In North Wilts the
milkmayds sing as shrill and cleare as any swallow sitting on a
berne:-
"So lowdly she did yerne, Like any swallow sitting on a berne."-
CHAUCER.
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According to the severall sorts of earth in England (and so all the
world over) the Indigense are respectively witty or dull, good or bad.
To write a true account of the severall humours of our own countrey
would be two sarcasticall and offensive: this should be a secret
whisper in the eare of a friend only and I should superscribe here,
"Pinge duos angues -locus est sacer: extra
Mei ite." - PERSIUS SATYR.
Well then! let these Memoires lye conceal'd as a sacred arcanum.
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In North Wiltshire, and like the vale of Gloucestershire (a dirty
clayey country) the Indigense, or Aborigines, speake drawling; they
are phlegmatique, skins pale and livid, slow and dull, heavy of
spirit: hereabout is but little, tillage or hard labour, they only
milk the cowes and make cheese; they feed chiefly on milke meates,
which cooles their braines too much, and hurts their inventions. These
circumstances make them melancholy, contemplative, and malicious;
by consequence whereof come more law suites out of North Wilts, at
least double to the Southern Parts. And by the same reason they are
generally more apt to be fanatiques: their persons are generally plump
and feggy: gallipot eies, and some black: but they are generally
handsome enough.
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