#another proof that laws are made by men and serves men first and foremost

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A family court in Indore, Madhya Pradesh has directed a woman to return to her husband's home with immediate effect and principal judge NP Singh observed that wearing the ritualistic 'sindoor' (vermillion) was the duty of a (Hindu) woman as it demonstrates that she is married, and refusing to wear it is "kind of cruelty".

The hearing included a plea of a man seeking restoration of his "rights" under the Hindu Marriage Act after his wife walked out of the marriage five years ago. The woman who had left and wanted a divorce, accused her husband of physical and mental harassment for dowry.

Source

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John Greaves Nall, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft: A Handbook for Visitors, 1866

Page 13: Footnote: Thomas Nashe was a Lowestoft man, born in 1558, a B.A. of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and one of the ablest Euphuistic writers of the Elizabethan age. His very rare tract on Great Yarmouth, reprinted in the Harlan Miscellany, vol. II, is a characteristic and favorable specimen of the literary fustian of his day;— “Taffeta phrases, silken terms, precise, Three plied hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical.’ It is entitled “Nashe’s Lenten Stuff concerning the description and first procreation and increase of the town of Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk, with a New Play never played before, of the Praise of the Red Herring. Fit of all Clerks of Noblemen’s kitchens to be read; and not unnecessary by all serving men who have short board-wages to be remembered.” The principal passages of this scarce and curious work are given in the Appendix. Page 273: Footnote: Formerly, in many parts of the kingdom, in the Shrove Tuesday procession, was a man called Lenton, to represent Lent, clad in white and red herring skins, and his horse had trappings of oyster shells. Page 341: Gillingwater relates that in 1776 a panic set in amongst the herring merchants of Lowestoft, an extinction of their fishery being apprehended from attempts at that time commenced by the merchants of Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Liverpool, to introduce at their respective stations the red herring cure. ‘Towers’ from Lowestoft and Yarmouth were engaged to teach the processes, and an endeavor was made to displace the English East Coast herrings in the markets of the Mediterranean, the larger coarser fish of the North being introduced at Leghorn, and in the Levant, at lower prices. After several years’ operations, the attempt was abandoned as a failure, the nature of the Scotch herring proving unsuitable, their fat and oily quality rendering the fish both difficult to smoke, and unpleasant to the taste, the season also at which they were caught — in the heat of summer — affecting the cure. Page 344: Foonote; The Yarmouth red herring exportation has almost rom the first labored under grievous disadvantages. The heavy freight incurred by the lengthy voyage to the ports of the Mediterranean is a great drawback to its profits. Add to this the onerous duties and local charges, and the result has been that with some countries it has been carried on under conditions almost prohibitory. In Spain and Portugal they are quite excluded. Page 346: This would however be a great underestimate, inasmuch as it is computing the entire catch, at the weight of full, fresh, or ‘wet’ fish of the largest size. The smoked red herring, the curing of which absorbs nearly half the Yarmouth catch, loses much of its weight in the process, and a barrel of 2 cwt. will contain 1,000 fish and upwards. A proportion (about a fifth,) of the catch are shotten herrings, and of these a last will be just half the weight of the full fish. A barrel of Yarmouth herrings, as regards its weight and contents, is anything but a fixed quantity, and if a dozen persons in the fish trade be asked to define it, the probability is that a different answer will be made by each, the most frequent reply would give 500 fish to the cwt.; the red herring forming the staple of the local trade. Page 353: “The puissant red herring, the golden Hesperides red herring, the Maeonian red herring, the red herring of Red Herrings Hall, every pregnant peculiar of whose resplendent laud and honor to delineate and adumbrate to the ample life, were a work that would drink dry fourscore and eighteen Castalian fountains of eloquence, consume another Athens of fecundity, and abate the haughtiest poetical fury betwixt this and the burning Zone, and the tropic of Cancer.’ “There are of you, it may be, that will account me a palterer for hanging out the sign of the Red Herring in my title page, and no such feast towards, for aught you can see. Soft and fair, my masters; you must walk and talk before dinner an hour or two, the better to whet your appetites to taste of such a dainty dish as the red herring.” — Nashe’s Lenten Stuff. Page 358: The proverbs of a people are its most genuine cardiphonia, the fireside communing of a nation, the deliverance of its collective wisdom on the subjects which most engross its thoughts. In Dutch proverbs the herring occupies the foremost place. The national importance of their fishery to the comfort and well-being of the country is illustrated in their, — ‘Herrings in the land, the doctor at a stand.’ Their ‘Don’t cry herrings till they are in the net’ is the expression of a caution conveyed in a hundred shapes in other languages. There is a curious disparagement of the larger fish conveyed in their — ‘Big fish spring out of the kettle’ — ‘Big fish devour the little ones’ — ‘Great fishes break the net’ — ‘Little fish are sweet.’ Our English — ‘It’s neither, fish, flesh, nor good red herring’ is complimentary to the latter. An obsolete English proverb is that of ‘Luck in a bag, and then you may wink and choose, for the devil a barrel the better herring amongst the lot.’ The Scotch proverb of, ‘Let ilk herring hing by its ain head,’ smacks more of the latitude of the Yarmouth curing houses, but their ‘Dinna gut your herrings till you get them’ is perfectly characteristic. ‘O’ a’ fish i’ the sea, herring is king,’ is an old Scotch saying, another is, ‘It’s but kindly that the pock savor of the herring,’ of which, ‘the cask still stairs o’ the herring’ is a variation. A rhyming saw is that of — If you would be a merchant fine, Beware of o’ auld horses, herring, and wine. The first will die, the second stink, and the third turn sour. The Danish proverb, ‘Better a salt herring on your own table than a fresh pike on another man’s,’ is a homily upon contentment which the world is more apt to preach than listen to, and but sorry comfort can be extracted from their ‘Of bad debtors you may take spoilt herrings.’ ‘As straight as the backbone of a herring,’ is one of the proverbial sentences collected by Ray. In the Isle of man the two Deemsters or Judges, when appointed, declare they will render justice between man and man, “As equally as the herring bone lies between the two sides,” and image which could not have occurred to any people unaccustomed to the herring fishery. ….. Footnote: Among the proverbial observations gathered by Ray, is an obscure one relating to its cookery — “Red herring ne’er spake but e’en (once), Broil my back, but not my weamb.” The bony strictures of the herring has supplied an appellation to herring bone masonry, courses of stone laid angularly, and to the herring bone cross-stitch in seams, used chiefly in woolen work. ….. The herring has furnished the theme for a variety of similes, which abound in the works of our dramatists and slang writers. ‘Dead as a herring; Packed as close as herrings in a barrel; Scragged, lagged or sent across the herring pond,’ the felon’s irreverent Old Bailey formula for the terrors of the law, may be instanced. The sporting freak of laying hounds on a red herring trail, on a blank or frosty day, has supplied that caveto to an enlightened public, which ‘decies repetita placebit’ — not to be put upon a false scent, and distracted from the game in view. ‘A shotten herring’ has passed into literature amongst the bye words of contumely. “If manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shooter herring,” exclaims Falstaff. In Quevedo’s description of the ‘House of Famine,’ “the master was a skeleton — a mere shotten herring.” Page 361: Burton, in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ discussing diet, quotes in commendation of sea fish Gomesius, an authority in whom one’s faith later on gets terribly shaken, on finding him declaring that fishes ‘pine away for love and wax lean.’ Galen pronounces fish to be melancholy food, but seems to have been a dyspeptic critic somewhat hard to please, and condemning beef and mutton as open to the same objection. Besides he is flatly contradicted by Cicero, who affirms that for some distempers of the mind fish will be found a better prescription than philosophy. A writer of our day has ingeniously sought to prove that Shakespeare was profoundly versed in medicine. We have not seen his book, and therefore do not know what weight of authority he attaches to Falstaff’s declaration (2 Henry iv, Act. 4): “There’s never any of these demure boys come to any proof; for their drink doth so overcool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male-green sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches.” Sir Toby Belch was of Sir John’s way of thinking. ‘A plague o’ these pickle herrings!’ is his drunken apostrophe to the disguised Viola. Whilst some writers have dwelt on the ‘cold phlegm of a fish diet,’ others have criticized its heating tendencies. ‘To think on a red herring,’ exclaims Nashe in his ‘Lenten Stuff,’ ‘such a hot stirring meat it is, is enough to make the cravenest dastard proclaim fire and sword against Spain. The most itinerant virgin wax phisnomy that taints his throat with the least rib of it; it will imbrawn and iron-crust his flesh, and harden his soft bleeding veins as stiff and robustious as branches of coral.’ Page 366: Of all fish that swim the sea, none has been more bountifully and abundantly supplied by a wise Providence for the sustenance of man than the herring; and, considering its cheapness, its excellent flavor and wholesomeness, no article of diet has undergone so absurd a proscription from the tables of the wealthy and great. That vile purse pride of the vulgar rich, which would fain protest with Peter that it had ‘never eaten anything that is common,’ has in this instance but obeyed with a servile fidelity the culinary edict which has banished the beautiful but plebeian fish from the menu of fashionable society. This ostracism of the herring is a thing of modern date, for turning over the leaves of our old cookery books, the reader will be surprised at the important place the red herring formerly occupied in the household menage, and the multiplicity of ways in which it was brought to table — stewed, potted, baked, boiled, roasted, fried, made into pies, soups, ragouts, terrines, puddings, etc.; dressed with cabbage, pickled with mushrooms, boiled with carrots, dished the Italian way, the Spanish way, as Virginia trouts, cum multis alitis, quoe etc., the choice offered to the gourmand is quite bewildering, whilst the recipes given for a variety of epicurean banquets on fresh herring roes, by Carême, prince of modern cooks, and others, would rouse the palled appetite of a Lucullus. Page 367: It is to be regretted (fàcheux) he observes, that the red herring does not enjoy in general a reputation sufficiently exalted to gain it admission to the tables of the great, and that the ostentation of rich people has banished it to the cookery of the people. It wakes up the blaséd appetite, it rouses vigorously the relaxed nerves. Served up as a hors d’oeuvre (side-dish) it prompts one to do justice to the entrées; cut in small morsels and mixed with the salad it gives it piquancy. Moreover it has a variety of exceptional uses, and if taken with moderation ought never to be entirely banished the table. It has besides an excellent virtue, one, of which the wine imbiber gratefully admits the value — it excites thirst, and renders him indulgent as to the quality of the wine. From all this one may conclude that maugre its defects — the red herring, like many people of merit, is of a much greater value than its ordinary reputation. Page 388: A cheap family Scotch dish is that of several pickled herrings, washed and put in a stone pan, or close covered pot, filled up with peeled potatoes and a little water, and baked in the oven or boiled till done. The herrings should be placed uppermost. A red herring sandwich is one of the standing list of articles supplied at the new model dining rooms opened in Glasgow. Page 399: Footnote: The reader may consult for much curious heraldic lore, treated very attractively, Moule’s Heraldry of Fish, 8vo. 1842, to which we are indebted for part of the foregoing. Mat: Thy lineage, Monsieur Cob, what lineage? what lineage? Cob: Why, sir, an ancient lineage, and a princely. Mine ancestry came from a king’s belly, no worse man; and yet no man neither (by your worship’s leave, I did lie in that), but Herring the king of fish, (from his belly I proceed), one o’ the monarchs o’ the world, I assure you. The first red herring that was broiled in Adam and Eve’s kitchen, do I fetch my pedigree from, by the harrot’s book. His, Cob, was my great great-mighty-great-grandfather. Mat: Why mighty, why mighty? I pray thee. Cob: O, it was a mighty while ago, sir, and a mighty great Cob. Mat: How know’t thou that? Cob: How know I? why, I smell his ghost, ever and anon. Mat: Smell a ghost! O unsavory jest! and the ghost of a herring, Cob.”—Every Man in his Humor. Page 400: ‘Be of good cheer, my weary readers, for I have espied land,’ breaks out Nashe, towards the close of his mad rhapsodical fantasias on the praises of the red herring. ‘Fishermen, I hope will not find fault with me for fishing before the net, or making all fish that comes to the net, in this history,’ he adds, and we would crave the same indulgence for this discursive, gossiping narrative. Our space imperatively requires us to take leave of this fascinating theme which has encroached so largely upon its originally allotted limits. We quit it with the greater reluctance, at leaving our tale but half told. More than half our materials, — illustrating the history of the herring fishery in Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and the Baltic, — and tracing the origin and growth of that romance of natural history, the herring migration theory, are per force thrown over for some future opportunity. Page xxii: A Ramble Round Old Yarmouth: …. “To fetch the red herring in Trojan equipage, some of every of the Christ Cross alphabet of outlandish cosmopolite furrow up the rugged brine, and sweep through his tumultuous ooze. For our English Microcosmos or Phoenician Dido’s hide of ground, no shire, county, count palatine, or quarter of it, but rigs out some oaken squadron or other to waft him along Cleopatrean Olympickly, and not the least nook or crevice of them but is parturient of the like super-officiousness, arming forth, though it be but a catch or pink, no capabler than a rundlet or washing bowl to imp the wings of his convoy. Holy St. Taurbard, in what droves, the gouty bagged Londoners hurry down, and dye the watchet air of an iron russet hue with the dust that they raise in hot spurred rowelling it on to perform compliment unto him.”