There is a most ungallant old riddle, “Why is a wife like a patten?” The answer reads, “Because both are clogs.” A very courteous bishop was once asked this uncivil query, and he answered without a moment’s hesitation, “Because both elevate the soul (sole).” Pattens may be clogs, yet there is a difference. After much consultation of various authorities, and much discussion in the columns of various querying journals, I make this decision and definition. Pattens are thick, wooden soles roughly shaped in the outline of the human foot (in the shoemaker’s notion of that member), mounted on a round or oval ring of iron, fixed by two or three pins to the sole, in such a way that when the patten is worn the sole of the wearer’s foot is about two inches above the ground. A heel-piece with buckles and straps, strings or buttons and leather loops, and a strap over the toe, retain the patten in place upon the foot when the wearer trips along. (See here.) Clogs serve the same purpose, but are simply wooden soles tipped and shod with iron. These also have heel-pieces and straps of various materials—from the heavy serviceable leather shown in the clogs here and here to the fine brocade clogs made and worn by two brides and pictured here. Dainty brass tips and colored morocco straps made a really refined pair of clogs. Poplar wood was deemed the best wood for pattens and clogs. Sometimes the wooden sole was thin, and was cut at the line under the instep in two pieces and hinged. These hinges were held to facilitate walking. Children also wore clogs. (See here.) Clogs, as worn by English and American folk, did not raise the wearer as high above the mud and mire as did pattens, but I have seen Turkish clogs that were ten inches high. Chopines were worn by Englishwomen to make them look taller. Three are shown here. Lady Falkland was short and stout, and wore them for years to increase her apparent height; so she states in her memoirs. It is a curious philological study that, while the words “clogs” and “pattens” for a time were constantly heard, the third name which has survived till to-day is the oldest of all—“galoshes.” Under the many spellings, galoe-shoes, goloshes, gallage, galoche, and gallosh, it has come down to us from the Middle Ages. It is spelt galoches in _Piers Plowman_. In a _Compotus_—or household account of the Countess of Derby in 1388 are entries of botews (boots), souters (slippers), and “one pair of galoches, 14 d.” Clogs, or galoches, were known in the days of the Saxons, when they were termed “wife’s shoes.”