188 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



Pisc. Why, you shall take up that ; for I am certain, by view- 

 ing the line, it has a fish at it. Look you, Scholar : well done. 

 Come now, take up the other too : well, now you may tell my 

 brother Peter at night, that you have caught a leash of trouts this 

 day. And now let us move toward our lodging, and drink a 

 draught of red-cow's milk* as we go, and give pretty Maudlin 

 and her honest mother a brace of trouts for their supper. 



Ven. Master, I like your motion very well ; and I think it is 

 now about milking-time, and yonder they be at it. 



Pisc. God speed you, good woman : I thank you both for our 

 songs last night : I and my companion have had such fortune a 

 fishing this day, that we resolve to give you and Maudlin a 

 brace of trouts for supper, and we will now taste a draught of 

 your red-cow's milk. 



MiLK-W. Marry and that you shall with all my heart ; and 

 I will be still your debtor when you come this way : if you will 

 but speak the word, I will make you a good syllabub of new 

 verjuice, and then you may sit down in a hay-cock and eat it, 

 and Maudlin shall sit by and sing you the good old song of the 

 Hunting in Chevy Chase, or some other good ballad, for she 

 hath good store of them : Maudlin, my honest Maudlin, hath a 



* Since my former note on " Red-cow's milk," a friend has pointed 

 out a passage in an old work which shows the estimation in which it 

 was held : " If asses' milk cannot be conveniently obtained for the lung 

 consumption, nor women's milk for the liver consumption, use the milk 

 of a meetly reddish cow, feeding in fine leaze (wherein store of cowslaps, 

 trifoil, cingfoil, elacampana, burnet, fillipendula, meadtansy, horse-tail, 

 plantain, lamb's tongue, scabiouse and lungwort groweth) ; or on the 

 sweetest hay ; but beware (as commonly fools do not) that you feed them 

 not with new, and mucli less with soure grains ; for it maketh their milk 

 strong, windy and unwholesome, especially for such as be weak or much 

 consumed ; likewise remember to rub and stroke down your cow every 

 morning, and her milk will be both sweeter and more nourishing." 

 Health's Improvement, or Rules Emprizing and Discovering the JVatnre, 

 Method, and Manyier of Preparing all Sorts of Food used in this JVation. 

 Written by that ever famous Thomas Muffett, Doctor in Physick ; Cor- 

 rected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Doctor in Physich, and Fel- 

 low of the College of Physicians in London. London, 1655, p. 127. — 

 Am. Ed. 



