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Taylor's Penniless Pilgrimage.

house, where with great entertainment he and his good wife did welcome me.

On the morrow he sent one of his men to bring me to a place called Adam, to Master John Acmootye his house, one of the Grooms of his Majesty's Bed-chamber; where with him and his two brethren, Master Alexander, and Master James Acmootye, I found both cheer and welcome, not inferior to any that I had had in any former place.

Amongst our viands that we had there, I must not forget the Sole and Goose (sic), a most delicate fowl, which breeds in great abundance in a little rock called the Bass, which stands two miles into the sea. It is very good flesh, but it is eaten in the form as we eat oysters, standing at a side-board, a little before dinner, unsanctified without grace; and after it is eaten, it must be well liquored with two or three good rouses[1] of sherry or canary sack. The Lord or owner of the Bass doth profit at the least two hundred pound yearly by those geese; the Bass itself being of a great height, and near three quarters of a mile in compass, all fully replenished with wild fowl, having but one small entrance into it, with a house, a garden, and a chapel in it; and on the top of it a well of pure fresh water.

From Adam, Master John and Master James Acmootye went to the town of Dunbar with me,

  1. Rouse.—A full glass, a bumper.