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Updated: June 10, 2025
On the left shoulder of my cloak there was embroidered in gold and coloured silks a little escocheon of arms; and with this, in my child-like way, my fingers hankered to play; but with threats that to me were dreadful, and not without sundry nips and pinches, and sly clouts, I was bidden to be still, and stir not from a certain stool apportioned to me in the great Withdrawing-room.
From the bed to the door that led into the cold outer room stretched the dark stove surrounded by pots and hanging clouts. Everything, including the absent Savely himself, was dirty, greasy, and smutty to the last degree, so that it was strange to see a woman's white neck and delicate skin in such surroundings.
They stripped me of the shirt and cloak that I was wearing, and gave me instead the tattered old clouts in which you now see me; then, towards nightfall, they reached the tilled lands of Ithaca, and there they bound me with a strong rope fast in the ship, while they went on shore to get supper by the sea side.
"Yes, you go about bullying old people who used to carry you in their arms and put dry clouts on you when you didn't know enough to ask.... Are you going to use your truncheon on me, too? Wouldn't you like to, Fredrik? Take your orders from the great folks, and then come yelping at us, because we aren't fine enough for you!"
There were nearly twenty of them, men and women, and amongst the rest was a man standing naked in a tub of water with two women stroking him down with clouts. He was a large fierce-looking fellow, and his body, on which the flame of the fire glittered, was nearly covered with red hair. I never saw such a sight.
And yet Mistress Stromer, of the Golden-Rose House, did differently; for when she took little Clare that was her own babe out of the water, and laid it on warm clouts on the swaddling board, she buried her face in the sweet, soft flesh, and kissed the whole of its little body all over, before and behind, from head to foot, as if it were all one sweet, rosy mouth; and they both laughed with hearty, loving merriment, as the mother pressed her lips against the babe's white, clean skin and trumpeted till the room rang, or clasped it, wrapped in napkins to her warm breast, as if she could hug it to death.
The poorest of the men wear clouts of banana leaf, and the women, when in danger of capture, don skirts of bark; but on most occasions we find the man wearing a colored cotton clout, above which is a bright belt of the same material, while for ceremonies he may add a short coat or jacket.
She preferred to let her subjects discover for themselves that the terrible Spaniard before whom the world trembled was but a colossus stuffed with clouts. Until Philip consented to tie the hands of the Holy Office she did not mean to prevent them from taking the law into their own hands. Now and then, if occasion required, Elizabeth herself would do a little privateering on her own account.
So streamed in these weaponed men till Ralph saw that it was a great host that was entering the Burg; and his heart rose within him, so warrior-like they were of men and array, though no big men of their bodies; and many of them bore signs of battle about them, both in the battering of their armour and the rending of their raiment, and the clouts tied about the wounds on their bodies.
Behind a swarm of half-stretched and loose-hanging clouts and canvas things, a lad sat on an overturned tub, his fair-haired curly head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, peering through a sort of lattice-work. Jaak sat down at the other side, on a bundle of maize, in just the same attitude, and looked too....
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