Humour, Wit, & Satire of the Seventeenth Century

SELDOME CLEANELY90

Reading edition

SELDOME CLEANELY⁹⁰

A merry new Ditty, wherein you may see, The tricke of a Huswife, in every degree. Then lend your attention while I doe unfold As pleasant a story as you have heard told.

To the Tune of Upon a Summers time.

[63.]Draw neere you Countrey Girles and lissen unto me, Ile tell you here a new conceit concerning Huswifery, concerning Huswifery. Three Aunts I had of late, good Huswifes all were they, But cruell death hath taken the best of them away, O the best &c— O this was one of my Aunts, the best of all the three, And surely though I say it myselfe a cleanly woman was she, a cleanly &c.

FINIS.

But "L. P.," whoever he was, entered thoroughly into the joke of the thing, and, when it was all over, wrote a book, teeming with quiet satire, which was published on 9th April 1652, called—

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · For tune, see Appendix.Note 2 · Rennet.Note 3 · Scent.Note 4 · ? Laurence Price.Note 5 · He published from 1641 to 1683.Note 6 · shee never used running.91 Note 7 · by the sent92 of the strayning clout.Note 8 · My Uncle carelesse was in wasting of his store, Which made my Aunt to have a care to looke about the more, to looke &c— When Winter tim Note 9 · London. Printed for John Wright junior,94 dwelling at the upper end of the Old Baily.Note 10 · Astrology (in the middle of the seventeenth century) was beginning to fall into disrepute, and Butler, in Hudibras, as well as Ben Jonson in