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I would have gone in my grave-clothes sooner than not go at all, and belike he knew it. I began arraying myself sullenly and clumsily in the murrain petticoats. There was a full kirtle of gray wool, falling to my ankles, and a white apron. There was a white blouse with a wide, turned-back collar, and a scarlet bodice, laced with black cords over a green tongue.
The nation was disgusted to see maladministration grow worse and worse; the nobles were indignant at the ever-increasing sway of the foreigners; and several years of bad harvests, high prices, rain, flood, and murrain sharpened the chronic misery of the poor.
“Nay, by my halidome, but I shall this day do my devoir right worthily upon the body of yon false knight,” quoth Westby, as he carefully turned his shirt right side out. “A murrain on thee! Beshrew me if I do not spit thee upon my trusty lance,” replied Collingwood, as he drew on his swimming tights.
Murcia had her temple on Mount Aventine. From abeo, to go away; and adeo, to come. The festival of this goddess was in September, when the Romans drank new wine mixed with old, by way of physic. From vitulo, to leap or advance. From voluptas, pleasure. In a great murrain which destroyed their cattle, the Romans invoked this goddess, and she removed the plague. The image was a head without a body.
Of what nature this murrain may have been, can no more be determined, than whether it originated from communication with plague patients, or from other causes; but thus much is certain, that it did not break out until after the commencement of the Black Death.
A disease among cattle, called the murrain, then prevailed to a very great extent through that district of Yorkshire. The cattle were made to pass through the smoke raised by this miraculous fire, and their cure was looked upon as certain, and to neglect doing so was looked upon as wicked.
The fact was proclaimed by her loud rude cry, "A murrain on thee, thou ne'er-do-weel lad," together with a sounding box on the ear. "'Tis thine own greed, who dost not "
But this morning he was in a mood more becoming a man of business, and in the course of his ride along the Basset lanes, with their deep ruts, lying so far away from a market-town that the labor of drawing produce and manure was enough to take away the best part of the profits on such poor land as that parish was made of, he got up a due amount of irritation against Moss as a man without capital, who, if murrain and blight were abroad, was sure to have his share of them, and who, the more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in.
The unwonted agitation of her voice attracted the attention of the refractory steward, notwithstanding his present state of elevation; but he no sooner saw that her eye glistened, and her cheek reddened, than his obstinacy was at once subdued. "A murrain on me," he said, "but I have made my lady angry in good earnest! and that is an unwonted sight for to see. I crave your pardon, my lady!
"I have lived long enough in courts, old Amyas, without a murrain on you, to have found out, first, that it is not so easy to shame the devil; and secondly, that it is better to outwit him; and the only way to do that, sweet chuck, is very often not to speak your mind at all.
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