Transcribathon U. South Carolina
Before ‘Understanding the Medieval Book’, which will begin tomorrow, we were invited to participate in the Folger Library’s Transcribathon. For the past 4.5 hours, I’ve been transcribing an early modern (ca. 1630) miscellany in secretary hand on politics, death, and food, which features some very anti-Scottish sentiments.
Here’s what I have for page 38:
And nothing heer seemes more ugly to mee of them hearafter I will discourse as followeth I pray remember my service to my honorable majesty I would not wish to be king of Scotland only if were to make her queane I have sent you a breife description of this kingdome with the natural condition of the people For the country I cousell it is too good for them that inhabit it & to bad for others to bear the chore to conquere it, the ayre might be wholesome but for tthe stinking people that live in it & the ground might be made fruitful had they wit to manure it. Their beaste generally are al smal, women only excepted then which there are no greater in the worlde. There is greate store of foule, as foule houses foul. dishes pots foule linnen foul trenchers and napkins foul sheets and shirts, with which fort of foul we had like to have been famished as the children of trad were with the fowle in the wilderness they have great score of fish too & good for them that can eat them raw, but if they once come into their hands they are as good as 3 dayes old, for the butter and cheese I will not medle with it nor any man else that loves his life. They have also great score of deare but they are so far from the places I have been of, that I had rather believe it then to goe to disprove it I confesse al the deare I met with was deare lodging deare horsemeat dear tobacco and English deare. As for fruit for their grand... ... sake they never planted any, for other trees had Christ been betrayed in ... country ... doubled he should have been had he come as as stranger a mong them Judas had sooner found the grace of repentance than a tree to hang himself. They have many ... in which they tel me ... much ... but they shew none of it. Nature hath only discovered unto shame form mines of Coales to shew to what end she created them. I saw but ... grasse, same only in pottage, and no fl... thistle was not given them for naught page break
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