Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/187

No. 5. of strange impertinence, fitted to her taste and condition; of poor servants who came to be ladies, and servingmen of low degree who married kings daughters. Among other things, I met this sage observation, That a lion would never hurt a true virgin. With this medley of nonsense in my fancy, I went to bed, and dreamed that a friend waked me in the morning, and proposed for pastime to spend a few hours in seeing the parish lions, which he had not done since he came to town; and because they showed but once a week, he would not miss the opportunity. I said I would humour him; although, to speak the truth, I was not fond of those cruel spectacles; and, if it were not so ancient a custom, founded (as I had heard) upon the wisest maxims, I should be apt to censure the inhumanity of those who introduced it." All this will be a riddle to the waking reader, until I discover the scene my imagination had formed, upon the maxim. That a lion would never hurt a true virgin. "I dreamed, that by a law of immemorial time, a he lion was kept in every parish at the common charge, and in a place provided adjoining to the churchyard; that before any one of the fair sex was married, if she affirmed herself to be a virgin, she must on her wedding day, and in her wedding clothes, perform the ceremony of going alone into the den, and stay an hour with the lion, let loose and kept fasting four and twenty hours on purpose. At a proper height above the den were convenient galleries for the relations and friends of the young couple, laid open to all spectators. No maiden was Rh