"Our women batten well on their good nature
All they can rap and rend for the dear creature."
"All they can rap and run for" is the more frequent colloquial version of this quaint phrase.
In Chaucer's "Chanones Yeman's Tale" it stands thus:
"But wasten all that ye may rape and renne."
And to this last word Tyrwhit, in his Glossary, gives "rend?" with a mark of interrogation, as doubtful of the meaning.
Johnson gives it "rap and rend," and quotes a line of Hudibras:
"All they could rap and rend and pilfer:"
and adds, "more properly, rap and ran;
