The Maid of SkerBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
General
The Maid of Sker
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Foundlings -- Fiction; Romance fiction; Wales -- Fiction
When these two were gone by, I was able to gaze again at the taller one.
Truly a goodly man he was, though spared from being a good one. He
seemed to stand over me, like Sir Philip; although I was measured for
six feet and one inch, before I got into rheumatic ways. And as for size
and compass, my parents never could give me food to fetch out my girth,
as this parson's was. He looked a good yard and a half round the chest,
and his arms were like oak-saplings. However, he proved to be a man void
of some pride and some evil desires, unless anybody bore hard on him;
and as for reading the collects, or lessons, or even the burial service,
I was told that no man in the British realm was fit to say "Amen" to
him. This had something to do with the size of his chest, and perhaps
might have helped to increase it. His sermons also were done in a style
that women would come many miles to enjoy; beginning very soft and
sweet, so as to melt the milder ones; and then of a sudden roaring
greatly with all the contents of enormous lungs, so as to ring all round
the sides of the strongest weaker vessels. And as for the men, what
could they think, when the preacher could drub any six of them?
This was "Parson Jack," if you please, his surname being "Rambone," as I
need not say, unless I write for unborn generations. His business in
Boutport Street that day was to see if any man would challenge him. He
had held the belt seven years, they said, for wrestling, as well as for
bruising; the condition whereof was to walk the street both at
Barnstaple fair and at Bodmin revels, and watch whether any man laid
foot across him.
This he did purely as a layman might. But the boxing and bruising were
part of his office, so that he hung up his cassock always for a
challenge to make rent in it. There had been some talk of a Cornishman
interfering about the wrestling; and bad people hoped that he might so
attempt, and never know the way home again; but as for the fighting, the
cassock might hang till the beard of Parson Jack was grey, before any
one made a hole in it. Also the Cornish wrestler found, after looking at
Parson Jack, that the wisest plan before him was to challenge the other
Cornishmen, and leave the belt in Devonshire.
All this I found out at a little gathering which was held round the
corner, in Bear Street, to reflect upon the business done at the fair,
and compare opinions. And although I had never beheld till then any of
our good company, neither expected to see them again, there were no two
opinions about my being the most agreeable man in the room. I showed
them how to make punch to begin with, as had been done by his Royal
Highness, with me to declare proportions; and as many of the farmers had
turned some money, they bade me think twice about no ingredient that
would figure on the bill, even half-a-crown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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