“I would fain be convinced of God’s wonders in the great deeps, and would lean upon the weakest reed like unto thee to manifest his glory. Thou mayest convince me.”
William Shakspeare.
1.
“‘A wonderful story, my lasses and lads,
Peradventure you’ve heard from your grannams or dads,
Of a merman that came every night to woo
The spinster of spinsters, our Catherine Crewe.
2.
“‘But Catherine Crewe
Is now seventy-two,
And avers she hath half forgotten
The truth of the tale, when you ask her about it,
And says, as if fain to deny it or flout it,
“Pooh! the merman is dead and rotten.”
3.
“‘The merman came up as the mermen are wont,
To the top of the water, and then swam upon ’t;
And Catherine saw him with both her two eyes,
A lusty young merman full six feet in size.
4.
“‘And Catherine was frighten’d,
Her scalp-skin it tighten’d,
And her head it swam strangely, although on dry land;
And the merman made bold
Eftsoons to lay hold
(This Catherine well recollects) of her hand.