CANTO I.]
HUDIBRAS.
293
The natural effects of love,
As other flames and aches[1] prove:
But all the mischief is, the doubt 705
On whose account they first broke out;
For tho' Chineses go to bed,
And lie-in in their ladies' stead,[2]
And, for the pains they took before,
Are nurs'd and pamper'd to do more; 710
Our green-men[3] do it worse, when th' hap
To fall in labour of a clap;
Both lay the child to one another,
But who's the father, who the mother,
As other flames and aches[1] prove:
But all the mischief is, the doubt 705
On whose account they first broke out;
For tho' Chineses go to bed,
And lie-in in their ladies' stead,[2]
And, for the pains they took before,
Are nurs'd and pamper'd to do more; 710
Our green-men[3] do it worse, when th' hap
To fall in labour of a clap;
Both lay the child to one another,
But who's the father, who the mother,
- ↑ Aches was a dissyllable in Butler's time, and long afterwards. See note 3 at page 191.
- ↑ In some countries, after the wife has recovered from her lying in, it has been the custom for the husband to go to bed, and be treated with the same care and tenderness. See Apollonius Rhodius, II. 1013, and Valerius Flaccus, v. 148. The history of mankind hath scarcely furnished any thing more unaccountable than the prevalence of this custom. We meet with it in ancient and modern times, in the Old World and in the New, among nations who could never have had the least intercourse with each other. It is practised in China, and in Purchas's Pilgrims it is said to be practised among the Brazilians. At Haarlem, a cambric cockade hung to the door, shows that the woman of the house is brought to bed, and that her husband claims a protection from arrests during the six weeks of his wife's confinement. Polnitz Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 396.
- ↑ Raw and inexperienced youths; green is still used in the same sense. Shakespeare, in Hamlet, Act iv. sc. 5, says:
to love, lewdness, or jealousy. Thus, in the manors of East and West Enborne, in Berkshire, if the widow by incontinence forfeits her free bench, she may recover it again by riding into the next manor court, backward, on a black ram, with his tail in her hand, and saying the following words:
Here I am, riding upon a black ram.
Like a whore as I am:
And for my crincum crancum,
Have lost my bincum bancum.
Blount's Fragmenta Antiq. p. 144.
Like a whore as I am:
And for my crincum crancum,
Have lost my bincum bancum.
Blount's Fragmenta Antiq. p. 144.
