There are various parallels to the Nuremberg Maiden. A similar instrument was invented by Nabis, a Spartan tyrant, who named it the Apega, after his wife. But the famous Morton's Maiden in the Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh is simply a beheading machine, something after the manner of a guillotine. Tradition says that the Regent, Earl of Morton, introduced it into Scotland and was the first to suffer by it. This is a story as old as the Bull of Phalaris. But it is not likely that Morton introduced it and he was certainly not the first to suffer by it. Similarly the rack was called Exeter's Daughter because the Duke of Exeter is said to have introduced it into England. So, too, the Scavenger's Daughter in the Tower of London took its name from Sir William Skevington, a lieutenant of the Tower under Henry VIII., who revived the use of an iron hoop, in which the prisoner was bent heels to hams and chest to knees, and was thus crushed together unmercifully. In all these cases, it will be observed, the instrument took its title of Maiden or Daughter from the grim contrast that would strike the popular mind between the soft embraces of a girl and the cruel greeting of the machine. It was the sweetest maiden he ever kissed, said the Marquis and Earl of Argyle when he suffered death by Morton's Maiden. So in the navy the gun to which a sailor was lashed before being flogged was termed the Gunner's Daughter.[40] So, too, in the days of the French Revolution, as Dickens tells us, the figure of the sharp female figure called La Guillotine was the popular theme for jests: it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close; who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. In Nuremberg this grim jest was translated into literal earnest. But it must have been difficult for the sufferer to appreciate the hideous humour of the thing. Not long ago there was an exhibition of torture instruments in London. The Nuremberg Maiden was represented, and round her neck hung a placard with the legend: "Maiden: Nuremberg." A cockney, the story runs, read out this inscription to his companion: "Syme old gyme," was the comment; "Myde in Germany." And it was. CHAPTER VII _Albert Durer and the Arts and Crafts of Nuremberg. (Michel Wolgemut, Peter Vischer, Veit Stoss, Adam Krafft, etc.)_ "Wie friedsam treuer Sitten Ertrost in that und Werk Liegt nicht in Deutschlands Mitten Mein liebes Nüremberg." --WAGNER, _Die Meistersinger_.