For, 'tis said, when she went up to heaven, and St. Peter, Who happened to meet her, Came forward to greet her, She pursed up with scorn every vinegar feature, And bade him "Get out for a horrid Male Creature!" Sent her back to her grave till her temper grew sweeter, No, if Tray were interr'd By Penelope Bird, No dog would be e'er so be-"whelp"ed and be-" cur"red. Chasing him round, and attempting to lick The ghost of poor Tray with the ghost of a stick. At the root of this gnarl'd and time-worn tree, Would often lie, And watch the light clouds as they floated by While the tender Wood-pigeon's cooing cry Ay, here it shall be !—far, far from the view Tender and true The lines o'er his grave. They have, some of them, too, The advantage of being remarkably new. Epitaph. Affliction sore Long time he bore, Grown blind, alas! he'd Some Prussic Acid, And that put him out of his pain! * In the autumn of 1824, Captain Medwin having hinted that certain beautiful lines on the burial of this gallant officer might have been the production of Lord Byron's Muse, Mr. Sydney Taylor, somewhat indignantly, claimed them for their rightful owner, the late Rev. Charles Wolfe. During the controversy a third claimant started up in the person of a soi-disant "Dr. Marshall," who turned out to be a Durham blacksmith, and his pretensions a hoax. It was then that a certain "Doctor Peppercorn" put forth his pretensions, to what he averred was the only "true and original" version, viz: Not a sous had he got,—not a guinea or note, As he bolted away without paying his shot, We saw him again at dead of night, When home from the club returning; All bare and exposed to the midnight dews, "The Doctor's as drunk as the d-," we said, And we managed a shutter to borrow; We raised him and sigh'd at the thought that his head We bore him home, and we put him to bed, Loudly they talk'd of his money that's gone, We tuck'd him in, and had hardly done Slowly and sadly we all walk'd down From his room in the uppermost story; Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores. VIRGIL. I wrote the lines- ** owned them-he told stories. THOMAS INGOLDSBY. MRS. BOTHERBY'S STORY. THE LEECH OF FOLKESTONE. I do not READER, were you ever bewitched? mean by a "white wench's black eye," or by lovepotions imbibed from a ruby lip; but, were you ever really and bonâ fide bewitched, in the true Matthew Hopkins sense of the word? Did you ever, for instance, find yourself from head to heel one vast complication of cramps?-or burst out into sudorific exudation like a cold thaw, with the thermometer at zero?-Were your eyes ever turned upside down, exhibiting nothing but their whites?- Did you ever vomit a paper of crooked pins? or expectorate Whitechapel needles?—These are genuine and undoubted marks of possession; and if you never experienced any of them,-why, "happy man be his dole!" Yet such things have been; yea, we are assured on no mean authority, still are. The World, according to the best geographers, is divided into Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Romney Marsh. In this last-named, and fifth, quarter of the globe, a witch may still be occasionally discovered in favourable, i. e. stormy, seasons, wea thering Dungeness Point in an egg-shell, or careering on her broomstick over Dymchurch wall. A cow may yet be sometimes seen galloping like mad, with tail erect, and an old pair of breeches on her horns, an unerring guide to the door of the crone whose magic arts have drained her udder.—I do not, however, remember to have heard that any Conjuror has, of late, been detected in the district. Not many miles removed from the verge of this recondite region, stands a collection of houses, which its maligners call a Fishing-town, and its well-wishers a Watering-place. A limb of one of the Cinque Ports, it has, (or lately had,) a corporation of its own, and has been thought considerable enough to give a second title to a noble family. Rome stood on seven hills; Folkestone seems to have been built upon seventy. Its streets, lanes, and alleys,-fanciful distinctions without much real difference - are agreeable enough to persons who do not mind running up and down stairs; and the only inconvenience, at all felt by such of its inhabitants as are not asthmatic, is when some heedless urchin tumbles down a chimney, or an impertinent pedestrian peeps into a garret window. At the eastern extremity of the town, on the sea-beach, and scarcely above high-water mark, stood, in the good old times, a row of houses then denominated "Frog-hole." Modern refinement subsequently euphonized the name into "East-street;" but what's in a name? the encroachments of Ocean have long since levelled all in one common ruin. |