by Thomas Nashe
Hero wept as trickling from the heavens, to think that heaven should so divorce them. Leander stormed worse than the storms, that by them he should be so restrained from his Cynthia. At Sestos was his soul, and he could not abide to tarry in Abidos. Rain, snow, hail or blow it how it could, into the pitchy Hellespont he leapt when the moon and all her torch-bearers were afraid to peep out their heads. But he was peppered for it; he had as good have took meat, drink and leisure, for the churlish frampold368 waters gave him his bellyful of fish-broth, ere out of their laundry or wash-house they would grant him his coquet369 or transire;370 and not only that, but they sealed him his quietus est371 for curveting372 any more to the maiden tower, and tossed his dead carcass, well bathed or parboiled, to the sandy threshold of his leman or orange,373 for a disjune or morning breakfast. All that livelong night could she not sleep, she was so troubled with the rheum, which was a sign she should hear of some drowning. Yet towards cock-crowing she caught a little slumber, and then she dreamed that Leander and she were playing at checkstone374 with pearls in the bottom of the sea.
You may see dreams are not so vain as they are preached of, though not in vain preachers inveigh against them and bend themselves out of the peoples’ minds to exhale their foolish superstition. The rheum is student’s disease, and who study most dream most. The labouring men’s hands glow and blister after their day’s work; the glowing and blistering of our brains after our day-labouring cogitations are dreams, and those dreams are reeking vapours of no impression if our mateless couches be not half empty. Hero hoped, and therefore she dreamed (as all hope is but a dream). Her hope was where her heart was, and her heart winding and turning with the wind, that might wind her heart-of-gold to her or else turn him from her. Hope and fear both combatted in her, and both these are wakeful, which made her at break of day (what an old crone is the day that is so long a-breaking) to unloop her luket or casement to look whence the blasts came, or what gait or pace the sea kept; when forthwith her eyes bred her eye-sore, the first white whereon their transpiercing arrows stuck being the breathless corpse of Leander. With the sudden contemplation of this piteous spectacle of her love, sodden to haddock’s meat, her sorrow could not but be indefinite, if her delight in him were but indifferent; and there is no woman but delights in sorrow, or she would not use it so lightly for everything.
Down she ran in her loose nightgown, and her hair about her ears (even as Semiramis375 ran out with her lie-pot376 in her hand, and her black dangling tresses about her shoulders with her ivory comb ensnarled in them, when she heard that Babylon was taken), and thought to have kissed his dead corpse alive again, but as on his blue-jellied-sturgeon lips she was about to clap one of those warm plaisters,377 boisterous woolpacks of ridged tides came rolling in and raught him from her (with a mind belike to carry him back to Abidos). At that she became a frantic Bacchanal outright, and made no more bones, but sprang after him, and so resigned up her priesthood, and left work for Musaeus and Kit Marlowe.378 The gods, and gods and goddesses all on a row, bread and crow,379 from Ops to Pomona, the first apple-wife, were so dumped380 with this miserable wrack that they began to abhor all moisture for the sea’s sake. And Jupiter could not endure Ganymede, his cup-bearer, to come in his presence, both for the dislike he bore to Neptune’s baleful liquor, as also that he was so like to Leander. The sun was so in his mumps upon it, that it was almost noon before he could go to cart that day, and then with so ill a will he went, that he had thought to have toppled his burning car or huny-curry381 into the sea (as Phaeton did) to scorch it and dry it up; and at night, when he was begrimed with dust and sweat of his journey, he would not descend as he was wont to wash him in the ocean, but under a tree laid him down to rest in his clothes all night, and so did the scowling moon under another fast by him, which of that are behighted382 the trees of the sun and moon, and are the same that Sir John Mandeville tells us383 he spoke with, and that spoke to Alexander. Venus, for Hero was her priest, and Juno Lucina, the midwife’s goddess, for she was now quickened and cast away by the cruelty of Aeolus, took bread and salt and ate it that they would be smartly revenged on that truculent jailer, and they forgot it not, for Venus made his son and his daughter to commit incest together. Lucina, that there might be some lasting characters of his shame, helped to bring her to bed of a goodly boy, and Aeolus bolting out all this heaped murder upon murder.
The dint of destiny could not be repealed in the reviving of Hero and Leander, but their heavenly-hoods in their synod thus decreed, that, for they were either of them sea-borderers and drowned in the sea, still to the sea they must belong, and be divided in habitation after death as they were in their lifetime. Leander, for that in a cold dark testy night he had his passport to Charon, they terminated to the unquiet cold coast of Iceland, where half the year is nothing but murk-light, and to that fish translated him which of us is termed ling. Hero, for that she was pagled384 and timpanized,385 and sustained two losses under one, they foot-balled their heads together, and protested to make the stem of her loins of all fishes the flaunting Fabian or Palmerin386 of England, which is Cadwallader Herring; and, as their meetings were but seldom, and not so oft as welcome, so but seldom should they meet in the heel of the week at the best men’s tables, upon Fridays and Saturdays, the holy time of Lent exempted, and then they might be at meat and meal for seven weeks together.
The nurse or Mother Mampudding387 that was a-cowering on the back side whiles these things were a-tragedizing, led by the scritch or outcry to the prospect of this sorrowful heigh-ho, as soon as, through the ravelled buttonholes of her blear eyes, she had sucked in and received such a revelation of Doomsday, and that she saw her mistress mounted a-cockhorse and hoisted away to hell or to heaven on the backs of those rough-headed ruffians, down she sunk to the earth, as dead as a door-nail, and never mumped crust after. Whereof their supemalities,388 having a drop or two of pity left of the huge hogshead of tears they spent for Hero and Leander, seemed to be something sorry, though they could not weep for it, and because they would be sure to have a medicine that should make them weep at all times, to that kind of grain they turned her which we call mustard-seed, as well for she was a shrewish snappish bawd, that would bite off a man’s nose with an answer and had rheumatic sore eyes that ran always, as that she might accompany Hero and Leander after death, as in her lifetime. And hence it is that mustard bites a man so by the nose and makes him weep and water his plants when he tasteth it; and that Hero and Leander, the red herring and ling, never come to the board without mustard, their waiting-maid; and, if you mark it, mustard looks of the tanned-wainscot hue of such a withered wrinklefaced beldam as she was that was altered thereinto. Loving Hero, however altered, had a smack of love still, and therefore to the coast of Loving-land (to Yarmouth near adjoining and within her liberties of Kirtley Road) she accustomed to come in pilgrimage every year, but contentions arising there, and she remembering the event of the contentions betwixt Sestos and Abidos, that wrought both Leander’s death and hers, shunneth it of late, and retireth more northwards. So she shunneth unquiet Humber, because Elstred389 was drowned there, and the Scots Seas, as before, and every other sea where any blood hath been spilt, for her own sea’s sake, that spilt her sweet sweetheart’s blood and hers.
Whippet, turn to a new lesson, and strike we up ‘John for the King’, or tell how the herring scrambled up to be king of all fishes. So it fell upon a time and tide, though not upon a holiday, a falconer bringing over certain hawks out of Ireland, and airing them above hatches on ship-board, and giving them stones to cast and scour,390 one of them broke loose from his fist ere he was aware; which being in her kingdom when she was got upon her wings, and finding herself empty gorged after her casting, up to heaven she towered to seek prey, but there being no game to please her, down she fluttered to the sea again, and a speckled fish playing above the water, at it she strook, mistaking it for a partridge. A shark or tuberon, that lay gaping for the flying fish hard by, what did me he, but, seein
g the mark fall so just in his mouth, chopped aloft and snapped her up, bells and all at a mouthful. The news of this murderous act, carried by the king’s fisher to the ears of the land fowls, there was nothing but ‘arm, arm, arm, to sea, to sea’, swallow and titmouse, to take chastisement of that trespass of blood and death committed against a peer of their blood royal. Preparation was made, the muster taken, the leaders allotted, and had their bills to take up pay. An old goshawk for general was appointed; for marshal of the field, a sparrowhawk, whom for no further desert they put in office, but because it was one of their lineage had sustained that wrong, and they thought they would be more implacable in condoling and commiserating. The peacocks with their spotted coats and affrighting voices for heralds they pricked391 and enlisted, and the cockadoodling cocks for their trumpeters (look upon any cock and look upon any trumpeter, and see if he look not as red as a cock after his trumpeting, and a cock as red as he after his crowing). The kestrils or windfuckers that, filling themselves with wind, fly against the wind evermore, for their full-sailed standardbearers; the cranes for pikemen, and the woodcocks for demilances,392 and so of the rest every one according to that place by nature he was most apt for. Away to the land’s end they trig,393 all the sky-bred chirpers of them. When they came there, aequora nos terrent et ponti tristis imago,394 they had wings of goodwill to fly with, but no webs on their feet to swim with; for, except the waterfowls had mercy upon them and stood their faithful confederates and back-friends,395 on their backs to transport them, they might return home like good fools and gather straws to build their nests, or fall to their old trade of picking worms. In sum, to the water fouls unanimately they recourse, and besought duck and drake, swan and goose, halcyons and sea-pies, cormorants and sea-gulls, of their oary assistance and aidful furtherance in this action.
They were not obdurate to be entreated, though they had little cause to revenge the hawks’ quarrel from them, having received so many high displeasures and slaughters and rapines of their race; yet in a general prosecution private feuds they trod underfoot, and submitted their endeavours to be at their limitation in everything.
The puffin, that is half-fish half-flesh (a John Indifferent,396 and an Ambodexter397 betwixt either), bewrayed this conspiracy to Protaeus’ herds or the fraternity of fishes; which the greater giants of Russia and Iceland, as the whale, the sea-horse, the norse, the wasserman,398 the dolphin, the grampoys, fleered and jeered at as a ridiculous danger, but the lesser pigmies and spawn of them thought it meet to provide for themselves betime, and elect a king amongst them that might derain399 them to battle, and under whose colours they might march against these birds of a feather, that had so colleagued themselves to destroy them.
Who this king should be, beshackled their wits and laid them a-dry ground everyone. No ravening fish they would put in arms, for fear after he had averted their foes and fleshed himself in blood, for interchange of diet, he would raven up them.
Some politic delegatory Scipio, or witty-pated Petito,400 like the heir of Laertes per aspherisin,401 Ulysses (well-known unto them by his prolixious seawandering and dancing on their topless tottering hills), they would single forth, if it might be, whom they might depose when they list, if he should begin to tyrannize, and such a one as of himself were able to make a sound party if all failed, and bid base to402 the enemy with his own kindred and followers.
None won the day in this but the herring, whom all their clamorous suffrages saluted, with Vive le Roy, ‘God save the King, God save the King’, save only the plaice and the butt, that made wry mouths at him, and for their mocking have wry mouths ever since, and the herring ever since wears a coronet on his head, in token that he is as he is. Which had the worst end of the staff in that sea journey or canvazado,403 or whether some fowler with his nets (as this host of feather-mongers were getting up to ride double) involved or entangled them, or the water fowls played them false (as there is no more love betwixt them than betwixt sailors and land soldiers), and threw them off their backs, and let them drown when they were launched into the deep, I leave to some Alfonsus,404 Poggius405 or Aesope to unwrap, for my pen is tired in it. But this is notorious: the herring, from that time to this, hath gone with an army, and never stirs abroad without it. And when he stirs abroad with it, he sends out his scouts or sentinels before him, that oftentimes are intercepted, and by their parti-coloured liveries descried, whom the mariners after they have took, use in this sort: eight or nine times they swinge them about the mainmast, and bid them bring them so many last406 of herrings as they have swinged them times, and that shall be their ransome, and so throw them into the sea again. King, by your leave, for in your kingship I must leave you, and repeat how from white to red you chameleonized.
It is to be read, or to be heard of, how in the punyship or nonage407 of Cerdick sands, when the best houses and walls there were of mud or canvas, or poldavies entiltments,408 a fisherman of Yarmouth, having drawn so many herrings he wist not what to do withal, hung the residue that he could not sell nor spend in the sooty roof of his shed a-drying; or say thus, his shed was a cabinet in decimo sexto,409 builded on four crutches, and he had no room in it but in that garret or excelsis410 to lodge them, where if they were dry, let them be dry, for in the sea they had drunk too much, and now he would force them do penance for it.
The weather was cold, and good fires he kept (as fishermen, what hardness soever they endure at sea, they will make all smoke but they will make amends for it when they come to land), and what with his firing and smoking, or smoky firing, in that his narrow lobby, his herrings, which were as white as whale’s bone when he hung them up, now looked as red as a lobster. It was four or five days before either he or his wife espied it, and when they espied it, they fell down on their knees and blessed themselves, and cried ‘A miracle, a miracle!’ and with the proclaiming it among their neighbours they could not be content, but to the Court the fishermen would and present it to the King, then lying at Burgh Castle two miles off.
Of this Burgh Castle, because it is so ancient, and there hath been a city there, I will enter into some more special mention. The flood Waveney, running through many owns of high Suffolk up to Bungey, and from thence encroaching nearer and nearer to the sea, with his twining and winding it cuts out an island of some amplitude, named Lovingland. The head town in that island is Leystofe,411 in which be it known to all men I was born, though my father sprang from the Nashes of Herefordshire.
The next town from Leystofe towards Yarmouth is Gorton, and next Gorlston. More inwardly on the left hand, where Waveney and the river Jerus mix their waters, Cnoberi Urhs, the City of Cnober, at this day termed Burgh or Burgh Castle, had his being.
The city and castle, saith Bede and Master Camden, or rather Master Camden out of Bede, by the woods about it, and the driving of the sea up to it, was most pleasant. In it one Fursaeus, a Scot, builded a monastery, at whose persuasion Sigebert, King of the East Angles, gave over his kingdom and led a monastical life there; but forth of that monastery he was haled against his will, to encourage his subjects in their battle against the Mercians, where he perished with them.
Nothing of that castle save tattered412 ragged walls now remains, framed four-square and overgrown with briars and bushes, in the stubbing up of which, erstwhiles they dig up Roman coins, and buoys and anchors. Well, thither our fisherman set the best leg before, and unfardled413 to the King his whole satchel of wonders. The King was as superstitious in worshipping those miraculous herrings as the fisherman, licensed him to carry them up and down the realm for strange monsters, giving to Cerdick sands (the birth of such monstrosities) many privileges, and, in that the quantity of them that were caught so increased, he assigned a broken sluice in the Island of Lovingland, called Herring Fleet, where they should disburden and discharge their boats of them, and render him custom. Our herring smoker, having won his monster’s stall throughout England, spirted overseas to Rome with a pedlar’s pack of them, in the papal chair of Vigilius, he that fir
st instituted saints’ eves or vigils to be fasted.414 By that time he came thither he had but three of his herrings left, for by the way he fell into the thievish hands of malcontents and of launce-knights,415 of whom he was not only robbed of all his money, but was fain to redeem his life besides with the better part of his ambry416 of burnished fishes.
These herrings three he rubbed and curried over417 till his arms ached again, to make them glow like a Turkie418 brooch or a London vintner’s sign, thick-jagged, and round-fringed with theaming419 arsedine,420 and folding them in a diaper napkin as lily-white as a ladies’ marrying-smock, to the market-stead of Rome he was so bold as to prefer them; and there, on a high stool, unbraced and unlaced them to any chapman’s eye that would buy them. The Pope’s caterer, casting a lickerous421 glance that way, asked what it was he had to sell. ‘The King of Fishes’, he answered. ‘The King of Fishes?’ replied he. ‘What is the price of him?’ ‘A hundred ducats’, he told him. ‘A hundred ducats?’ quoth the Pope’s caterer. ‘That is a kingly price indeed. It is for no private man to deal with him.’ ‘Then he is for me’, said the fisherman, and so unsheathed his cuttle-bong,422 and from the nape of the neck to the tail dismembered him and paunched him up at a mouthful. Home went his Beatitude’s caterer with a flea in his ear, and discoursed to His Holiness what had happened. ‘Is it the King of Fishes?’ The Pope frowningly shook him up like a cat in a blanket. ‘And is there any man to have him but I that am King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Go, give him his price, I command thee, and let me taste of him incontinently.’423 Back returned the caterer like a dog that had lost his tail, and poured down the herring merchant his hundred ducats for one of those two of the King of Fishes unsold; which then he would not take, but stood upon two hundred. Thereupon they broke off, the one urging that he had offered it him so before, and the other that he might have took him at his proffer, which since he refused and now halpered424 with him, as he eat up the first, so would he eat up the second, and let Pope or Patriarch of Constantinople fetch it out of his belly if they could. He was as good as his word, and had no sooner spoke the word, but he did as he spoke. With a heavy heart to the palace the yeoman of the mouth departed, and rehearsed this second ill success, wherewith Peter’s successor was so in his mulligrums425 that he had thought to have buffeted him and cursed him with bell, book and candle; but he ruled his reason, and bade him, though it cost a million, to let him have that third that rested behind, and hie him expeditely thither, lest some other snatched it up, and as fast from thence again, for he swore by his triple crown, no crum of refection would he gnaw upon, till he had sweetened his lips with it.