"A certain man, as fortune fel,
A woman tungles wedded to wive,
Whose frowning countenance perceivig by live
Til he might know what she ment he thought long,
And wished ful oft she had a tung.
The devil was redy, and appeered anon,
An aspin lefe he bid the man take,
And in her mouth should put but one,
A tung, said the devil, it shall her make;
Til he had doon his hed did ake;
Leaves he gathered, and took plentie,
And in her mouth put two or three.
Within a while the medicine wrought:
The man could tarry no longer time,
But wakened her, to the end he mought
The vertue knowe of the medicine;
The first woord she spake to him
She said: 'thou whoresonne knave and theef,
How durst thou waken me, with a mischeef!'
From that day forward she never ceased.
Her boistrous bable greeved him sore:
The devil he met, and him entreated
To make her tungles, as she was before;
'Not so,' said the devil, 'I will meddle no more.
A devil a woman to speak may constrain,
But all that in hel be, cannot let it again.'"
_Schole-house of Women_, 1542 (Utterson's _Select Pieces of Early
Popular Poetry_, ii. 74).