Books and Bookmen. Lang Andrew
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Books and Bookmen - Lang Andrew страница 6
Название: Books and Bookmen
Автор: Lang Andrew
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
isbn:
isbn:
And so the registers run on. Sometimes they tell of the death of a glutton, sometimes of a Grace wyfe (grosse femme). Now the bell tolls for the decease of a duke, now of a “dog-whipper.” “Lutenists” and “Saltpetremen” – the skeleton of the old German allegory whispers to each and twitches him by the sleeve. “Ellis Thompson, insipiens,” leaves Chester-le-Street, where he had gabbled and scrabbled on the doors, and follows “William, foole to my Lady Jerningham,” and “Edward Errington, the Towne’s Fooll” (Newcastle-on-Tyne) down the way to dusty death. Edward Errington died “of the pest,” and another idiot took his place and office, for Newcastle had her regular town fools before she acquired her singularly advanced modern representatives. The “aquavity man” dies (in Cripplegate), and the “dumb-man who was a fortune-teller” (Stepney, 1628), and the “King’s Falkner,” and Mr. Gregory Isham, who combined the professions, not frequently united, of “attorney and husbandman,” in Barwell, Leicestershire (1655). “The lame chimney-sweeper,” and the “King of the gypsies,” and Alexander Willis, “qui calographiam docuit,” the linguist, and the Tom o’ Bedlam, the comfit-maker, and the panyer-man, and the tack-maker, and the suicide, they all found death; or, if they sought him, the churchyard where they were “hurled into a grave” was interdicted, and purified, after a fortnight, with “frankincense and sweet perfumes, and herbs.”
Sometimes people died wholesale of pestilence, and the Longborough register mentions a fresh way of death, “the swat called New Acquaintance, alias Stoupe Knave, and know thy master.” Another malady was ‘the posting swet, that posted from towne to towne through England.’ The plague of 1591 was imported in bales of cloth from the Levant, just as British commerce still patriotically tries to introduce cholera in cargoes of Egyptian rags. The register of Malpas, in Cheshire (Aug. 24, 1625), has this strange story of the plague: —
“Richard Dawson being sicke of the plague, and perceiving he must die at yt time, arose out of his bed, and made his grave, and caused his nefew, John Dawson, to cast strawe into the grave which was not farre from the house, and went and lay’d him down in the say’d grave, and caused clothes to be lay’d uppon and so dep’ted out of this world; this he did because he was a strong man, and heavier than his said nefew and another wench were able to bury.”
And John Dawson died, and Rose Smyth, the “wench” already spoken of, died, the last of the household.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.