The Flitch of Bacon: Or, The Custom of Dunmow : a Tale of English Home

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B. Tauchnitz, 1854 - 339 pages
 

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Page 5 - A whole gammon of bacon you shall receive, And bear it hence with love and good leave ; For this is our custom at Dunmow well known, Though the pleasure be ours, the bacon's your own.
Page 5 - You shall swear by Custom of Confession, That you ne'er made nuptial transgression; Nor since you were married man and wife By household brawls or contentious strife, Or otherwise at bed or at board Offended each other in deed or word : Or since the parish clerk said Amen...
Page 81 - ... gift to us is dear , Not for its worth, but that it shows Thou deem'st our love sincere. And in return broad lands I give — Broad lands thy Convent near; Which shall to thee and thine produce A Thousand Marks a Year 1 IV.
Page 5 - Wished yourselves unmarried again ; Or in a twelvemonth and a day, Repented not in thought any way ; But continued true in thought and desire, As when you join'd hands in holy quire.
Page 177 - The grisly bones rattled, and with the chains battled, The gibbet appallingly shook ; On the ground something stirr'd, but no more the man heard, — To his heels, on the instant, he took.
Page viii - B were sole, and I sole, I would take her to be my wife before all the wymen of the worlde, of what condiciones soever they be, good or evylle; as help me God and his seyntes, and this flesh and all fleshes.
Page 80 - A Twelvemonth and a Day have fled Since first we were united ; And from that hour," the young man said, " No change our hopes has blighted. Fond faith with fonder faith we've paid, And love with love requited. IV. " True to each other have we been ; No dearer object seeing, Than each has in the other found ; In everything agreeing. And every look, and word, and deed That breed dissension fleeing. v. " All this we swear, and take in proof Our Lady of Dunmow ! For She, who sits with saints above, Well...
Page 176 - To the gibbet I'll go, and this I will do, As sure as I stand in my shoes ; Some address I'll devise, and if Grinny replies, My wager, of course, I shall lose.
Page 177 - Though dark as could be, yet he thought he could see The skeleton hanging on high ; The gibbet it creaked : and the rusty chains squeaked ; And a screech-owl flew solemnly by.
Page 176 - All such as had dared, had sadly been scared, And soon 'twas the general talk, That the wretch in his chains, each night took the pains, To come down from the gibbet — and walk...

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