Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Old English prodigies
OLD ENGLISH PRODIGIES.
In the dull season of the year we occasionally find some very startling information in our daily papers. The gigantic gooseberry, the mushroom as large as a lady’s parasol, birds’ nests behind doors or in letter-boxes at post-offices, a fall of large hailstones, an eight-legged calf, or three children at a birth, are “subjects” that pleasantly enliven reports of the disease in potatoes, the smut in wheat, or the fly in turnips. The popular taste for what is curious must, in fact, be gratified. But how tame are the greatest achievements of the most ingenious paragraph-monger of the present day compared with the stories furnished to Englishmen two hundred years ago! In the British Museum Library—that mine of treasure inexhaustible as Aladdin’s cave—there are tales without end of marvels that formerly no man thought of doubting. Let us disentomb some of them, bring them to the light of day, and judge how they would look in the columns of the “Times.”
In the year 1641 there was placed before the public “A strange prophecie of a Maid that lately lived neere Worsop in Nottinghamshire.” This was by no means an ordinary prophecy. The maid in question had calmly departed this life, but a few days after the sad event she returned and divulged the secrets of fate. The object of the prophecy was to inform the world that the end of all things was “neer at hand.” The maid while in the flesh had been much “flooted” one day by some of her companions respecting the poverty of her wardrobe. Nay, one of the taunting young ladies displayed—doubtless, with an amiable and friendly motive—“curious wrought hadkirchers, and the like, which caused admiration”—unmingled, of course, with envy. But the sight of the “hadkirchers” overpowered the Maid; she gave up the ghost next day, and lay four-and-twenty hours quite silently and still. Her mother was weeping over her remains when, lo! the Maid of Worksop arose, and “with a mild and cheerefull countenance” told her story. She had met an old man, it seemed, in the land of shadows—people, alack! grow old there also—who took her, she said, “to a faire and costly fort, no Prince’s Court like it, where we were let in; in which place we saw many bright angells, shining like the sun, all singing melodiously with cleare voices.” It was in this enchanting scene that the Maid was charged to come back to earth with a message warning all persons against wearing fine dresses, and especially denouncing her former companion who had “flooted” her. “The very cloathes,” said the seer, “which Miss Anne did weare, for her Pride shall become loathsome to all people, whereby none shall be able to weare them, but shall become unnecessary to all men.” And “unnecessary” they were for ever after, since we are told that “this speech, twice spoken, was markt and found to be true, by reason of an evill savour about them.” This disagreeable incident satisfied the irate and wounded Maid, and she once more retired from an ungrateful world.
A greater prodigy still was Charles Benet, the “Man-child of Manchester,” who made his appearance in the year 1679. The record of his life declares that “at three yeares of age he doth speak Latine, Greek, and Hebrew, though never taught those languages.” There was something in his appearance betokening the possession of marvellous gifts. “His countenance,” says the discriminative biographer, “is very solid and composed; he is somewhat inclined to Melancholy, yet hath a kind of Majestical Gravity even already appearing in his looks, which is frequently attended with a modest smile.” His eye “darted a piercing and sprightly ray upon all things,” and his modesty was no less remarkable than were his talents as a linguist, for when he heard people praise himself “he did commonly blush and reprove them.” Here was an example for his seniors! Happily for the peace of families such children are rare, or what would become of parents? One night, when the prodigy’s father was, “according to his usual and commendable custom, reading to his family in the Bible, and indeed misreciting one sentence, the child of a sudden (then two years old) broke out into these words: ‘Father, you read wrong, for it is not so in the Scripture.’” The unhappy parent was “wrapt in amazement” at this alarming instance of precocity, nor was he much comforted to learn that his son had oftimes read the Scriptures in “Latine, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as English.” As to his mode of talking, we learn that he was “very vehement in the delivery of his Speeches, with a manly voice, but something thick in the delivery of his words.” Cotemporary with Master Benet was a child in Switzerland, who preached edifying sermons to the neighbours when but three years of age; and at Basil there was a girl who delivered discourses uninterruptedly from the 3rd of February to the 22nd of May, “rising as fresh in the morning as if she had neither said nor done anything.” What a treasure of a wife this girl must have been in after years! Let us hope her husband appreciated her unusual powers of eloquence.
Another wonderful girl was Martha Taylor, “the famed Derbyshire damsel.” It was this young person’s lot to exist twelve months without eating. She lived near Bakewell—what good angler has not sojourned at that quaint village?—and in the year 1667 she received “a blow on her back” from a miller. The consequence was that the poor girl fell ill, and immediately abstained from taking food, “and so” adds the chronicler, “she hath continued till within a fortnight before the date hereof, which amounts to thirteen months and upwards.” She occasionally indulged in a few drops of the syrup of stewed prunes, water, and sugar, “or the juice of a roasted raisin.” The last delicacy might have been refreshing, but Miss Taylor’s biographer is clearly right in describing it as “prodigiously insufficient for sustenation.” She was watched by a person appointed by the Duke of Devonshire, but the only discovery made was that sleep was as unnecessary to her as food, since she once “continued for five weeks waking.”
Another individual of remarkably abstemious habits was one Roger Crab, who flourished at Uxbridge in 1655. “He can live,” says the record, “on three farthings a-week”—a consummation devoutly to be wished for in many other cases. Economical housewives may envy Roger Crab’s system in its results, although they would probably hesitate to follow it in its operations. For his constant food was “roots and herbs, as cabbage, turneps, carrots, dock-leaves, and grass; also bread and bran.” Not the least curious fact in Roger’s history was, that he once kept a shop, but retired to the woods on his dock-leaves and grass, “because of the many lyes, swearing, and deceiving that are too frequently used by most shopkeepers and tradesmen.”
In 1614 was published a “True and wonderfull account of a strange and monstrous serpent or dragon, yet living, to the great annoyance and divers slaughters both of men and cattell by his strong and violent poyson.” This appalling monster “lived” in a wood two miles from Horsham; the “account” of it was written by M. A. R., who appends to his name the quaint notice, “He that would send better newes if he had it.” The dragon was nine feet in length, and must have been in every way an interesting object. In colour it was black in some parts and red in others, in shape it was like the axletree of a cart, and its general appearance is thus sketched. “He is of countenance very proud, and at the sight or hearing of men or cattell will raise his necke upright, and seeme to listen and look about with great arrogancy.” On his side were “two great branches,” which were likely to expand into wings; but M. A. R, expressed a hope that he would be destroyed before he grew “so fledge.” Very terrible was this dragon to meet, for he “cast his venome about four rodde from him,” and had thereby killed several people. What became of him there is no record to show, and the town very soon forgot this prodigy in the consideration of another—an old woman of Denbighshire, who was “perfectly able to relate what she hath said and done 130 years ago.” It is scarcely necessary to say that her name was Morgan. Her teeth were perfect, “although about three score years ago she had lost most of them. Her organs of smell were so corroborated by age that no stench could invade them to the least prejudice.” Mrs. Morgan had only one fault—she was a termagant. She was the terror of “catchpolls and petty constables,” and “whatever ground she trod upon was as fatal to them as Irish earth to venomous creatures.” Another little weakness of the old dame was displayed in her choice of food—“carrion buried two or three days she will take up, slice, and fling as collops upon the coals, which she will eat as savourly as he that thinks he eats the best in town.” Moreover, she smoked tobacco “in a comfortable short pipe.”
Such are a few examples of the prodigies which astonished our pensive great-grandfathers.