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"This was the very place he chose,
Just where these four roads met;
And I was one among the throng
That hither follow'd them along,

I shall never the sight forget!

"They carried her

upon a

board

In the clothes in which she died;

I saw the cap blow off her head,

Her face was of a dark dark red,
Her eyes were starting wide:

"I think they could not have been closed,

So widely did they strain.

I never saw a ghastlier sight,

And it often made me wake at night,

For I saw it in dreams again.

66

They laid her here where four roads meet, Beneath this very place.

The earth upon her corpse was prest,

The stake is driven into her breast,

And a stone is on her face."

1798.

GOD'S JUDGMENT ON A BISHOP.

Here followeth the History of HATTO, Archbichop of Mentz.

It hapned in the year 914, that there was an exceeding great famine in Germany, at what time Otho surnamed the Great was Emperor, and one Hatto, once Abbot of Fulda, was Archbishop of Mentz, of the Bishops after Crescens and Crescentius the two and thirtieth, of the Archbishops after St. Bonafacius the thirteenth. This Hatto in the time of this great famine afore-mentioned, when he saw the poor people of the country exceedingly oppressed with famine, assembled a great company of them together into a Barne, and, like a most accursed and mercilesse caitiffe, burnt up those poor innocent souls, that were so far from doubting any such matter, that they rather hoped to receive some comfort and relief at his hands. The reason that moved the prelat to commit that execrable impiety was, because he thought the famine would the sooner cease, if those unprofitable beggars that consumed more bread than they were worthy to eat, were dispatched out of the world. For he said that those poor folks were like to Mice, that were good for nothing but to devour corne. But God Almighty, the just avenger of the poor folks quarrel, did not long suffer this

hainous tyranny, this most detestable fact, unpunished. For he mustered up an army of Mice against the Archbishop, and sent them to persecute him as his furious Alastors, so that they afflicted him both day and night, and would not suffer him to take his rest in any place. Whereupon the Prelate thinking that he should be secure from the injury of Mice if he were in a certain tower, that standeth in the Rhine near to the towne, betook himself unto the said tower as to a safe refuge and sanctuary from his enemies, and locked himself in. But the innumerable troupes of Mice chased him continually very eagerly, and swumme unto him upon the top of the water to execute the just judgment of God, and so at last he was most miserably devoured by those sillie creatures; who pursued him with such bitter hostility, that it is recorded they scraped and knawed out his very name from the walls and tapistry wherein it was written, after they had so cruelly devoured his body. Wherefore the tower wherein he was eaten up by the Mice is shewn to this day, for a perpetual monument to all succeeding ages of the barbarous and inhuman tyranny of this impious Prelate, being situate in a little green Island in the midst of the Rhine near to the towne of Bing, and is commonly called in the German Tongue, the MowsE-TURN.

CORYAT'S Crudities, p. 571, 572.

Other Authors who record this tale say that the Bishop was

eaten by Rats.

THE summer and autumn had been so wet,
That in winter the corn was growing yet,

'Twas a piteous sight to see all around

The grain lie rotting on the ground.

Every day the starving poor

Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door,
For he had a plentiful last-year's store,
And all the neighbourhood could tell
His granaries were furnish'd well.

At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day
To quiet the poor without delay,

He bade them to his great Barn repair,

And they should have food for the winter there.

Rejoiced such tidings good to hear,
The poor folk flock'd from far and near;
The great Barn was full as it could hold
Of women and children, and young and old.

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