The Badianus Manuscript: America's oldest Herbal

The Spanish conquest of Mexico happened so fast that nobody had time to think about what sort of regime or society would emerge afterwards. It would be Catholic, of course, but other than that the Spanish did not agree about anything, and the native aristocracy remained powerful enough for decades to exert their own views.

Church of Santa Cruz, only surviving remnant of the college

The College of Santa Cruz, founded by the Franciscans in Mexico City in 1536, is a good case of how these conflicts played out. The purpose of the college was to train Aztecs from elite families to be Catholic priests. The college had two Spanish Franciscans as teachers, aided by a native assistant, and several dozen sons of elite Aztec families attended. They were taught Spanish, Latin, theology, and "grammar," that is, the basics of Latin literature and composition. But other forces, led by the Dominicans, opposed this whole plan; they kept the school from ever receiving adequate funding and in 1555 banned any native from becoming a priest. By then, our sources say, the school was already a ruin. During its brief life, however, the school did manage to train dozens of Aztec men. One of its instructors was Bernardino de Sahagún, who published several books on the Aztecs and the Nahuatl language and also the famous General History of the Indies, an immense project on which he was helped by students at Santa Cruz.

One of the most notable graduates of Santa Cruz was Martin de la Cruz. De la Cruz wrote, in Nahualt, the manuscript that was then translated into Latin by Juan Badiano as Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, the first work to document Native American knowledge of plants. Badiano's autograph copy ended up in the Vatican Library, where it languished in obscurity for 400 years. The Vatican Library was infamous until recent times for its habit of hiding important, potentially controversial books under boring titles that nobody would ever ask for, and then sometimes of being unable to find them if they were asked for. Anyway hardly anyone had read this book until 1929 when an American named Charles Clark arrived from the Smithsonian searching for early Latin American manuscripts. With backing from Vice President and Smithsonian board member Charles Dawes, Clark was able to get the Vatican to let him photograph and then publish the manuscript, something almost unheard of in those days.

The Spanish were very interested in Native plants and their properties. In the letter Cortes wrote to Emperor Charles V describing his conquest of Mexico, he mentioned that the market district of Tenochitlan included "a street of herb sellers where there are all manner of roots and medicinal plants that are found in the land. There are houses as it were of apothecaries where they sell medicines made from those herbs both for drinking and for use as ointments and salves." Valuable plants were one of the things Europeans were seeking around the world, and of course cacao, tobacco, corn, potatoes, hot peppers, and other American plants ended up being worth many times more than all the gold in the world.

So plant lore was big business in 1552, when someone got de la Cruz to write this manuscript and then paid Badiano to translate it. The Latin version was written on fine parchment and bound in velvet. It is one of the purest sources for Aztec thinking about the natural world, written by a knowledgeable native in his own language.

Cacao

It describes, among many other things, giving patients hypnotic preparations of datura before surgery, which is pretty much what was done to me when they operated on my wrist. Plants are listed for treating bleeding, skin rashes, headaches, colds, wounds, and so on, including those great stables of pre-modern medicine, laxatives and purgatives. Some of these plants are still used by folk healers in Mexico for the same purposes described by de la Cruz, showing strong continuity within the oral culture.

Anyway I can't recall having heard of this manuscript or its authors until this week, and I got excited about it and wanted to share.

Which Trees Can I Burn?

Old Irish poem from Egerton 1782, a famous manuscript written around 1517 that includes much ancient material. Here the King of the Little People explains to Fergus which trees should be burned:

The pliant honeysuckle if thou burn, wailings for misfortune will abound,
Dire extremity at weapons’ points or drowning in great waves will follow.

Burn not the precious apple tree of spreading and low-sweeping bough;
Tree ever decked in bloom of white, against whose fair head all men put forth the hand.

The surly blackthorn is a wanderer, a wood that the artificer burns not;
Throughout his body, though it be scanty, birds in their flocks warble.

The noble willow burn not, a tree sacred to poems;
Within his blooms bees are a-sucking, all love the little cage.

The graceful tree with the berries, the wizard’s tree, the rowan burn;
But spare the limber tree; burn not the slender hazel.

Dark is the colour of ash; timber that makes the wheels to go;
Rods he furnishes for horsemen’s hands, his form turns battle into flight.

Tenterhook among woods the spiteful briar is, burn him that is so keen and green;
He cuts, he flays the foot, him that would advance he forcibly drags backward.

Fiercest heat-giver of all timber is green oak, from him non may escape unhurt;
By partiality for him the head is set on aching, and by his acrid embers the eye is made sore.

Alder, very battle-witch of all woods, tree that is hottest in the fight–
Undoubtedly burn at thy discretion both the alder and whitethorn.

Holly, burn it green; holly, burn it dry;
Of all trees whatsoever the critically best is holly.

Elder that hath tough bark, tree that in truth hurts sore;
Him that furnishes horses to the armies from the sidh (fairies) burn so that he be charred.

The birch as well, if he be laid low, promises abiding fortune;
Burn up most sure and certainly the stakes that bear the constant pods.

Put on the hearth if it so please thee, the russet aspen to come headlong down;
Burn, be it late or early, the tree with the palsied branch.

Patriarch of long-lasting woods is the yew sacred to feasts as it is well known;
Of him now build ye dark-red vats of goodly size.

–Translated from Irish by Standish O’Grady

Troy Town

There are in England about a dozen turf mazes called Troy Towns. The name goes back in England to Renaissance times, when building these was in vogue.

They mostly follow this particular shape of labyrinth, rather than the round or square kind.

Which is interesting because most of the known medieval labyrinths in England and France are round, like this 15th-century ceiling boss in St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol.

The Renaissance labyrinths follow instead a version well known in the ancient world, as on this Hellenistic coin; the head is Apollo, a god sometimes associated with labyrinths, especially in connection with his birth on Delos.

The name Troy Town may also be ancient; the text written across the labyrinth symbol on this Etruscan win jar, dating to around 600 BC, seems to spell out TRUIA, which people think might mean Troy; at least, nobody seems to have any other suggestions. There was also a Roman equestrian event called the Troy Game, which people think involved riding in a labyrinth-like pattern, but this is pretty obscure. I have not found any source which says how the name "Troy Town" might have been passed down, despite the immense effort put into the question by mystically-minded scholars, professional and amateur. It seems to appear in no medieval source. So if the name is classical as well as the image, nobody seems to know how it was preserved.

The image is certainly ancient, going back to the pre-Roman iron age, and widespread; this is the Hollywood Stone from Ireland, dated to around 550 AD.

As to what it means, I think our Etruscan wine jar might be a clue; this is some kind of fertility symbol, probably because it makes the ancient, very widespread symbol of the labyrinth look like a woman's private parts.

To me the weirdest thing about this sort of labyrinth is that there are still hundreds in the world, almost all of them in Germanic northern Europe. Sweden, in particular, has more than 200. They have two traditional uses. In one version couples who are dating, or about to be married, or actually on their wedding day, walk the maze hand in hand while trying not to step off the path or let go of each other, success being some kind of good omen. Which makes sense with the ancient tradition.

But there is another tradition, which seems to be at least 200 years old, which I will let wikipedia explain:

There were once many hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of these labyrinths around the Baltic Sea, throughout Fennoscandia and the Baltic countries, and many of them still survive, particularly in remote areas. There are also similar stone labyrinths in the Kola Peninsula and coasts and islands of the White Sea, such as Stone labyrinths of Bolshoi Zayatsky Island. For some reason these northern labyrinths are almost all close to the sea. Some have suggested that they were markings of seafarers, perhaps even used for navigation. Many of the stone labyrinths around the Baltic coast of Sweden were built by fishermen during rough weather and were believed to entrap evil spirits, the "smågubbar" or "little people" who brought bad luck. The fishermen would walk to the centre of the labyrinth, enticing the spirits to follow them, and then run out and put to sea.

Weird. Incidentally these are also called Troy Towns in Swedish, and again nobody can say where the name came from.

So these are a fun distraction, a bit of modern mystery with very ancient mystical associations.

Castello di Vincigliata

Having fun on the internet last night I stumbled across a photograph of the Castello di Vincigliata. I thought, hey, that's cool, I wonder if it's real? That turned out to be a complicated and interesting question. The castello is in Tuscany, near the village of Fiesole.

These days the castle's web site promotes it as

one of the most romantic and beautiful wedding venues, only a few km from the centre of Florence. Plunged among the rolling Tuscan hills, it is the ideal place for celebrating your special day.

So, you know, if you were thinking of getting married in Tuscany, give them a call. Just out of curiosity, would you find out for me how much it costs?

The castle's own web site reveals that this is no pristine medieval construction. As they put it,

In 1840 Sir John Temple leader was exploring the hill of Fiesole,when he came upon the overgrown ruin of a medieval castle. He instantly fell in love with it and decided to restore it to its former glory. Of the many stories he uncovered, Sir John especially coveted the one about Donna Bianca.

Sir John decided that Vincigliata was a perfect place to host his many noble friends. With the help of a young architect Fancelli, he started the daunting task of restoration. In pure spirit of renaissance patronage, he commissioned 80 masons, artisans, sculptors, glassmakers and antiquarians and with their help, Vincigliata was reborn after 10 years of work.

So this was really built in the 1840s. But how extensive were those ruins that started Sir John dreaming? Wikipedia tells us that  under Temple's ownership the castle was "entirely reconstructed in the feudal style."

These two drawings are the only records I have found of what was here when Sir John's builders set to work. They are enough, though, to show that quite a bit remained, so this is far from a complete fantasy. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc did some of his "restorations" with less. So who built the castle that Sir John found in ruins?

According, again, to the castle web site, there has been a noble residence on this spot since at least 1031. And that's pretty much all the castle's web site has to say about the site's early history. I did track down one halfway learned source, a brief article in Italian, which confirms that there was a medieval house here. In fact there is an estate inventory of 1335 that describes the place as

medietas pro indiviso cuiusdam resedii cum turre, curte, giardino, terra laborativa, puteo, e arboribus positum in populi Sancte Marie de Vincigliata comitatis Florentiae, loco dicto ala torre

That is, a house with tower, wall, garden, fields, well, and woods in the parish of St. Mary de Vincigliata in the county of Florence. So there was something fairly impressive here by 1335. However, our author (Alessandro Rinaldi) does not think that describes our house. He seems to think that whatever was there before was mostly swept away after 1365, when the property fell into the hands of the Alessandri family.

The Alessandri family were Florentine aristocrats, a wealthy clan that produced numerous senators and the like in the 1300s and 1400s. One of their town houses, the Palazzo Allessandri, still stands

and they once owned a famous piece of furniture, the Alessandri Table. They show up among the patrons of various Florentine artists, and Vassari says that one of their infants was the model for a famous baby Jesus. Anyway, they were rich and stylish.

Photo from a set posted by one of my favorite bloggers, Vertigo 1871

They were not, however, soldiers. Or knights. They were merchants. Of course like most rich merchants of that era they spent some of their profits buying land, both as a safe investment and by way of elbowing their way into the old aristocracy. And what did you, a merchant trying to pass as a nobleman, build on the country estate with the money you made in banking or trade? Why, a castle!

Like this one, described in a will of 1429 as "a Lordly palace with battlements and subterranean vaults, with an outer wall." Our man Rinaldi calls this new structure

an eloquent expression of the neo-feudal aspirations and mentality of the Florentine aristocracy of the 15th century.

It just tickles me that our nineteenth-century English romantic, full of neo-feudal aspirations, rebuilding a castle as a place to entertain and impress his friends, was following so closely in the footsteps of the fifteenth-century Alessandri, who were also building a sort of lark instead of a fortress.

And Donna Bianca? She was a young woman of the house who was loved by two brothers. Like a proper folk tale heroine, she chose to marry the younger. She was sitting at the tower window on her wedding morning, waiting for her betrothed to arrive, when she saw him coming down the road. Just before he reached the gate his older brother and two other men leaped from behind trees and killed him before her eyes. Of course, she leaped to her death.

Skeletons in the Foundation

Archaeologists exploring the oldest foundations of Břeclav Castle in the Czech Republic found something interesting.

Three bodies, all obviously buried within the foundations when they were built in the 11th century. From the position of the skeletons the excavators thought they had been tied together. They were placed on top of the first layer of stones at the bottom of the wall, a careful placement that pretty much rules out an accident.

This habit of burying sacrificial victims in new building foundations was common around the world for thousands of years. But I wonder, how was it preserved in Moravia into the 11th century? The area had been Christian for at least 200 years, and the builder, Duke Bretislav I of Bohemia, was a champion of the church who had saints in his family. Who passed on this tradition, and how? And what else were they passing along?

And who were the victims? War captives? Criminals?

Weird and fascinating. Via The History Blog.

Children of the Spanish Flu

Fascinating piece by Alex Tabarrok, following up on some work by Douglas Almond, about the impact on the 1918-1919 flu pandemic on the future lives of people who were in utero when the flu struck:

Fetal health is found to affect nearly every socioeconomic outcome recorded in the 1960, 1970, and 1980 Censuses. Men and women show large and discontinuous reductions in educational attainment if they had been in utero during the pandemic. The children of infected mothers were up to 15 percent less likely to graduate from high school. Wages of men were 5–9 percent lower because of infection. Socioeconomic status…was substantially reduced, and the likelihood of being poor rose as much as 15 percent compared with other cohorts. Public entitlement spending was also increased.

This makes me think of all the folklore surrounding pregnant women and what they shouldn't see or experience, you know, that it will damage the baby if the mother experiences a severe fright. Maybe they derive from experience with disease, remembering that most people have had no clear way of separating infection from other kinds of harm.

I also wonder about the impact on whole populations where conditions like severe intestinal parasites were endemic.

Krishna Killing a Demon with a Cow

Oh, the great deeds of mighty heroes. From India, c. 1800. In the Wellcome Collection.

The Oseberg Tapestries

In about 834 CE, a Viking queen was buried in Norway. She was laid to rest with an astonishing array of goods, including the amazingly beautiful ship, four carved animal-head posts, three beds, a cart or wagon, and much more. The femininity of the queen was acknowledged with a huge array of objects related to womens' work: several looms and a whole suite of tools for working cloth, from shears to spindles to needles.

One end of the cart was decorated with cats, sacred to the goddess Freya.

And what I want to write about today, an amazing array of textiles. The textiles included everything from raw materials – skeins of thread, bundles of silk ribbon – to complete and highly elaborate tapestries. Some of the material had almost completely disappeared, especially that woven of flax. But some survived well enough that we can puzzle out what it depicts. Note that I am interested in what these tapestries depict; if you want to read about how they were made, see here.

More than 900 fragments were recovered from the burial. These images are watercolors by Sofie Kraft, who drew and painted many of the fragments in the 1910s.

The central character here is usually interpreted as a human in bird costume.

This one includes two famous figures, The Horned Man with Crossed Spears Confronts the Man in a Bear Skin.

Wagon.

Besides all these fragments, substantial parts were found of two large tapestries. One is called The Wagon Procession.

Many pieces survive, so the reproductions one sees all over the place (you can buy a replica in the museum gift shop) are fairly authentic. These paintings were done by Mary Storm in 1940. Notice the figure in the upper left of the top image wearing a horned helmet. So the next time somebody says to you, "Vikings never wore horned helmets!" casually mention that while the figure from the Oseberg tapestries is thought to represent Odin, it is wearing a horned helmet.

Then there is this work.

It is thought to depict a sacrificial tree, hung with corpses, as in this interpretation. Notice that the tops of the large branches have been carved into horses' heads; does that make the tree a representation of the world tree Yggdrasil, Odin's Steed? Adam of Bremen's chronicle describes something like this practice:

It is customary also to solemnize in Uppsala, at nine-year intervals, a general feast of all the provinces of Sweden. From attendance at this festival no one is exempted Kings and people all and singly send their gifts to Uppsala and, what is more distressing than any kind of punishment, those who have already adopted Christianity redeem themselves through these ceremonies. The sacrifice is of this nature: of every living thing that is male, they offer nine heads with the blood of which it is customary to placate gods of this sort. The bodies they hang in the sacred grove that adjoins the temple. Now this grove is so sacred in the eyes of the heathen that each and every tree in it is believed divine because of the death or putrefaction of the victims. Even dogs and horses hang there with men. A Christian told me that he had seen 72 bodies suspended promiscuously. Furthermore, the incantations customarily chanted in the ritual of a sacrifice of this kind are manifold and unseemly; therefore, it is better to keep silent about them.

The overall impression is that most of the works depict ritual scenes: processions of wagons, processions of costumed figures, stylized combats, sacrifices. Since the tapestries from this grave are most of those that survive from 9th-century Scandinavia, we don't know if this was the usual subject matter of Viking tapestries, or if it was considered appropriate for funerals, or if it was the particular taste of this queen. But they are a wonderful source for imagining Viking religious life.

Halloween 1596, or, the Trail of Janet Wishart

Aberdeen's market square, with the 1686 Mercat Cross

During the Scottish Witch Panic of 1597, more than 400 people were tried as witches, and more than a hundred executed. One of these was Janet Wishart of Aberdeen. I find her case fascinating, besides which it includes this wonderful Halloween story:

Janet's son, Thomas Leyis, was found guilty of being a ringleader and convicted on three accounts of witchcraft. He is said to have presided at a meeting held on Halloween at midnight in the Castlegate when many witches convened between the mercat and fish crosses 'under the conduct and guiding of the devil present with them'. These people all danced and played instruments about the crosses and Thomas was accused of being foremost amongst them and of hitting Kathren Mitchell 'because she spoilt the dance and ran not so fast as the rest'. 

This story introduces the theme, which is that the trial of Janet and the other Wisharts connects much  more with the literature and theory of witchcraft than any other British case I know. Tales of witches frolicking on Halloween or other special nights abound in the stories but are rare in the trial transcripts.

Modern scholars have been very interested in why most victims of the witch trials were women, and one of their theories has been that the patriarchy used such accusations to control women and especially their sexually. Certainly some of the old books on witchcraft, especially the infamous Malleus Mallificarum, ooze disgust for women's bodies and women's desires. But again this is very rare in the trial transcripts, where after all the typical witch was an old woman, not a young, sexually active one. But Janet Wishart was a different sort of witch:

One of the earliest accusations referred to an incident in May 1572 when five men, three of them students, caught Janet creeping out of the yard of Adam Mair, her neighbour, at two o’clock in the morning. The men immediately woke Mair’s wife and told her what they had discovered. Furiously, Janet said, ‘Weill haif ye schemit me. I sail gar the best of yow repent’. Whereupon, that same day, between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, two of the youths were drowned in the Auld Wattergang in the Links, where they had gone to wash themselves.

The obvious interpretation of this is that the young men thought Janet was coming back from visiting her married lover, and when they informed the wronged wife Janet responded by cursing them in a way that killed two of them.

Brown dog from the Aberdeen Bestiary

And then this:

There is an air of novelty about the next case, that of John Allan, cutler, Janet Wishart's son-in-law. Quarrelling with his wife, he 'dang' her, 'whereupon Mistress Allan complained to her mother, who immediately betook herself to her son-in-law's house, 'bostit' him, and promised to gar him repent that ever he saw or kent her. Shortly afterwards, either she or the devil her master, in the likeness of a brown tyke [dog], came nightly for five or six weeks to his window, forced it open, leaped upon the said John, dang and buffeted him, while always sparing his wife, who lay in bed with him, so that the said John became half-wod and furious.' And this persecution continued, until he threatened to inform the ministry and kirk-session.

It's a bad idea to hit your wife when her mother is a powerful witch. In another case Janet was accused of sending a "nightmare cat" rather than a dog, with the same sleep-disturbing effect.

The source I am following rendered most of the trial transcript into something closer to modern English, but for this charge against one of Janet's daughters he also provided the original, which I provide since I know some of my readers are interested in the history of our language:

Fourlle thou art Indyttit for passing to the kirk of dyce and then gathe Ring of a numer of deid folkis banes, and seything thame in watter and tacking of That watter and therefter wasching willea[m] sy[m]mer in the haltoun of fyntrie (he Than being lyand deidlie seik) and therefter causing the said willia[m]is gude Mother tak the saids banes and cast thame in the watter of doyn, q[ui]lk Quhen sche had done, the watter ru[m]lit in sic a sort as all the hillis had fallin therin and this sich you can not deny

Fourthly you are indicted for passing to the Church of Dyce and there gathering a number of dead folk's bones and boiling them in water, and taking that water and thereafter washing William Symmer in the Hatton of Fintray (he then being lying deadly sick) and thereafter causing the said William's good mother take the said bones and cast them in the River Don, which when she had done, the water rumbled in such a manner as [if] all the hills had fallen therein and this you can not deny

But most of the charges against Janet were the usual sort. An example:

In the month of April, or thereabout, in 1591, in the "gricking" of the day, [that is, in the dawn,] Janet Wishart, on her way back from the blockhouse and Fattie, where she had been holding conference with the devil, pursued Alexander Thomson, mariner, coming forth of Aberdeen to his ship, ran between him and Alexander Fidler, under the Castle Hill, as swift, it appeared to him, as an arrow could be shot forth of a bow, going betwixt him and the sun, and cast her "cantrips" in his way. Whereupon, the said Alexander Thomson took an immediate "fear and trembling," and was forced to hasten home, take to his bed, and lie there for the space of a month, so that none believed he would live;--one half of the day burning in his body, as if he had been roasting in an oven, with an extreme feverish thirst, "so that he could never be satisfied of drink," the other half of the day melting away his body with an extraordinarily cold sweat. And Thomson, knowing she had cast this kind of witchcraft upon him, sent his wife to threaten her, that, unless she at once relieved him, he would see that she was burnt. And she, fearing lest he should accuse her, sent him by the two women a certain kind of beer and some other drugs to drink, after which Thomson mended daily, and recovered his former health.

And this:

She [Janet] and her daughter, Violet Leyis, desired ... her woman to go with her said daughter, at twelve o'clock at night, to the gallows, and cut down the dead man hanging thereon, and take a part of all his members from him, and burn the corpse, which her servant would not do, and, therefore, she was instantly sent away.

Like many other accused witches Janet Wishart was also a healer, and regularly gave out or sold charms and potions. In one case a woman said she had earned Janet's enmity by revealing to her friends a charm Janet had sold her. When Janet's son was in prison awaiting trial, one of his neighbors visited him for advice on how to rid her home of a troublesome spirit.

Janet Wishart comes across as a formidable woman. She was described as the leader of her family, more dangerous and powerful than her husband or son. People said that with her magic she murdered children, ruined people financially, coerced them to do her bidding by sending them nightmares. She is shown, more than any other accused witch I know of, playing up her fearsome reputation to get her way. Her anger was power.

And one more case, which perhaps more than any other gets into the minds of people who feared witchcraft and invoked the power of the law against witches:

Twelve years since, or thereby, Janet came into Katherine Rattray's, behind the Tolbooth, and while she was drinking in the said Katherine's cellar, Katherine reproved her for drinking in her house, because, she said, she was a witch. Whereupon, she took a cup full of ale, and cast it in her face, and said that if she were indeed a witch, the said Katherine should have proof of it; and immediately after she had quitted the cellar, the barm of the said Katherine's ale all sank to the bottom of the stand, and no had abaid [a bead] thereon during the space of sixteen weeks. And the said Katherine finding herself 'skaithit,' complained to her daughter, Katherine Ewin, who was then in close acquaintance with Janet, that she had bewitched her mother's ale; and immediately thereafter the said Katherine Ewin called on Janet, and said, 'Why bewitched you my mother's ale?' and requested her to help the same again. Which Janet promised, if Katherine Ewin obeyed her instructions ... to rise early before the sun, without commending herself to God, or speaking, and neither suining herself nor her son sucking on her breast; to go, still without speaking, to the said Katherine Rattray's house, and not to cross any water, nor wash her hands; and enter into the said Katherine Rattray's house, where she would find her servant brewing, and say to her thrice, 'I to God, and thou to the devil!' and to restore the same barm where it was again; 'and to take up thrie dwattis on the southt end of the gauttreyis, and thair scho suld find ane peice of claithe, fowr newikit, with greyn, red, and blew, and thrie corss of clewir girss, and cast the same in the fyir; quhilk beand cassin in, her barm suld be restorit to hir againe, lyik as it was restorit in effect.'

And the said Katherine Ewin, when cracking [gossiping] with her neighbours, said she could learn them a charm she had gotten from Janet Wishart, which when the latter heard, she promised to do her an evil turn, and immediately her son, sucking on her breast, died. And at her first browst, or brewing, thereafter, the whole wort being played and put in 'lumes,' the doors fast, and the keys at her own belt, the whole wort was taken away, and the haill lumes fundin dry, and the floor dry, and she could never get trial where it yird to. And when the said Katherine complained to the said Janet Wishart, and dang herself and her good man both, for injuries done to her by taking of her son's life and her wort [which Katherine seems to have thought of about equal value], she promised that all should be well, giving her her draff for payment. And the said Katherine, with her husband Ambrose Gordon, being in their beds, could not for the space of twenty days be quit of a cat, lying nightly in their bed, between the two, and taking a great bite out of Ambrose's arm, as yet the place testifies, and when they gave up the draff, the cat went away.