I mar'l what this gentlewoman should be...

I mar'l what this gentlewoman should be

That I should have in marriage, she's a stranger to me:

I wonder what my parents mean, i'faith,

To match me with a stranger so:

A maid that's neither kiff nor kin to me:

Life, do they think I have no more care of my body,

Than to lie with one that I ne'er knew,

A mere stranger,

One that ne'er went to school with me neither,

Nor ever playfellows together;

They're mightily o'erseen in't methinks;

They say she has mountains to her marriage,

She's full of cattle, some two thousand runts;

Now what the meaning of these runts should be,

My tutor cannot tell me;

I have looked in Rider's dictionary for the letter R,

And there I can hear no tidings of these runts neither;

Unless they should be Rumford hogs,

I know them not,

[For full play text, see A Chaste Maid in Cheapside]

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