Poor Robin's True Character of a Schold

by William Winstanley

Poor Robin's

True

CHARACTER

OF A

SCHOLD

OR, THE

SHREWS LOOKING-GLASS.

 

Dedicated

To all $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Domineering Dames
	Wives Rampant
	Cuckolds Couchant and
	Henpeckt Sneaks;

In City or Country.

 

With Allowance.

 

London: Printed for L. C. 1678.

 

POOR ROBIN'S

 

RANK SCOLD is a Devil of the feminine gender; a serpent, perpetually hissing, and spitting of venom; a composition of ill-nature and clamour. You may call her animated gunpowder, a walking Mount Etna that is always belching forth flames of sulphur, or a real purgatory, more to be dreaded in this world, than the Pope's imaginary hot-house in the next. A burr about the moon, is not half so certain a presage of a tempest at sea, as her brow is of a storm on land. And though laurel, hawthorn, and seal-skin are held preservatives against thunder, magic has not yet been able to find any amulet so sovereign as still her ravings: for, the oil poured on flames, good words do but make her rage the faster; and when once her flag of defiance, the tippet, is unfurled, she cares not a straw for constable nor cucking-stool.

Her tongue is the clapper of the devil's saints-hell, that rings all into confusion. It runs round like a wheel, one spoke after another, and makes more noise and jangling, than country-steeples on the fifth of November. She is never less at ease, than when she is quiet; never quiet, but when she is sleeping; nor then neither: for either she talks in her dream, or awakes the whole house with a terrible fit of snoring. She makes such a pattering with her lips when she walks the streets, as if she were possessed; and so indeed she is, with the spirit of contention. The dog-days, with her, continue all the year round; nor can she possibly take cold: for she is ever in a heat, and holds neither pox nor plague so grievous a disease, as being tongue-tied.

She makes an ass of Aristotle, and demonstrates, that though every man be, yet many a woman is not, a sociable creature, for there is no good humour can charm her to be civil or agreeable; no company, how affable or complaisant soever, that can long content her. She seeks occasions for railing, as eagerly as a common barrister does to go to law. If you will not anger her, she will be angry with for thus neglecting her: and you cannot vex her worse, than to be silent, unless you sing or whistle at her folly. She interprets all she hears in the worse sense, and supplies the defect of real affronts with jealous suspicions. She is more captious, than capable of offence; and all her neighbours bless themselves from her, wishing this Quotidiano fever of her tongue cured with a razor. Yet is not that her only weapon; for she has hands to clap with, and nails to scratch with, and teeth to bite with, and much more furniture for war; so that being looked upon as invincible, her bad humour gets her a privilege: for wherever she comes, she may be sure to have the room to herself; nor needs long contest for priority of walk, or precedency at table, or opinion in argument: for the proudest gossip will quit pretensions, rather than stand the shock of her well-known rhetoric.

If she be of the preciser cast, she abuses sacred language in her railing, as conjurers do in their charms; calls her neighbours heathen Edomites, her husband reprobate, or son of Belial, and will not cudgel her maid without a text for it. But now I speak of husband, methinks I see the creeping snail shivering in an ague-fit when he comes in her presence. She is worse than cow-itch in his bed, and as good as a chafing-dish at board; but has either quite forgot his name, or else she likes it not; which makes her re-baptize him with more noble titles, as white-livered rascal, drunken sot, sneaking nincompoop, or pitiful lousy Tom Farthing. Thus she worries him out of his senses at home, and then ferrets his haunts abroad worse than a needy bawd does a decayed bully's. Taverns and ale-houses dread her single alarm, more than the joint attacks of the constable and watch; and his companions are content to pay his club and dismiss him, on news of her approach, rather than be at the charge of so many glasses and bottles as she will quickly salute his coxcomb with. A full glass seasonably offered, may sometimes pacify her for a moment; but immediately the ill spirit returns, and she can be quiet only just so long as she is drinking. Thus she clamours at him so long without occasion, that at last he gives her enough; and rails at him for keeping ill company, till she forces him to it; being ashamed to go into any good society, or they ashamed of him; which makes him seek blind bubbing-schools to hide himself in from her fury, and resolve to stay out all night, rather than endure a double rally.

In a word, (for I perceive our character begins to be infected with the contagious talkativeness of its subject) a virulent scold is her neighbour's perpetual disquiet, her families evil genius, her husband's ruin, and her own daily tormentor: And that you may the better know her pedigree, I'll give you a serious account of the receipt or method made use of for her production into the world, lately found in a long-concealed manuscript of Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, as follows: viz.

That nature long since finding many of her sons oft-times bewitched to their own ruin by the charms of women, for their punishment contrived this monster called A Scold: to form which,

She first took of the tongues and galls of bulls, bears, wolves, magpies, parrots, cuckoos, and nightingales, of each a like number: The tongues and tails of vipers, adders, snakes and lizards, seven apiece: aurum fulminans aqua fortis and gunpowder, of each one pound: the clappers of nineteen bells, and the pestles of a dozen apothecaries' mortars. Which being all mixed, she calcined in Mount Strombelo and dissolved the ashes in a water distilled just under London bridge at three quarters' flood, and filtrated it through the leaves of Calepino's Dictionary, to render the operation more verbal. After which, she distilled it again through a speaking-trumpet, and closed up the remaining spirits in the mouth of a cannon. Then she opened the graves of all new-deceased pettifoggers, mountebanks, barbers, coffee-newsmongers, and fish-wives: and with the skin of their tongues, made a bladder covered o'er with drum-heads, and filled with storms, tempests, whirlwinds, thunders, lightnings, &c. These for better incorporation, she set seven years in a rough sea to ferment, and then mixing them with the rest, rectified the whole three times a day for a twelve-month in a balneum of quicksilver. Lastly, to irrabiate the whole elixir, and make it more churlish, she cut a vein under the tongue of the dog-star, drawing thence a pound of the most choleric blood; from which sublimating the spirits, she mixed them with the foam of a mad dog: and then putting altogether in the forementioned bladder, stitched it up with the nerves of Socrates's wife.

Out of this noble preparation, and a crooked rib (emblem of future crossness) Dame Nature first composed a SHREW, whose posterity (as is frequent with noxious animals) has since so overspread the world, that scarce an alley or village is free from some of her lineage.

But that you may see her end as well as beginning, be pleased to peruse this

 

EPITAPH.

After some threescore years of caterwauling,
Here lies A SCOLD, stopped from above-ground bawling.
Though ill she liv'd, I dare not read her doom;
But sure, go where she will, she's troublesome.
I wish her, in revenge, amongst the blest:
For she'd as lief be damn'd, as be at rest.