Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/160

 England in all other land a perpetual infamy of tayles by thee wrytten legendes of lyes, yet can they not well tell where to bestowe them truely.” Bale, a fierce and unsparing reformer, and one who stinted not hard words, applying to the inventors of these legends an epithet more strong than elegant, says, “In the legends of their sanctified sorcerers they have diffamed the English posterity with tails, as has been showed afore. That an Englyshman now cannot travayle in another land by way of marchandyse or any other honest occupyinge, but it is most contumeliously thrown in his tethe that all Englyshmen have tails. That uncomely note and report have the nation gotten, without recover, by these laisy and idle lubbers, the monkes and the priestes, which could find no matters to advance their canonized gains by, or their saintes, as they call them, but manifest lies and knaveries .”

Andrew Marvel also makes mention of this strange judgment in his Loyal Scot:— “But who considers right will find, indeed, ’Tis Holy Island parts us, not the Tweed. Nothing but clergy could us two seclude, No Scotch was ever like a bishop’s feud.