The following passage is from chapter 8, entitled ”Moone men: A discovery of a strange wild people, very dangerous to townes and country villages,” in Lanthorne and Candle-light. Or, The Bell-Man’s second Nights-walke, In which He brings to light, a Brood of more strange Villanies then ever were till this yeare discovered by Thomas Dekker (2nd ed., newly corrected and amended, London: Printed for John Busby, 1609). I don’t have any reason for posting this, except that I find the passage pleasantly dreamy and outrageous like so many other old, forgotten cultural objects now strictly out of keeping with the modern age in which we seem to live.
”A Moone-man signifies in English, a mad-man, because the Moone hath greatest domination (above any other Planet) over the bodies of Frantick persons. But these Moone-men (whose Images are now to be carved) are neither absolutely mad, not yet perfectely in their wits). Their name they borrow from the Moone, because as the Moone is never in one shape two nights together, but wanders up and downe Heaven, like an Anticke, so these changeable-stuffe-companions never tary one day in a place, but are the onely, and the onely base Ronnagats* upon earth. And as in the Moone there is a man, that never stirres without a bush of thornes at his backe, so these Moone-men lie under bushes, and are indeed no better then Hedge creepers.
”They are a people more scattred then Jewes, and more hated: beggerly in apparell, barbarous in condition, beastly in behavior: and bloudy if they meete advantage. A man that sees them would sweare they hav all the yellow Jawndis, or that they were Tawny Moores bastardes, for no Red-oaker man caries a face of a more filthy complexion, yet are they not borne so, neither has the Sunne burnt them so, but they are painted so, yet they are not good painters neither: for they do not make faces, but marre faces. By a byname they are called Gipsies, they call themselves Egiptians, others in mockery call them Moone-men.”
*Ronnagats: A variant spelling for “renegades,” I think.
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