Page:Poor Robin's True Character of a Schold - 1678.djvu/5



POOR ROBIN'S



RANK SCOLD is a Devil of the feminine gender; a serpent, perpetually hissing, and spitting of venom; a composition of ill-nature and clamour. You may call her animated gunpowder, a walking Mount Etna that is always belching forth flames of sulphur, or a real purgatory, more to be dreaded in this world, than the Pope's imaginary hot-house in the next. A burr about the moon, is not half so certain a presage of a tempest at sea, as her brow is of a storm on land. And though laurel, hawthorn, and seal-skin are held preservatives against thunder, magic has not yet been able to find any amulet so sovereign as still her ravings: for, the oil poured on flames, good E 2