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The fancy can hardly put such sweet ladies in the place of those nimble beldams, who hopped about there in the wind-swept street, plucking up their day's supply of firing from the involuntary bounty of the cart. Even the attempt is unseemly, and whether mine is at best but a feeble fancy, not bred to strenuous feats of any kind, it fails to bring them before me in that figure.
The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their rusty cloaks as he passed by; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to dread contamination; and many a stern old man arose, and turned his repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the sanctuary were polluted by his presence.
Harlequin's Invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys. The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory.
For in those daies the man was glad to be rid of them, if he could but get the lining untorn or indamaged; for he saw perfectly that the World was at that time so full of those pretty Beldams, that there was begun a most bloody War between the better sort of Gentlewomen, and the meaner degree of Women, for the gaining of the Breeches, wherein Ketels and Pans, Tongs and Fireshovels, Spinning-wheels, Brooms and Maps were all beaten out of fashion.
The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their rusty cloaks as he passed by; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to dread contamination; and many a stern old man arose, and turned his repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the sanctuary were polluted by his presence.
Now when the Boss of the Beldams found That without his leave they were ramping round, He called, they could hear him twenty miles, From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles; The deafest old granny knew his tone Without the trick of the telephone. "Come here, you witches!
The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their rusty cloaks as he passed by; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to dread contamination; and many a stern old man arose and turned his repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the sanctuary were polluted by his presence.
Hildebrand, addressing Hagen, then said that the hour would come when he would gladly accept the truce his lord offered, but Hagen in reply twitted Hildebrand with the manner in which he had fled from the hall. Dietrich interrupted them, saying that it ill beseemed heroes to scold like ancient beldams, and forbade Hildebrand to say more.
Learning from their questions that the inmates of the almshouse did not know her history, she refused to reveal it, thus awakening endless surmises. Many histories were made for her, the beldams vying with each other in constructing the worst one. Poor Alida soon learned that there was public opinion even in an almshouse, and that she was under its ban.
I saw another surrounded with a crowd of two sorts of women. Some were young, quaint, clever, neat, pretty, juicy, tight, brisk, buxom, proper, kind-hearted, and as right as my leg, to any man's thinking. The rest were old, weather-beaten, over-ridden, toothless, blear-eyed, tough, wrinkled, shrivelled, tawny, mouldy, phthisicky, decrepit hags, beldams, and walking carcasses.
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