PRO ME
Ancestry: Toward the stock, stem, vine, clew, cable and navelstring of my pedigree Saturn’s scythe hath been so blunted that I can iluct its labyrintheon through innumerable changes of monarchy and estate among the Regal Houses of Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, Gallicia, Murcia, Andaluzia, Granada, Carthage, Egypt, Amazonia, Greece and Israel, back to Adam surnamed the Protoplast, who was quintessence of that red earth created in time, of nothing, by the word of TRIUN JEHOVUS the ETERNAL FATHER, SON AND GHOSTLIE MINERVA. AMEN. CONTRA ME
Ancestry: Though verboradically demonstrable, the middle part of my geneology lacks inscriptory provenance, and will be doubted by pedant sciolasts and fidimplicatary gownsmen who can neither admit the eductions of informed inspiration, nor comprehend the congruency of the syllabic with the Sibylene. PRO ME
Rank: I am Knight of Bray and Udol, Baron of Fichterie and Clohorby, Laird Baron Cromartie and Heritable High Sheriff thereof, having Admiralty of the seas betwixt Catness and Innernasse, and therefore Jehovus Depute (under the Steward Crown) in that part of Brittain autochthonously colonized by oriental polistactical patricians and their followers, which is why so many towns, castles, churches, fountains, rivers, nasses, bays, harbours, and the like, have from my family name received their denomination, and why the shire of Cromartie alone, of all the places of the Isle of Brittain, hath the names of its towns, villages, hamlets, dwellings, promontaries, hillocks, temples, dens, groves, fountains, rivers, pools, lakes, stone heaps, akers and so forth, of pure and perfect Greek. CONTRA ME
Rank: Nothing.
PRO ME
Frame: In portliness of garb, comeliness of face, sweetness of countenance, majesty of very chevelure, with goodliness of frame, proportion of limbs and symmetry betwixt all the parts and joints of my body, I am heroical in the mould of, not Hercules, Ganimed. CONTRA ME
Frame: Nothing. PRO ME
Nature: Jovial, yet Saturnine, my venereal fervour (for the better ingendering of brain-babes) chastened by Diana, inharmonied by Apollo, promoted with Martial vigour, ripened through Minerval cogency and quickened by Mercurial urgency, though this last only in learning and combat, since I lack all lust to transmute baseness into coyn of any metal. CONTRA ME
Nature: Nothing. PRO ME
Home: This noble mansion-fort, the stance whereof is statelie, the tower of notable good fabrick and contrivance. CONTRA ME
Home: The windows lack glass. PRO ME
Library: Not three books therein but are of my own purchase, and all of them together (in the order wherein I will rank them) compiled like a compleat nosegay of flowers, which in my travels I gathered out of the gardens of sixteen several different kingdoms. CONTRA ME
Library: Still unpacked. PRO ME
Estate: Lands in the shires of Cromartie and Aberdeen yeelding a thousand pounds Sterling of rent, with many especial royalties, privileges and immunities, preserved from the days of Nomoster in the 389th epoch before Christ, untill the perfect age and majority of my father, who received it without any burthen of debt, or provision of brother or sister or other kindred alliance to affect it, whereunto was then added, by his father-in-law Lord Elphingstone, the then High Treasurer of Scotland, my mother, Lady Christian, with whom he received no inconsiderable fortune. Also the patronage of the parriches of Kirkmichel, Cromartie and Cullicuden. CONTRA ME
Estate: Twelve or thirteen thousand pounds Sterling of debt, five brethren all men and two marriageable sisters to support, and less to defray all this by six hundred pounds Sterling a year, in a time of frantic anticivilian warres and garboyles, than my father inherited for nothing, in a peaceful age, to maintain himself alone. Meantime the Church Commission maintain in my kirks three cutpurse Mammoniferous ministers of their own make who, loathing my loyaltie to the Episcopal liturge, demand for their tythes a fifth of the rent of the land, and combinate in synods and concils with creditors and neighbours to put upon me alone the charge of garrisoning troops in this district, thereby intending to inchaos the structure of ancient greatness into the very rubbish of a neophitic parity.
PRO ME
Tenandrie: All are descended (as they themselves avouch) from pregenitors who accompanied my ancestors Alypos, Belistos, Nomostor, Astioremon and Lutork in their borignarie acquest of the land, receiving from these such good yeoman leases for the digging and manuring of it that they very suddenly took deep root therein, and bequeathed to their children the hereditary obedience owed to their masters. Each hamlet by that means having its own Clan, as we call it, or name of kindred, none will from that portion of land bouge, any inter-flitting between coterminal parrishes being as mutually displeasing to them as an extrusive exile to the Barbadoes or to Malagask. I have farmers who dwell in the selfsame house inhabited by their ancestors from dad to brat, sire to suckling, above nine hundred years together and though none can read, they nevertheless exchange discourse with any concerning the heathenish deities of the Grecolatin Pantheon, whose temples, delubres and fanes, of a circularie, oval, triangulary or square figure, my own forefathers erected in groves and high places before the time of Christ, the stones whereof may still be ascribed to Jove, juno, Palas, Apollo &cetera by the eye of the intelligible Mythologist.
CONTRA ME
Tenandrie: These much plundered and rouped of goods, gear and rents by the soldiery without hope of redress; while their Kir-komanatickal presbyterian pastors vilipend, pester and flite them for tenaciously clinging to their frets of old, which often send them at set times to fountains, oak-trees, little round hillocks and stone-heaps where, with preconceived words and motions, they worship in accordance with the poetical liturgies of Hesiod, Theocritus and Ovid; And my ministers demand that I magisterially prohibit and persecute these practices as things of charm, fascination, inchantment or infernal assistance! There is a silly old wife who, for doing some pretty feats wherein she has been instructed by her mother, according to a prescript set down in some verses of Homer, whom neither had the skill to use, is accused of witchcraft by one who, being a professor of the Greek, whipt a boy for not getting these verses by heart: as if it were a duty for him to study what is felonie for others to enact. Being resolved to conduct myself by the light of reason, I openly acquit many of both sexes whom flagitory zealots accuse of incubation, succubation and peragration with fairies and am forthwith reputed an obstinate assertor of erroneous doctrine. Even as a raw youth I would not without examination trust to aged men in matters contrary to commonsense and experience, for I caused brought to my father’s house one of either sex that were supposed rivals in diabolical venerie, the male with the succub, the female with the incub. The young man was two-and-twenty years old, very bashfull, yet prone to lasciviousness, and a handsome youth; she was some five-and-twentie, nothing so pleasant as he, and had it not been for a little modesty that restrained her, a very sink of lust. All this I perceived at first view, and after I had spoken kindly with them in generals, I entreated them with all gentilnesse possible, to tell me freely whether it was so or not, as it was reported of them; and their answer was (for they were not suspicious of any harm from me) that it was true enough; whereat I straight conceived that they had a crack in their imagination. The better to try an experiment thereon, I commanded to be given unto each of them an insomniatorie and exoniretick potion, for stirring up a libidinous fancie; I also directed one of my footboys to attend the woman with all possible respect and outward shew of affection; the like I required of one of my mother’s chambermaids to be done in behalf of the young man. Which injunctions of mine were by these two servants with such dexterity prosecuted, that the day after each of their night’s repose with these two hypochondriacks, when I called for them, and, after I had fairly insinuated myself into their mind by a smooth discourse, asked whether that night they had in their bodies felt any carnal application of the fowl spirit, or if they did, in what likeness they received him? To this both made reply that of all the nights they had ever enjoyed, it was that night respectively wherein the spirit was most intirely communicative in feats of dalliance, and that he acted in the guise of the boy and chambermaid whom I had appointed to await on them as they went to bed. This confirmed me in my former opinion, which certainly increased when I heard a short time after, that the imagination of two had become a regular fornication of four; by which (though I caused to punish them all) the fantasists were totally cured, who afterwards becoming yoke mates in wedlock to the two servants of our house, were in all times coming sound enough in fancie, and never more disquieted by diabolical apprehensions.