Yet to this mean-looking
memorial of our faith is attached an eventful story, at which
"The sad might laugh; the merry weep."
It is a tale of which our brief limits will only allow a rapid sketch.
This we have thrown together in the dramatic and narrative form, a
combination more calculated than any other, we believe, to awaken
attention, and bring forth the subject before the mind with truth and
distinctness.
One stormy night, in the autumn of the year 1324, mine host of the Merry
Maypole, a tavern of great resort by the market-cross in the good
borough of Wigan, was awakened from a laborious slumber. The door which
opened into a low porch projecting from the thatch, was shaken with a
vehemence that threatened some fearful catastrophe. Giles, no longer
able to endure these thundering appeals to his hospitality, desired his
wife to ascertain the cause of the disturbance.
"Gramercy! An' I be to unlatch for every graceless unthrift that chooses
to pummel at Giles Dauber's wicket, I shall have but sorry bedding wi'
an old husband."
"Old, quotha!--Old! I tell thee, dame, that I'm less by a good score of
winters than Dan o' the higher Wient, when he wed old Simon's
daughter.
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