From Shakespeare’s (and George Wilkins‘) Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1.2.276):
For flattery is the bellows blows up sin;
The thing the which is flatter’d, but a spark,
To which that wind gives heat and stronger glowing;
The italicized ‘wind’ is the subject of a number of editorial conjectures. The original (often corrupt) quarto text has ‘sparke‘ which cannot be right (spark then being object in the first instance and separate agent in the second). Other readings beside the one adopted here are ‘breath’, ‘blast’, and ‘spur.’ I rather like ‘blast’ for picking back up the ‘bellows blows’ bl repetition but I stick with the Arden.
Anyway, I liked the image and it struck me that it that I couldn’t think of another such use. That felt surprising since the metaphor feels an obvious one. It turns out there’s only one other use in Shakespeare, at the beginning of Antony and Cleopatra (1.1.9)
Nay, but this dotage of our general’s
O’erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes,
That o’er the files and musters of the war
Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front: his captain’s heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy’s lust.
I think I’ve always unreflectively misread this line by taking ‘bellows’ and ‘fan’ as synonyms both governing ‘cool’. But, following the OED’s figurative use definition – ‘applied to that which blows up or fans the fire of passion, discord, etc’ – there must be a contrast between the two and an implied verb for ‘bellows’ like ‘the bellows [to arouse] and the fan to cool.
Speaking of the OED, their entry provides Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale a few centuries earlier as the first figurative use:
Now shal ye understonde in what manere that sinne waxeth and encresseth in man. The firste thing is thilke norisshing of sinne of which I spak biforn, thilke flesshly concupiscence. And after that comth the subjeccioun of the devel – this is to ayn, the develes bely, with which he blowth in man the fir of flesshly concupiscence.
Now shall you understand in what manner that sin waxes or increases in man. The first thing is this nourishing of sin of which I spoke before, this fleshly concupiscence. And after that comes the subjection of the devil — this is to say, the devils bellows, with which he blows in man the fire of fleshly concupiscence.
To which I’d add, more by way of associative thinking than argument for connection, one of the Old English Exeter Book riddles (37, translation source here):
I saw these things—their belly was behind them,
swollen-up splendor. Its servant followed,
a powerfully eager man, and a great deal
had it endured what it experienced—
flying through its eye.One doesn’t always die, when one must give up
what’s inside to another, but it comes soon,
a benefit to his bosom, its fruiting fulfilled—
he engenders his son, but is his own father as well.
Bellows is the generally proposed solution.
Extracts 