SEVEN CHILDREN AT A BIRTH THREE TIMES FOLLOWING.
Your correspondent N. D.'s papers (Vol. ii., p. 459., and Vol. iii., p. 64) have reminded me of another remarkable instance of fecundity related by the well-known civil engineer Jan Adriaensz. Leeg-Water, in his Kleyne Chronycke, printed at Amsterdam in 1654:
"Some years since," says he, p. 31., "I was at Wormer, at an inn near the town-hall: the landlady, whose name was Frankjen, told me of the Burgomaster of Hoorn, who in the spring went over the (Zuyder?) sea to buy oxen, and going into a certain house he found seven little children sitting by the fire, each with a porringer in its hand, and eating rice-milk, or pap, with a spoon; on which the Burgomaster said 'Mother, you are very kind to your neighbours, since they leave their children to your care.' 'No,' said the woman, they are all my own children, which I had at one birth; and if you will wait a moment, I will show you more that will surprise you.' She then fetched seven other children a birth older: so she had fourteen children at two births. Then the woman said to the Burgomaster, 'I am now enceinte, and I think in the same way as before: if you come here next year, call upon me again.' And so, the next year, when the Burgomaster went over the sea, he called upon the woman and the woman had again brought forth seven children at a birth. Thus the woman had at three births twenty-one children."
I subjoin the original of which the above is a literal translation.
J. S.
Woudenberg, April, 1851.
RAMASSHED, MEANING OF THE TERM.
In the curious volume recently edited by Sir Henry Ellis for the Camden Society, entitled The Pilgrymage of Syr R. Guylforde, Knyght, a singular term occurs, which may claim a note of explanation. It is found in the following passage:
"Saterdaye to Suse, Noualassa, and to Lyungborugh; and at the sayd Noualassa we toke moyles to stey us vp the mountayne, and toke also marones to kepe vs frome fallynge. And from the hyght of the mounte down to Lyuyngborugh I was ramasshed, whiche is a right strange thinge."—P. 80.