Thus the dispute lasted till they came to us, and getting into the boat, they jostled for preeminence, which might have proved a sharp conflict, had not the old fellow took up a stretcher and parted them. After which we parted peaceably over to the other side: being-landed, the Scot and I took our way together, and left the furious churchman to vent his spleen by himself. We had not travelled long before we came to a populous village, where, from the various multitude, our eyes encountered at a distance, we might easily conjecture that something more than ordinary had gathered them together in that manner; it resembled (as near as I can describe it) that famous place called Sherrick-fair, or a Staffordshire-Wake. While we were applying our admiration that way, we arrived at a small hut erected for that purpose, where Nero the tyrant, like a blind fiddler, was surrounded by a confused tribe of all sorts and sexes, like another Orpheus among the beasts. The various remarks I made (some dancing, some prancing; some clapping, some knapping; some drinking, some winking; some kissing, some pissing; some reeling, some stealing) urged my curiosity to enquire for what it was possible those noble sports might be ordained, and was soon satisfied it was the Anniversary Feast of their Great Lady Proserpine's birth-day. But these things that I took to be diverting, so elevated the spleen of my Puritan companion, that he began loudly to exclaim against those prophane exercises: he said, they were impure, and lifted up the mind to lewdness; that those that followed them, were the sons of Belial, and wore the mark of the beast in their foreheads. I endeavoured to pacify the sanctified brother, by putting him in mind where we were, and that his rashness might draw us into danger, being in a strange place; but all was in vain, I but stirred up his fury more; for, turning his rebukes upon me, he told me, I was myself one of the wicked, and did rejoice in my heart at the deeds of darkness: no, says he, I will not be pacified, I will roar aloud to drown their incantations; yea, I will set out a throat even as the beast that belloweth! so that perceiving the mob gather about him, I thought it prudence to steal off, and leave him to the fury of those, whose displeasure he was about to incur.