Charles Dibdin has a song entitled, _The Origin of the Patten_. Fair Patty went out in the mud and the mire, and her thin shoes speedily were wet. Then she became hoarse and could not sing, while her lover longed for the sweet sound of her voice. “My anvil glow’d, my hammer rang, Till I had form’d from out the fire To bear her feet above the mire, A platform for my blue-eyed Patty. Again was heard each tuneful close, My fair one in the patten rose, Which takes its name from blue-eyed Patty.” This fanciful derivation of the word was not an original thought of Dibdin. Gay wrote in his Trivia, 1715:— “The patten now supports each frugal dame That from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name.” In reality, patten is derived from the French word _patin_, which has a varied meaning of the sole of a shoe or a skate. Pattens were noisy, awkward wear. A writer of the day of their universality wrote, “Those ugly, noisy, ferruginous, ancle-twisting, foot-cutting, clinking things called women’s pattens.” Notices were set in church porches enjoining the removal of women’s pattens, which, of course, should never have been worn into church during service-time. Children’s Clogs. 1730. Children’s Clogs. 1730. It may have disappeared today, but four years ago, on the door of Walpole St. Peters, near Wisbeck, England, hung a board which read, “People who enter this church are requested to take off their pattens.” A friend in Northamptonshire, England, writes me that pattens are still seen on muddy days in remote English villages in that shire. Men wore pattens in early days. And men did and do wear clogs in English mill-towns. There were also horse pattens or horse clogs which horses wore through deep, muddy roads; I have an interesting photograph of a pair found in Northampton. CHAPTER XIV BATTS AND BROAGS, BOOTS AND SHOES _“By my Faith! Master Inkpen, thou hast put thy foot in it! Tis a pretty subject and a strange one, and a vast one, but we’ll leave it never a sole to stand on. The proverb hath ‘There’s naught like leather,’ but my Lady answers ‘Save silk:’”_ —Old Play. CHAPTER XIV BATTS AND BROAGS, BOOTS AND SHOES O