And growing down't' a man, was wont
With wolves upon all four to hunt.
As for your reasons drawn from tails,[1]
We cannot say they're true or false,
Till you explain yourself, and show735
B' experiment, 'tis so or no.
Quoth he, If you'll join issue on't,[2]
I'll give you satistact'ry account;
So you will promise, if you lose,
To settle all, and be my spouse.740
That never shall be done, quoth she,
To one that wants a tail, by me:
For tails by nature sure were meant.
As well as beards, for ornament;[3]
And tho' the vulgar count them homely,745
In man or beast they are so comely,
So gentee, alamode, and handsome,[4]
I'll never marry man that wants one:
And till you can demonstrate plain,
You have one equal to your mane,750
I'll be torn piece-meal by a horse,
Ere I'll take you for better or worse.
The Prince of Cambay's daily food
Is asp, and basilisk, and toad,[5]
- ↑ See Fontaine, Conte de la jument du compere Pierre. Lord Monboddo had a theory about tails; he maintained that naturally they were as proper appendages to man as to beasts; but that the practice of sitting had in process of time completely abraded them.
- ↑ That is, rest the cause upon this point.
- ↑ Mr Butler here alludes to Dr Bulwer's Artificial Changeling, p. 410, where, besides the story of the Kentish men near Rochester, who had tails clapped to their breeches by Thomas a Beckett, he gives an account, from an honest young man of Captain Morris's company, in Ireton's regiment, "that at Cashell, in the county of Tipperary, in Carrick Patrick church, seated on a rock, stormed by Lord Inchequin, where near 700 were put to the sword, there were found among the slain of the Irish, when they were stripped, divers that had tails near a quarter of a yard lung: forty soldiers, that were eye-witnesses, testified the same upon their oaths." For an account of the Kentish Long-tails, see Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent, p. 315, and Bohn's Handbook of Proverbs, p. 207.
- ↑ Gentee is the affected pronunciation of the French Gentil.
- ↑ See Purchas's Pilgrime, vol. ii. p. 1495, for the story of Macamut, Sultan of Cambay, who is said to have lived upon poison, and so complete-
