Today's Tall Story

[D. Allan]

CHAP. XVI.

Of Margaret the Wife of Herman, Earle of Henneberge.

THIS Ladie lived in the time of Henrie the 3d Emperor, who brought forth at one birth 365 children, the just number of daies in the yeare; in memory whereof, not far from Leiden in Holland, in a village called Lausdunen, there is yet a faire Table of Marble, which containeth the whole Historie of this stupendious accident; which, as it there standeth ingraven upon the Marble, I will truly relate: for I my self have twice or thrice, when I lived in Holland, seen the same: these two Verses are ingraven uppermost,

En tibi monstrosum nimis, & memorabile factum,

Quale nec à mundi conditione datum.

Margaret the wife of Herman, Earle of Henneberge, and daughter of Florence the 4th Earle of Holland and Zeland, sister of William King of the Romanes, and after Cæsar, or Governor of the Empire, and of Alithea, Countesse of Henault, whose Uncle was the Bishop of Utrecht, and Cousin to the Duke of Brabant, and the Earle of Thuringia, &c. This Noble Countesse being about forty yeares of age, upon Easter day, and about nine of the clocke in the yeare of our Lord, 1276. was brought to bed of three hundred sixtie and five children, all which were baptized in two brazen Basons, by Guido the Suffragane of Utrecht; the males, how many soever there were of them, were christened by the name of Iohn, the daughters were al named Elizabeth, who all together with their mother dyed the same day, and with their mother lie buried in this Church of Losdunen. This happened by the meanes of a poore woman, who carried in her armes two children, who were twinnes, & both of them males, which the Countesse admiring, said, That she could not have them by one father, and so shooke her off in contempt and scorn. Whereupon this poore woman being much perplexed in her mind, presenly prayed to God to send her as many children as there were dayes in the whole yeare: which thing beside the course of Nature, in a stupendious and wonderfull manner came to passe, as it is briefly set downe and declared in this Table for a perpetuall Memorie, testified as well by ancient Manuscripts, as by many printed Chronicles. The Almightie and great GOD of Heaven hereupon bee feared, honoured, and praysed from this time forth for evermore. Amen.

- Henry Peacham (1638), The Valley of Varietie, pp.140-144

[olger]

I wonder how many of those children needed braces..

og

[D. Allan]

None, og. They and their mother died the same day, according to the story. Do you suppose that inscription in marble still can be seen and read in Holland?

[D. Allan]

An ancient tall tale about baby bears:

Aelian, the 2nd century AD Greek rhetorician, relates the folk legend about how a bear cub is born a shapeless lump, only a bit bigger than a mouse, without eyes or hair. The mother bear licks the mass into the proper shape of a cub, smoothing it with her tongue and little by little bringing it into shape over a period of 14 days. Exhausted, the mother then falls asleep for three months. This idea was widely dispersed and genuinely believed by many in Europe until about the 17th century. Shakespeare borrowed this folk belief and incorporated it into his play Henry VI.

[D. Allan]

From Book II of the Histories of Herodotus, an account of Egypt:

"Now Psammetichos, when he was not able by inquiry to find out any means of knowing who had come into being first of all men, contrived a device of the following kind:—Taking two new-born children belonging to persons of the common sort he gave them to a shepherd to bring up at the place where his flocks were, with a manner of bringing up such as I shall say, charging him namely that no man should utter any word in their presence, and that they should be placed by themselves in a room where none might come, and at the proper time he should bring to them she-goats, and when he had satisfied them with milk he should do for them whatever else was needed. These things Psammetichos did and gave him this charge wishing to hear what word the children would let break forth first, after they had ceased from wailings without sense. And accordingly so it came to pass; for after a space of two years had gone by, during which the shepherd went on acting so, at length, when he opened the door and entered, both the children fell before him in entreaty and uttered the word bekos, stretching forth their hands. At first when he heard this the shepherd kept silence; but since this word was often repeated, as he visited them constantly and attended to them, at last he declared the matter to his master, and at his command he brought the children before his face. Then Psammetichos having himself also heard it, began to inquire what nation of men named anything bekos, and inquiring he found that the Phrygians had this name for bread. In this manner and guided by an indication such as this, the Egyptians were brought to allow that the Phrygians were a more ancient people than themselves. That so it came to pass I heard from the priests of that Hephaistos who dwells at Memphis..."

[D. Allan]

"I used to fish a lot because I thought it was relaxing, but it got to be too much trouble. Then a friend told me his theory: 'If you truly fish for relaxation, don't bait your hook. Now, that's relaxing!'

"This same friend, a Southerner suspicious of anything Northern (he won't even eat Great Northern Beans), also told me, 'The only way to make ice hockey interesting is to paint the puck white.'"

-from The Wit and Wisdom of Lewis Grizzard, p.43

[Amelia]

Quote:

'The only way to make ice hockey interesting is to paint the puck white.'"

now that would be fun to see.

[D. Allan]

"The most abusive (and also the best) golf caddies in the world are in Scotland. One once said to me, 'You have a great short game, sir. Too bad it's off the tee.' After duffing a shot, I said, 'You know, golf's a funny game.' To which my caddy replied, 'It's not supposed to be, sir.' Later I asked why he kept looking at his watch. He answered, 'It's not a watch, sir; it's a compass.' Finally, at the end of that round, I tried my hand at revenge: 'You must be the worst caddy in the world,' I said. And he answered, 'That, sir, would be too great a coincidence.'"

-Grizzard, p.115

[D. Allan]

" We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over the hard, level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time the coach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and unfatigued.

After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles

further on, and we three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver and conductor. Apparently she was not a talkative woman. She would sit there in the gathering twilight and fasten her steadfast eyes on a mosquito rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other hand till she had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him that would have jolted a cow; and after that she would sit and contemplate the corpse with tranquil satisfaction -- for she never missed her mosquito; she was a dead shot at short range. She never removed a carcase, but left them there for bait. I sat by this grim Sphynx and watched her kill thirty or forty mosquitoes -- watched her, and waited for her to say something, but she never did. So I finally opened the conversation myself. I said:

"The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam."

"You bet!"

"What did I understand you to say, madam?"

"You BET!"

Then she cheered up, and faced around and said:

"Danged if I didn't begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb. I did, b'gosh. Here I've sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust'n muskeeters and wonderin' what was ailin' ye. Fust I thot you was deef and dumb, then I thot you was sick or crazy, or suthin', and then by and by I begin to reckon you was a passel of sickly fools that couldn't think of nothing to say. Wher'd ye come from?"

The Sphynx was a Sphynx no more! The fountains of her great deep were broken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and forty nights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under a desolating deluge of trivial gossip that left not a crag or pinnacle of rejoinder projecting above the tossing waste of dislocated grammar and decomposed pronunciation!"

-Mark Twain, Roughing It, chapter two