The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (51 page)

Rie is one of the ancient towns belonging to the cinq
ports, yet limpeth cinq ace
²³⁹
behind Yarmouth, and it will sink when Yarmouth riseth, and yet, if it were put in the balance against Yarmouth, it would rise when Yarmouth sinketh; and to stand threshing no longer about it, Rie is rye and no more but rye, and Yarmouth wheat compared with it. Wherefore had he been a right clerk of the market, he would have set a higher price on the one than the other, and set that one of highest price above the other.

Those that deserve by common men's opinion small commendation for any cunning sailing at all are not the Yarmouthers (however there is a foul fault in the print escaped, that curstly squinteth and leereth that way) but the bonny northern cobbles of his country, with their Indian canoes or boats like great beef-trays or kneading-troughs, firking
²⁴⁰
as flight
²⁴¹
swift thorough the glassy fields of Thetis as if it were the land of ice, and sliding over the boiling desert so early, and never bruise one bubble of it, as though they contended to outstrip the light-foot tripper in the
Metamorphosis
,
²⁴²
who would run over the ripe-bending ears of corn and never shed or perish one kernel. No such iron-fisted cyclops to hew it out of the flint and run thorough anything as these frost-bitten crabtree-faced lads, spun out of the hards
²⁴³
of the tow, which are Donzel
²⁴⁴
Herring's lackeys at Yarmouth every fishing.

Let the careeringest
²⁴⁵
billow confess and absolve itself, before it prick up his bristles against them, for, if it come upon his dancing horse, and offer to tilt it with them, they will ask no trustier lances than their oars to beat out the brains of it and stop his throat from belching.

These rubs
²⁴⁶
removed, on with our game as fast as we may, and to the gain of the red herring again another
crash.
²⁴⁷
Item: if it were not for this Huniades
²⁴⁸
of the liquid element, that word Quadragesima, or Lent, might be clean sponged out of the calendar, with rogation weeks, saints' eves, and the whole ragman's rule of fasting days; and fishmongers might keep Christmas all the year for any overlavish takings they should have of clowns and clouted shoes,
²⁴⁹
and the rubbish menialty, their best customers; and their bloody adversaries, the butchers, would never leave cleaving it out in the whole chines,
²⁵⁰
till they had got a Lord Mayor of their company as well as they. Nay, out of their wits they would be haunted with continual takings and stand cross-gagged with knives in their mouths from one Shrove Tuesday to another, and wear candles'-ends in their hats at midsummer, having no time to shave their pricks
²⁵¹
or wash their flyblown aprons, if Domingo Rufus
²⁵²
or Sacrapant
²⁵³
Herring caused not the dice to run contrary.

The Romish rotten Pythagoreans or Carthusian friars, that mump
²⁵⁴
on nothing but fish, in what a phlegmatic predicament would they be, did not his counterpoison of the spitting-sickness (sixtyfold more restorative than bezer
²⁵⁵
) patch them out and preserve them; which, being double-roasted and dried as it is, not only sucks up all rheumatic inundations, but is a shoeing horn
²⁵⁶
for a pint of wine over-plus.

The sweet smack that Yarmouth finds in it, and how it hath made it
Lippitudo Atticae
²⁵⁷
(as it was said of Aegina, her near adjacent confronter), the blemish and stain of all
her salt-water sisters in England, and multiplied it from a mole-hill of sand to a cloud-crowned Mount Teneriffe, abbreviately and meetly according to my old Sarum plain-song
²⁵⁸
I have harped upon, and that, if there were no other certificate or instance of the inlinked consanguinity twixt him and Lady Lucar,
²⁵⁹
is
instar mille
,
²⁶⁰
worth a million of witnesses, to exemplify the riches of him. The poets were trivial that set up Helen's face for such a top-gallant summer maypole for men to gaze at, and strouted
²⁶¹
it out so in their buskined braves
²⁶²
of her beauty, whereof the only Circe's Heypass and Repass
²⁶³
was that it drew a thousand ships to Troy, to fetch her back with a pestilence. Wise men in Greece in the meanwhile to swagger so about a whore!

Eloquious
²⁶⁴
hoary-beard father Nestor, you were one of them, and you, Master Ulysses, the prudent dwarf of Pallas, another, of whom it is iliadized that your very nose dropped sugar candy, and that your spittle was honey. Natalis Comes,
²⁶⁵
if he were above ground, would be sworn upon it. As loud a ringing miracle as the attractive melting eye of that strumpet can we supply therewith of our dappert Piemont Huldrick
²⁶⁶
Herring, which draweth more barques to Yarmouth Bay than her beauty did to Troy. Oh, he is attended upon most Babylonically; and Xerxes so over-cloyed not the Hellespont with his foists, galleys and brigandines, as he mantleth the narrow seas with his retinue, being not much behind, in the check-roll of his janissaries and contributories, with eagle-soaring Bullingbroke, that at his removing of household into banishment (as Father Froissart
threaps us down
²⁶⁷
) was accompanied with
40
,
000
men, women and children weeping, from London to the land's end at Dover. A colony of critical Zenos,
²⁶⁸
should they sinnow
²⁶⁹
their syllogistical cluster-fists
²⁷⁰
in one bundle to confute and disprove moving, were they, but during the time they might lap up a mass of buttered fish, in Yarmouth one fishing, such a violent motion of toiling myrmidons
²⁷¹
they should be spectators of and a confused stirring to and fro of a Lepantalike hoste of undefatigable flood-bickerers and foam-curbers, that they would not move or stir one foot till they had declaimed and abjured their bedrid spital
²⁷²
positions. In verament and sincerity, I never crowded through this confluent herring fair, but it put me in memory of the great year of jubilee in Edward the Third's time, in which it is sealed and delivered under the hands of a public notary, three hundred thousand people roamed to Rome for purgatory pills and paternal venial benedictions, and the ways beyond sea were so bunged up with your daily orators or beadsmen and your crutched or crouchant friars or cross-creepers and barefoot penitentiaries, that a snail could not wriggle in her horns betwixt them. Small things we may express by great, and great by small, though the greatness of the red herring be not small (as small a hop-on-my-thumb he seemeth). It is with him as with great personages, which from their high estate and not their high statures propagate the elevate titles of their gogmagognes.
²⁷³
Cast
²⁷⁴
his state who will, and they shall find it to be very high-coloured (as high-coloured as his complexion if I said there were not a pimple to be abated). In Yarmouth he hath set up his state house, where one quarter of a year he keeps open court for Jews and Gentiles.

To fetch him in,
*
in Trojan equipage, some of every of the Christcross alphabet
²⁷⁵
of outlandish cosmopoli furrow up the rugged brine, and sweep through his tumultuous ooze, will or nill he, rather than in tendering their allegiance they should be benighted with tardity. For our English Mikrokosmos or Phoenician Dido's hide of ground,
²⁷⁶
no shire, county, count palatine,
²⁷⁷
or quarter of it, but rigs out some oaken squadron or other to waft him along Cleopatrian
†
Olympickly
‡
and not the diminutivest nook or cruise of them but is parturient
²⁷⁸
of the like super-officiousness,
^§
arming forth though it be but a catch or pink,
²⁷⁹
no capabler than a rundlet
²⁸⁰
or washing bowl to imp
²⁸¹
the wings of his convoy. Holy Saint Taubard, in what droves the gouty-bagged Londoners hurry down and dye the watchet
²⁸²
air of an iron russet hue with the dust that they raise in hot-spurred rowelling it on
²⁸³
to perform compliments unto him. One beck more to the baillies of the cinq ports, whom I were a ruder barbarian than Smill, the Prince of the Crims and Nagayans,
²⁸⁴
if in this action I should forget (having had good cheer at their tables more than once or twice whiles I loitered in this paragonless
²⁸⁵
fish town). City,
town, country, Robin Hood and Little John, and who not, are industrious and careful to squire and safe conduct him in; but in ushering him in, next to the baillies of Yarmouth, they trot before all, and play the provost marshals, helping to keep good rule the first three weeks of his ingress, and never leave roaring it out with their brazen horn as long as they stay, of the freedoms and immunities sourcing from him. Being thus entered or brought in, the consistorians
²⁸⁶
or settled standers of Yarmouth commence intestate
²⁸⁷
wars amongst themselves who should give him the largest hospitality, and gather about him as flocking to handsel
²⁸⁸
him and strike him good luck as the sweetkin madams did about valiant Sir Walter Manny, the martial tutor unto the Black Prince (he that built Charterhouse), who being upon the point of a hazardous journey into France, either to win the horse or lose the saddle, as it runs in the proverb,
²⁸⁹
and taking his leave at Court in a suit of mail from top to toe, all the ladies clung about him and would not let him stretch out a step, till they had enfettered him with their variable favours, and embroidered over his armour like a gaudy summer mead, with their scarves, bracelets, chains, ouches;
²⁹⁰
in generous reguerdonment
²⁹¹
whereof he sacramentally obliged himself, that, had the French King as many giants in his country as he hath pears or grapes, and they stood all enranged on the shore to interdict his disembarking, through the thickest thorny quickset of them he would pierce, or be tossed up to heaven on their spears, but, in honour of those debonair Idalian nymphs and their spangled trappings, he would be the first man should set foot in his kingdom, or unsheathe steel against him. As he promised, so was his
*
manly blade's execution, and, in
emulation of him, whole herds of knights and gentlemen closed up their right eyes with a piece of silk every one, and vowed never to uncover them or let them see light till, in the advancement of their mistress's beauties, they had enacted with their brandished bilbowblades
²⁹²
some chivalrous Bellerophon's
²⁹³
trick at arms, that from Salomons Islands to St Magnus' corner
²⁹⁴
might cry clang again. Oh it was a brave age then, and so it is ever, where there are offensive wars, and not defensive, and men fight for the spoil and not in fear to be spoiled, and are as lions seeking out their prey, and not as sheep that lie still whiles they are preyed on.

The red herring is a legate of peace, and so abhorrent from unnatural bloodshed that if, in his quarrel or bandying who should harbing him, there be any hewing or slashing or trials of life and death, there where that hangman embowelling is, his pursuivants or baillies return
non est inventus
;
²⁹⁵
out of one bailiwick he is fled, never to be fastened on there more. The Scottish jockies
²⁹⁶
or redshanks
²⁹⁷
(so surnamed of their immoderate raunching
²⁹⁸
up the red shanks or red herrings) uphold and make good the same. Their clack or gabbling to this purport: ‘
How
, in diebus illis,
²⁹⁹
when Robert de Breaux,
³⁰⁰
their gud king, sent his dear heart to the holy land, for reason he caud not gang thider himself, (or then or thereabout or whilom before or whilom after, it matters not) they had the staple or fruits of the herring in their road or channel, till a foul ill feud arose amongst his sectaries and servitors, and there was
mickle tule
,
³⁰¹
and a black world, and a deal of whin–yards
³⁰²
drawn about him, and many sackless
³⁰³
wights and praty barns run through the tender weambs, and fra thence ne sarry tale of a herring in thilk sound they caud grip
.' This language or parley have I usurped from some of the deftest lads in all Edinborough town, which it will be no impeachment for the wisest to turn loose for a truth, without any diffident wrestling with it.

The sympathy thereunto in our frothy streams we have took napping. Wherefore, without any further bolstering or backing, this Scottish history may bear palm.
³⁰⁴
And if any further bolstering or backing be required, it is evident by the confession of the six-hundred Scottish witches executed in Scotland at Bartelmewtide was twelve-month, that in Yarmouth Road they were altogether in a plump
³⁰⁵
on Christmas Eve was two year, when the great flood was, and there stirred up such tornadoes and furicanoes of tempests, in envy (as I collect) that the staple of the herring from them was translated to Yarmouth, as will be spoke of there whiles any winds or storms and tempests chafe and puff in the lower region.
³⁰⁶

They and all the seafaring towns under our temperate zone of peace may well envy her prosperity, as a general envy encompassing it. Kings, noblemen, it cleaves unto, that walk upright and are anything happy; and even amongst mean artificers it thrusts in his foot, one of them envying another if he have a knack above another, or his gains be greater, and, if in his art they cannot disgrace him, they will find a starting hole in his life that shall confound him. For example: there is
*
a mathematical smith or artificer in Yarmouth that hath made a lock and key that weighs but three farthings, and a chest with a pair of knit gloves in
the till of it, whose whole poise is no more but a groat. Now, I do not think but all the smiths in London, Norwich or York, if they heard of him, would envy him if they could not outwork him.