ireland arose probably from some metrical charm or incantation used there for that purpose.

Snapper-back - in foot-ball, a center rusher . . . Neither the snapper-back nor his opponent can take the ball out with the hand until it touches a third man.

Ruckle - A loose heap or pile; figuratively, a ruckle of bones, a very lean person.

Fowerty-frappers - Fireworks of any kind.

Simmiting - An inclination or fondness for a person of the opposite sex; related to simmity, to look after admiringly, to pay attention to.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 015

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Cuckoo-ale - Ale drunk out of doors to welcome the cuckoo's return. The cuckoo was looked upon as the embodiment of spring in early times, and the weather was supposed to change as soon as it appeared.

Ragrowtering -  Playing at romps, and thereby rumpling, roughening and tearing the clothes to rags, or playing the rogue in a wanton frolic; from ragery and rout, tumultus. Risking the damage of clothes by rude or rough personal handling in play.

Man of  straw - The old clothes of a man, stuffed with straw; hence, an imaginary person, a person of little consequence put forward to deceive.

Tricked up and made fine; a metaphor taken from a horse's hounces, which is part of the furniture of a cart-horse which lies spread up on his collar.

Apple-john - An apple, so called from its being at maturity about St. John's Day, May 6 . . .  Sometimes called the Apples of King John which, if correct, would militate against the notion about St. John's Day. . . In the United States there is a drink called apple-jack, which is apple or cider brandy.

 

OD&D - The OSR and Innovation - A Few Thoughts

I have recently read Where Should the Innovation in the OSR Be - Rules or Settings? over at Tenkar's Tavern; Settings or Rules or Both and Why Not, Another Giveaway over at Gothridge Manor; and Innovation: settings, rules, or... what? over at Greyhawk Grognard and see also +Michael S,  +Tim Shorts,  +Joseph Bloch, and +James Spahn.

So I decided to weigh in with a few comments of my own.

Now before I comment I would like to establish exactly where I am coming from on this. As of this coming fall I will have been playing and reffing OD&D for 40 years. I don't consider myself to be part of the OSR, since for me there is nothing to revive, since I never left old school gaming and OD&D to begin with. For me it is as fresh and new as when I started. I have not played any of the retro-clones (see my list of those products Ye Olde School List of Retro Games & Clones, Retro Clones, and What Have You!) but I have copies of the free ones and have looked through them for ideas. The ones that are for sale I am curious about, but not enough to spend money on them yet. I don't have any problem with anyone making money on their labor at all. But when it comes to new rulesets based on OD&D or Classic D&D, I want to look before I buy. That is just me, now if I like your ruleset - i.e. I find it readable and with no deal breakers then I might be enticed to purchase a product based on your ruleset. As I said, I am all about promoting OD&D - see The Ruins of Murkhill - True OD&D - Original Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Worlds for this blog and OD&D - Campaigns and House Rules Discussion for my forum.

Now on to my comments concerning the OSR and Innovation. The above noted essays on the noted blogs mentioned Empire of the Petal Throne, Blackmoor, Spears of the Dawn, Arrows of Indra,  White Star, Carcosa and others. 

Now the question of where should the innovation be Rules or Settings is to me fairly simple. IMO the main efforts for innovation should be going into settings, new spells and new monsters. Let me elaborate on this a bit, when it comes to new rules/house rules/rule sets I say keep them coming, write all of the clones, retro clones, retro games you want and I will happily use any new rule that looks like fun and if it does enhance fun I will keep it. 

However, when it comes to settings and to me this does mean new spells and new monsters, I was surprised that no one mentioned The Arduin Grimoire (The Arduin Trilogy). Dave Hargrave started Arduin as an OD&D campaign and then when he published he was forced by TSR to change it from what was essentially an unofficial OD&D supplement into its own game. It was a extraordinary setting with many new spells and new monsters and it had all kinds of innovations many of which were brought out 20-25+ years later by others as new things, but they weren't new at all. So I say aspire to be the next "Arduin", be truly innovative in a way that goes way beyond just a new setting or a new spell or a new monsters, create something that really breaks the mold. Those are things worth buying!

But here is the thing for me, I am not going to use your setting the way you write it, I am going to mine it for ideas to mix with my own ideas and then use it IMC the same way I steal rules and use them IMC.

Over on my forum, I am encouraging people to post their campaign worlds and we have several that we have started and along with that, information about campaigns and game play. One fellow plays on a Jupiter sized world and it is a generation game that has been running for over 40 years and he is starting to post about the current characters that are 7 and a half real world years into circumnavigating the globe. To me that is something I want to read about and I hope it runs hundreds if not thousands of posts. Others are brand new worlds, some just beginning and I want to see where they go. I want to see things that stir me up and make me care.

I suppose that is really what I want from the OSR - not just your rules, settings, monsters and spells - I want to hear about your campaign and see your maps - I want to know what weird things your players did and the strange things they found when they explored your world. I want to see and read about things that I would not think of. I am not a deep thinker like some of the bloggers are, so just my 2 coppers.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 014

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Settlers' matches - A name occasionally applied to the long pendulous strips of bark which hang from the Eucalyptus and  other trees during decortication, and which, becoming exceedingly dry, are readily ignited and used as kindling wood.

Octogamie - Marrying eight times. From Latin ecto, and Old French gamie (marriage).
Purse Proud - Haughty on account of wealth.

Extranean - An outsider, stranger; one not belonging to a household . . .  in the grammar school at Aberdeen, the extranean was one who had not gone through the regular curriculum from the lowest to the highest classes, but had come from other schools for the last quarter in order to get a final drill or finishing  touch before going to compete for the university bursaries or scholarships.

Seeksorrow - One who contrives to give himself  vexation.

Chair-days - A time of repose; the evening of life.

Crump - One that helps solicitors to affidavit- men and overseers  . . . who, for a small sum will be bound  or swear for anybody, on that occasion putting on good cloaths to make a good appearance, that bail may be accepted.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 013

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Snickle - A snare for birds, constructed of horsehair.

Invalid's table - At Yale college in former times, a table at which those who were not in health could obtain more nutritious food than was supplied at the common board.

Queer rooster - An informer that pretends to be sleeping, and thereby overhears the conversations of thieves in night cellars.

Fangast - A marriageable maid.

Quill-driver - A scrivener, a clerk, satirical phrase similar to "steel bar driver,"  a tailor.

Cramp-rings - Ring(s) made out of old coffin-lead , and worn as a preservative against cramp. 

Aroint - A word of aversion, to a witch or infernal spirit, of which the etymology is uncertain . . . It occurs in Shakespeare's Macbeth, "Aroint thee, witch, the rump-fed ronyon cries" 

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 012

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Weeping-ripe - Ready to weep; ripe for weeping. A notion long prevailed in this country that it augured ill for a matrimonial alliance if the bride did not weep profusely at the wedding. As no witch could shed more than three tears , and those from her left eye only, a copious flood of tears gave assurance to the husband that the lady had not plighted her troth to Satan, and was no witch.

Shinnock - The game of shinny . . . resembling hockey, the and club used for the game.

Bog-oranges -  Potatoes. A phrase perhaps derived from the term "Irish fruit, " which by some strange peculiarity has been applied to potatoes, for even the most ignorant Cockney could hardly believe that potatoes grow in a bog.

Gabriel's hounds - These phantom hounds, jet black and breathing flames . . . frequent bleak and dreary moors on tempestuous nights, and woe betide the unlucky wretch who chances to cross their path.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 011

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Riding the hatch - In the district about the Land's End, a custom once prevailed known as riding the hatch. Persons suspected of immorality were mounted on the half-door (a Dutch door), which was then violently rocked until they fell off. If the accused fell into the house, he was judged to be innocent; if into the street, guilty.

Keak - A distortion or injury of the spine that causes deformity. It seems to have some affinity with the Cheshire word kench . . .  "a twist or wrench, a strain or sprain." Our term, however, is never used but for a wrench in the spine.

Curglaff - the shock felt in bathing when one first plunges into the cold water; hence curgloff, panic struck.

Box harry - To live in a poor manner, or on credit. To go without food; to make a poor or coarse meal; to rough it; to take things as they are . . . Hence Boxharry-week, the blank week between pay-weeks when the workmen lived on credit or starved.

The phrase "to box Harry" probably means to box or fight, the devil.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 010

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

 Man-browed - Having hair growing between the eyebrows. Here is is deemed unlucky to meet a person thus marked, especially if the first one meets in the morning. Elsewhere, it is a favourable omen. The term, I suppose, has been primarily applied to a woman, as by this exuberance indicating something of a masculine character, having brows like a man.

Almner - An officer of a king or prince's house whose function is carefully to collect the fragments of meat and victuals and distribute them . . . and likewise to receive and faithfully distribute *cast horses, robes, money and other things given in alms. He ought also to excite the king with often admonitions, especially on festival days, to be bountiful in giving alms, and to beseech that his rich robes may not be given to parasites, maskers and stage-players.

*Cast Horses - A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. A horse can be injured from this and have to be put down.

Water-quake - A disturbance of water caused by volcanic action.

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.CP3EVp8Q.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.CP3EVp8Q.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.CP3EVp8Q.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.CP3EVp8Q.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.CP3EVp8Q.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.CP3EVp8Q.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.CP3EVp8Q.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.CP3EVp8Q.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

A horse can get stuck - or cast - in his stall. A horse is said to be cast when he has lain down or rolled and managed to position himself with his legs so close to the wall that he can neither get up nor reposition himself to roll the other way. - See more at: http://www.equisearch.com/article/help-your-cast-horse-your-horses-stall#sthash.oD9SwJPy.dpuf

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 009

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Resurrection Men - body-snatchers, those who broke open the coffins of the newly buried to supply the demands of the surgical and medical schools. The resurrectionist took the corpse naked, this being in law a misdemeanor, as opposed to a felony if garments were taken as well.

- First applied to Burke and Hare in 1829, who rifled graves to sell the bodies for dissection, and sometimes even murdered people for the same purpose.
 
Thraw - The Scots thought formerly, and may do still, that to die with what they call a thraw, that is, in pain and contortion, was an indication of having lived an ill life.

- To die with a thraw is reckoned an obvious indication of  a bad conscience. When a person was secretly murdered, it was formerly believed that if the corpse were watched with certain mysterious ceremonies, the death-thraws would be reversed in its visage, and it would denounce the perpetrators and circumstances of the murder.

Scrofula - Hard swellings of the glandules of the neck and ears; the King's Evil - so called because it was thought that the touch of the King would cure it.

 

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 008

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Snuff-dipping - A mode of taking tobacco practiced  by some of the lower class of women in the United States, consisting of dipping a brush among snuff and rubbing the teeth and gums with it.

Primovant - In ancient astronomy, that sphere which was supposed to carry the fixed stars in their daily motions, to which all the other orbs were attached.

Celibatist - A person who is unmarried.

Hungerslain -  Having a famished appearance. The term is freely applied where circumstances hardly warrant it, as in the case of a family who occupy a large residence without having the means to provide suitable attendance.

Clapperclaw - to jangle and claw each other about. (from Dutch & German klappen, to strike.

- To tongue-beat, to scold.

- To scratch, maul, fight in an unskillful manner; generally used of women . . . Hence, clapperclaw, a noisy woman.

- A man having his face scratched by his wife is said to be "clapper-claad."

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 007

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Daw, in common speech, is to awaken; to be dawed, to have shaken off sleep, to be fully awakened and to come to one's self out of a deep sleep.

Chilblains - An inflammation of the feet, hands, &c., occasioned by cold . . . Chilblains are treated by accustoming the parts to exposure, stimulant, terebinthinate and balsamic washes.

To thrash chilblains with holly is an old-fashioned cure, but in some places it is only efficacious if the feet are crossed during the painful operation.

Snoutfair - A person with a handsome countenance.

Screevers - Writers of false or exaggerated accounts of afflictions and privations . . . professional begging-letter writers. Persons who write begging-letters for others sometimes, though seldom, beg themselves. They are, in many cases, well supported by the fraternity for whom they write. A professional of this kind is called by the cadgers their "man of business." Their histories vary as much as their abilities, generally speaking, they have been clerks, teachers, shopmen, reduced gentlemen, or the illegitimate sons of members of the aristocracy, while others, after receiving a liberal education, have broken away from parental control and commenced the profession in early life, and will probably pursue it to their graves.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 006

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

 Clock-faces - A favorite name for the small circles of ice formed upon a pool when it begins to freeze over.

Bundling - Bundling used to be a widely diffused Welsh custom before marriage. (It was also practiced in the American south up through the 1800's and perhaps longer in some areas) The betrothed or engaged pair went to bed or more frequently lay together, in their clothes . . .  Even among families of good position it is tacitly recognized and tolerated, and it was at the outset the product of the clothed state, where touch had to play the part of sight in the unclothed. It is a rigorous condition that no liberty be taken with the dress.  Prudent mothers gave daughters approaching bundling age a "courting-stocking" completely covering the girl's body from the waist downwards, with room for both legs within it; such stockings . . . were often heirlooms.

Bundling boards - A wooden board the length of the bed and 8-12 inches in width that was placed upright in the bed between the bundling couple.

Drink-meat - Ale boiled, thickened with oatmeal, and spiced.

Town-bull - It was formerly the custom to keep a bull for the common use of the town.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 005

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Gull-groper - A bystander that lends money to the gamesters.

Blutterbunged - confounded, overcome by surprise.

Minnock - To affect delicacy, to ape the manners of one's superiors.

Word-wanton - Obscene in speech.

Taghairm - A wild species of magic was practiced in the district of Trotternish that was attended with a horrible solemnity. A family who pretended to oracular knowledge ...  was sewed up in the hide of an ox and , to add to the ceremony, was placed on a precipice beside a waterfall. The trembling enquirer was brought to the place where the shade and the roaring of the waters increased the dread of the occasion. The question is put, and the person in the hide delivers his answer. And so ends this species of divination styled taghairm.

Vomitory - a door of a large building by which the crowd is let out; from the Latin vomitorious.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 004

Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Duck-shoving - A cabman's phrase. In Melbourne, before the days of the trams, the wagonette-cabs used to run by a time-table from fixed stations at so much a passenger. A cabman who did not wait his turn on the station rank, but touted passengers up and down the street in the neighbourhood of the rank, was called a  duck-shover.

Fumbler -   An unperforming husband, one that is insufficient: Fumbler's Hall, the place where such are to be put for their nonperformance.

Sal ammoniac - a volatile salt of two kinds. The ancient type was a native salt generated in inns where pilgrims ... used to lodge, who traveling upon camels, urinating in the stables; out of this urine arose a kind of salt, denominated ammoniac. The modern sal ammoniac is entirely factitious, and made in Egypt with soot, a little sea salt, and the urine of cattle.

Grave-merels - It is thought unlucky on the Borders to tread on the graves of unbaptized children ... He who steps on the grave of a stillborn or unbaptized child, subjects himself to the disease of grave-merels. ...There is a remedy for the grave-merels, though not of easy attainment. It lies in the wearing of a sark, thus prepared: The lint must be grown in a field which shall be manured by a farmyard heap that has not been disturbed for forty years. it must be spunby an old Habbitrot, that queen of spinsters, it must be bleached by an honest bleacher, in an honest miller's milldam, and sewed by an honest tailor. On donning this mysterious vestment, the sufferer will at once regain his health and strength.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 003

Some more olde words to lighten up your day and stimulate your thinking!

Duck's dinner - A drink of water without anything to eat.

Wolfshead - An outlaw, meaning a person who might be killed with impunity, like a wolf.

Shoot the moon - To remove furniture from a house in the middle of the night without paying the landlord.

Shuttle-gathering - An expedient for stopping weaving factories without breaking the machinery. The shuttles from the looms were forcibly gathered and taken away by the discounted weavers and, as they could not be replaced for several weeks, business had to be suspended.

Eyeshot - sight, glance, view. Hence, eye-reach, the range or reach of the eye; extent of vision.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 002

Continuing on with some of these fun archaic words:

Pixilated - Led astray, as if by pixies; confused, bewildered. Also intoxicated.

Pixilated - An early American expression derived from the word pixies, meaning elves. They would say, "The pixies have got him, " as we nowadays (1930's) would say a man is balmy.

Pixilated - To use the word in the sense of crazy is not correct. A Vermonter would not hesitate to use crazy if that conveyed his meaning. A pixilated man is one whose whimseys are not understood by practical-minded people ... More nearly a synonym of 'whimsical.'

Tree-geese - A name given to barnacles, from their supposed metamorphosis into geese.

Fiddler's green - A name given by sailors to their dancehouses and other places of frolic on shore; sailors' paradise.

OD&D - Old Forgotten English Words - 001

When you play OD&D do you ever throw in any old archaic words for flavor. Not everyone's players would appreciate it, I am sure; however, many of us enjoy words and play many different word games. I am a Scrabble fan myself; however, when I play I have one house rule - if an English word appears in any dictionary I can access the word is valid. When you play Scrabble using the OED and others it greatly increases the number of words available.

Here are a few archaic words, how many do you know?

Sough - the sound of the wind amongst the trees, the sound of one sleeping.

Sic-Sic - Said to pigs when called to the trough by those who think little that they are speaking pure Saxon, in which sic is pig.

Pulpatoon - A dish made of rabbits, fowl, etc., in a crust of forced meat.

Forced Meat - Minced and highly seasoned meat.

Martingale - A gambling term which means the doubling of a stake every time you lose, so that when you win once, you win back all that you have lost. So called from the fact that, as in all fair games you must win once, you have a safe hold of fortune. The difficulty is to obtain a bank large enough to do this effectively ... in a fair game.

Curtain-lecture - A lecture or homily delivered by a wife to her husband when in bed, upon the shortcomings and errors of his daily life.