Jebediah returned past midnight to the carriage, bright-eyed and bedraggled. He smelt of the marsh and by some ingenuity had contrived to construct a pair of lichen eyebrows to adorn his brow. Experience has taught me to refrain from enquiring about such matters, and so it was with some considerable relief that we wended our way homewards through the dark night lanes of Norfolk. No matter how queer the gallopings of the artist may appear to us clod-footed trundlers, we must, nonetheless, trust to their conspectuity!
Back in the city, I am sitting in my study composing this in the dead of night , as, alas, I find sleep is not a butterfly that landeth on this withered flower. In the flickering candlelight the baboon skull gifted me by Tobias Irnwin grins malevolently. Aside from the barkings of some stray curs Norwiche slumbers...
Tomorrow Dan Tangle will come a calling, for we are to go to the market place to view Billy Kipper Hands, the Yarmouth fish boy. I am mightily weary now...
© Cornelius Hump, Esq.
Return to main Ragged Ramblers' blog
© Cornelius Hump, Esq.
Return to main Ragged Ramblers' blog
A possible explanation may lie in "Homines Anasatie" by C Howye-Fartzon. Jebediah's unusual facial adornment may be the remnants of his pursuit of the sort of deplorable behaviour described therein, where young men in rural communities would sometimes disguise themselves as "wood spirits" in order to bedevil maidens, superstitiously fearful of refusal, into ante nupta voluptates corporis.
ReplyDeleteAs a city man, Hump was probably blissfully unaware of such dastardly deviousness, but one wonders as to the background of his unreliable companion.
Gregorious