An answer to The tale of a nettle: Written by D. D'Foe.

Table of contents

- [colophon]

An ANSWER To The Tale of a Nettle.

Written by D. D'FOE.

WHen the Good Man was won to so Gracious a Deed,

As to Tolerate the Nettle and his Cursed Seed,

He ne'er imagin'd this Vip'rous Brood

Wou'd be so Ungrateful and monstrously Rude,

As to plead any Title to the Right of his Ground;

Which had Cost the Just Man so many fair Pound.

He then cast about what to do in the main,

And Council he call'd to advise with the same.

Good Sir, says the Council, do but try 'um with speed.

They pretend to much Sanctity, call em selves the Lords seed

And none are so righteous and seemingls Holly,

As the Offspring of Nettle. Hypocritical Folly

I presume you have gotten, and instead of being just,

I doubt they'll Betrap you on any disgust:

Therefore I advise you without more ado,

You now being old, may grow wiser too;

For Experience will teach, what I now shall declare,

Let none in your Ground any port of it share,

But such as will swear to be True to your Heir,

And Support You and Him against all Invaders

Of Yours and his Right; let no desperate Bravado's

Make you the more fear them, or esteem your self little,

For they'll soon cut you out by the Scythe or the Sickle:

If once they are sure that you dread their Power,

You nor Yours shall never be quiet one Hour.

I thank you, good Friend, for your good Advice,

I'll follow your Counsel, and strait in a trice

He summon'd the Nettles, and told them the Cause.

A Motion he made for to bind them in Laws,

For their good and's own; and so would in short

Admit them to hold that Possession in part

Of his Ground they possessed, if they would with speed

Swear to preserve it to him and his Seed.

They unanimously consented, and without more ado,

Took the Oaths unto Him, and his Succeffor too;

Thus being admitted to a free Toleration,

A handle they got for their present Possession,

And now they began to dispute with their Mastêr,

And incroached on him, even faster and faster,

And told him in short they'd aright to his Land,

For he gave 'em Possession under his own Hand.

And thus they daily created Him trouble,

And plaguly vex'd the good Man that was Noble;

They mighty Combustion did raise in his Ground,

And Cedars and Elms they met their Deaths Wound,

And all sorts of Trees that were Royally given,

Were rooted up quite, tho' their Tops reach'd to Heaven:

And after they had thus destroy'd his Possession,

The Royal-Oaks-Head was cut off by Commission,

And nothing there left but Brdmbles and Bushes,

Viporous Stinging Nettles and silly poor Rushes;

The Bramble bore sway, and beat down the rest

Of all his fine Plants, and Fruits of the best,

And so it continued in Confusion so long,

Till Right did take Place and o'ercome Wrong.

And now since the Ground is restored as before,

Take care how the Nettle Stings you any more:

And since the Handle you have once again got,

Keep it fast lest your Ground goes once more to Pot.

Oxford, Printed in the Year, 1710.

Information about this book

Title statement

An answer to The tale of a nettle: Written by D. D'Foe.

Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731.

Publication

Distributor

University of Oxford Text Archive
Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road
Oxford
OX2 6NN
ota@oucs.ox.ac.uk

ID [ota]

http://ota.ox.ac.uk/id/3328

ID [isbn10]

1106003276

ID [isbn13]

9781106003270

ID [TCP]

K001048.000

ID [BIBNO]

CW3310437202

ID [ECLL]

0159701700

Availability

Distributed by the University of Oxford under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Source

— An answer to The tale of a nettle: Written by D. D'Foe., Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731.. 1 sheet ; 1/2⁰. Oxford [i.e.London?] :: printed in the year,. 1710.. ["Not discussed by any bibliographer of Defoe, but most improbably by him."(Foxon).] [Verse.] [Imprint is false; possibly printed in London.] [Reproduction of original from the Harvard University Houghton Library.] [Foxon, D89] [English Short Title Catalog, ESTCN1651.] [Electronic data. Farmington Hills, Mich. : Thomson Gale, 2003. Page image (PNG). Digitized image of the microfilm version produced in Woodbridge, CT by Research Publications, 1982-2002 (later known as Primary Source Microfilm, an imprint of the Gale Group).]

Creation

Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2p5.xsl, TEI @ Oxford.

Editorial practices

This electronic text file was keyed from page images and partially proofread for accuracy. Character capture and encoding have been done following the guidelines of the ECCO Text Creation Partnership, which correspond roughly to the recommendations found in Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Digital page images are linked to the text file.