One thing there was beyond all these he tells us, which was also what drove them from the house in reality, though they never owned it. This was they had formed a reserve of part of the premises to themselves, and hid their mutual agreement, which they had drawn up in writing, under the earth in a pot in a corner of the room in which they usually dined, in which an orange tree grew: when in the midst of their dinner one day this earth of itself took fire and burned violently with a blue flame, filling the room with a strong sulphurous stench; and this he also professes was his own doing, by a secret mixture he had placed there the day before.
I am very happy in having an opportunity of setting history right about these remarkable events; and would not have the reader disbelieve my author’s account of them, from his naming either white gunpowder going off when melted, or his making the earth about the pot take fire of its own accord; since, however improbable these accounts may appear to some readers, and whatever secrets they might be in Joe’s time, they are well known now in chemistry. As to the last, there needs only to mix an equal quantity of iron filings, finely powdered, and powder of pure brimstone, and make them into a paste with fair water. This paste, when it has lain together about twenty-six hours, will of itself take fire, and burn all the sulphur away, with a blue flame and great stink. For the others, what he calls white gunpowder, is plainly the thundering powder called pulvis fulminans by our chemists. It is made only of three parts of saltpetre, two parts of pearl-ashes, or salt of tartar, and one part of flower of brimstone, mixed together and beat to a fine powder; a small quantity of this held on the point of a knife over a candle will not go off till it melts, and then give a report like a pistol; and this he might easily dispose of in larger quantities, so as to make it go off of itself, while he was with his masters.
From this diversion at Woodstock, wherein if we have exceeded be it remembered that Aubrey carried us thither, we return to the diversions of the month.
Ye shepherdesses, in a goodly round,
Purpled with health, as in the greenwood shade,
Incontinent ye thump the echoing ground,
And deftly lead the dance along the glade;
(O may no showers your merry makes affray!)
Hail at the opening, at the closing day,
All hail, ye Bonnibels, to your own season, May.
Nor ye absent yourselves, ye shepherd swains,
But lead to dance and song the liberal May,
And while in jocund ranks you beat the plains,
Your flocks shall nibble and your lambkins play,
Frisking in glee. To May your garlands bring,
And ever and anon her praises sing:
The woods shall echo May,—with May the vallies ring.
May Day in London.
The truant schoolboy now at eve we meet,
Fatigued and sweating thro’ the crowded street,
His shoe embrown’d at once with dust and clay,
With whitethorn loaded, which he takes for May.
Round his flapp’d hat in rings the cowslips twine,
Or in cleft osiers form a golden line.
On milk-pail rear’d the borrow’d salvers glare,
Topp’d with a tankard, which two porters bear,
Reeking they slowly toil o’er rugged stones,
And joyless milkmaids dance with aching bones.