Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/142



HOPE I may be excused for introducing here a notice of the legendary enlargements of Scripture narrative with which Drayton added interest to Moses, his Birth and Miracles. The oftentimes charming idyls known as the Muses Elysium were the prelude of Noah's Flood (already sufficiently considered), Moses, and David and Goliath. It is only the second of these poems (save the mark!) that will detain us now.

Moses began his exemplary life in an exemplary way, his entrée being painless to her that bare him. Drayton relates the story told by Josephus, of how that, when Pharaoh fondled the adopted child, and in a sportive manner put the diadem on the boy's head, the little fellow dashed it to the ground, and spurned it with his feet. Small wonder that the soothsayers looked upon this as ominous, and would fain have had the young rebel put to death. But his royal mother defended him by showing the artlessness of a child of his tender age (we learn from the Talmud that he was three): he was shown some burning coals, and was so attracted by their gleaming beauty that he carried one of them to his mouth, and so scorched his tongue that he was ever afterwards afflicted by an impediment in his speech, to which defect some suppose that Moses referred when he said unto the Lord, "O, my Lord, I am not eloquent [marg. a man of words] but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue"; and when he alleged, "I am of uncircumcised lips." Bishop Wordsworth remarks that "stammering lips and slowness of tongue were