Moyst

[sabotabby]

Via toft_froggy comes this most excellent post: A Reformation-era "How Come?" book. There are no words. You just need to read it.

Choice excerpts:

Q. WHerefore is it that Bastard children are ordinarily more ingenious, and more couragious then the legitimate?

A. The cause is, that being conceived by stealth, the businesse is done with an affection more particular, and ardently searching those parts which cause the child to be much more accomplished, then those which are begot with an ordinary and common affection, and sometimes languishingly; and this is the cause wherefore the ancient Bastards, that the Poets called Hero's, or demy gods, have bin esteemed Sonnes of a god, and of a mortall woman, or of a Goddesse, and of a mortall man· because of their admirable, and above humane vertue, as Hercules, Achilles, Aeneas, Romulus, and others.

Q. How comes it that Eunuches are so extreamly moyst?

A. In that their seed which they cannot thrust out, or consume by naturall heat, so well as perfect men, spreads through all their bodies, and are moyst excessively, by which they have their cheeks blowne up, and their Paps great even as women.

Q. Wherefore is it that horses and many other kind of Animals, and even men themselves pisse for company·

174 A. It is by the Sympathy of the Animal spirits, or rather that the one thinkes of the other.

(Apparently back in the day it was men who went to the washroom in groups.)

Now I want to write a "How Come?" book for the modern era, filled with folk wisdom that is completely Mayde up on the Spott.