And much the worse I like it,
when their words walk so large toward the favour of the Turk's
sect, which they were ever wont to have in so great abomination, as
every true-minded Christian man--and Christian woman, too--must
have.
I am of such age as you see, and verily from as far as I can
remember, it hath been marked and often proved true, that when
children in Buda have fallen in a fancy by themselves to draw
together and in their playing make as it were corpses carried to
church, and sing after their childish fashion the tune of the
dirge, great death hath followed shortly thereafter. And twice or
thrice I can remember in my day when children in divers parts of
this realm have gathered themselves in sundry companies and made as
it were troops and battles. And after their battles in sport, in
which some children have yet taken great hurt, there hath fallen
true battle and deadly war indeed. These tokens were somewhat like
your example of the sea, since they are tokens going before, of
things that afterward follow, through some secret motion or
instinct of which the cause is unknown.
But, by St. Mary, cousin, these tokens like I much worse--these
tokens, I say, not of children's play nor of children's songs, but
old knaves' large open words, so boldly spoken in the favour of
Mahomet's sect in this realm of Hungary, which hath been ever
hitherto a very sure key of Christendom.
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