On September 14, 1855, there were bread riots in Nottingham, where the mob broke the bakers’ windows and proceeded to such extremities that special constables were sworn in and peace was restored. On three successive Sundays, October 14, 21, and 28, 1855, there were disorderly meetings on account of the dearness of bread held in Hyde Park; the windows of many houses were smashed, but the disturbances hardly amounted to riot; and the same occurred on November 4, 11, and 18, but the police prevented the mob from doing much mischief. Since then we have never known a _bread riot_, although the unemployed, Anarchists, etc., have at times been troublesome. CHAPTER XV. LEGENDS ABOUT BREAD. As might be expected in an article of such worldwide consumption as bread, there is a considerable amount of folk-lore and sayings attendant on it. We can even find it in Shakespeare, for, in _Hamlet_ (Act iv. s. 5), Ophelia says: ‘They say the owl was a baker’s daughter.’ This, unless one knew the Gloucestershire legend, would be unintelligible, but the bit of folk-lore makes it all clear. The story goes that our Saviour went into a baker’s shop, where they were baking, and asked for some bread to eat. The mistress of the shop immediately put a piece of dough into the oven to bake for Him, but was reprimanded by her daughter, who, insisting that the piece of dough was too large, reduced it to a very small size. The dough, however, immediately afterwards began to swell, and presently became a most enormous loaf; whereupon the baker’s daughter cried out: ‘Heugh! heugh! heugh!’ which owl-like noise probably induced our Saviour to transform her into that bird. This tradition is also current in Wales; but, there, the baker’s daughter altogether refuses to give Jesus a bit of dough, for which He changed her into the _Cassek gwenwyn, lilith, lamia, strix_, the night-spectre, _mara_, the screech-owl. In the catalogue of the pictures at Kenilworth, belonging to Queen Elizabeth’s Earl of Leicester at the time of his death (September 4, 1588), are ‘The Picture of King Philip, with a Curtaine,’ and ‘The Picture of the Baker’s Daughter, with a Curtaine.’ And he had a copy of the same, or another picture of ‘The Baker’s Daughter,’ at his house at Wanstead. Whether this was a picture of the foregoing legend or not, no one can tell; but it has been suggested, from the fact of King Philip and the baker’s daughter coming in sequence in the catalogue, that it was the portrait of a female respecting whom there was some scandal current during Mary’s lifetime; it being said in an old ballad that Philip loved ‘The baker’s daughter, in her russet gown, Better than Queen Mary, with her crown.’