_Eating Snakes a Charm for growing young._--I send you the following illustrations of this curious receipt for growing young. Perhaps some of your correspondents will furnish me with some others, and some additional light on the subject. Fuller says,--
"A gentlewoman told an ancient batchelour, who looked _very young_, that she thought _he had eaten a snake_: 'No, mistris,' (said he), 'it is because I never { 131} meddled with any snakes which maketh me look so young.'"--_Holy State_, 1642, p. 36.
He hath left off o' late to _feed on snakes_; His beard's turned white again.
"He is your loving brother, sir, and will tell nobody But all he meets, that you have eat a _snake_, And are grown young, gamesome, and rampant."
Mr. Cunningham, in his _Handbook of London_ (2nd edition, p. 540.), has the following passage, under the head of "Westminster Abbey:"
"_Observe._--Effigies in south cloister of several of the early abbots; large blue stone, uninscribed, (south cloister), marking the grave of Long Meg of Westminster, a noted virago of the reign of Henry VIII."
This amazon is often alluded to by our old writers. Her life was printed in 1582; and she was the heroine of a play noticed in Henslowe's _Diary_, under the date February 14, 1594. She also figured in a ballad entered on the Stationers' books in that year. In _Holland's Leaguer_, 1632, mention is made of a house kept by Long Meg in Southwark:--
"It was out of the citie, yet in the view of the citie, only divided by a delicate river: there was many handsome buildings, and many hearty neighbours, yet at the first foundation it was renowned for nothing so much as for the memory of that famous amazon _Longa Margarita_, who had there for many yeeres kept a famous _infamous_ house of open hospitality."
According to Vaughan's _Golden Grove_, 1608,--
"Long Meg of Westminster kept alwaies twenty courtizans in her house, whom, by their pictures, she sold to all commers."
From these extracts the occupation of Long Meg may be readily guessed at. Is it then likely that such a detestable character would have been buried amongst "goodly friars" and "holy abbots" in the cloisters of our venerable abbey? I think not: but I leave considerable doubts as to whether Meg was a real personage.--Query. Is she not akin to Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Doctor Rat, and a host of others of the same type?