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6 - Monsters and men
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
In 1647, a text called Strange News from Scotland described the birth of a ‘terrible and prodigious monster’ on 14 September:
a child, or rather a monster (I think Learna nor Egyptian Nile ever produced the like), with two heads growing severally, somewhat distant one from the other, bearing the similitude of man and woman, the one face being all overgrown with long hair, the other more smooth and more effeminate … From the secret parts (which showed it to be both male and female), downwards all hairy, like your Satyrs or Sylvan Gods … those that were eyewitnesses … standing amazed as if they had beholden Gorgon.
This monster has been born to a woman who explains how it came about:
‘Good people’, says she, ‘pray for me as I do for myself. This judgement is questionless fallen upon me for my sins … for I have often wished this or some like judgement might befall me, which might not only be a terror to myself, but all other that should behold it, rather than any child born of my body should receive these Christian rites which by the laws and ancient customs of England and Scotland were given children at the font … And I confess that I did vehemently desire, being seduced by heretical factious fellows who go in sheep's clothing but are naught but ravening wolves, to see the utter ruin and subversion of all Church and State government, which too many in these times have desired, as the late unhappy differences can testify.
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- Literature, Gender and Politics During the English Civil War , pp. 163 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005