Patten (shoe) walk in, and despite their practical intention, literary evidence suggests that they could appear, at least to males, as a further aspect of feminine frailty and dependency. Samuel Pepys recorded in his Diary for January 24, 1660: From the "Middle Period" Poems of John Clare (1820s): From Thomas Hardy's "The Woodlanders" of 1887, though set earlier in the century: The word could also be used as a term for a wooden soled shoe, that is a chopine or clog, as opposed to an overshoe, until at least the nineteenth century. The word was also used for the traditional wooden outdoor
Pig in a poke Pig in a poke The idioms pig in a poke and sell a pup (or buy a pup) refer to a confidence trick originating in the Late Middle Ages, when meat was scarce, but cats and dogs were not. The scheme entailed the sale of a suckling pig in a poke. The bag, sold unopened, would actually contain a cat or dog, which was substantially less valuable as a source of meat. The French idiom "acheter (un) chat en poche" (to buy a cat in a bag) refers to an actual sale of this nature, as do many European equivalents,