Moryson's Fancy

Publication Instance Details #1806

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	Yes	No	Yes	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	War
Irish Context	Colonization and Colonial Legacy (Ireland) Other
Languages	English
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Paratext Text	A most horrible spectacle of three children (whereof the eldest was not above ten yeeres old), all eating and gnawing with their teeth the entrails of their mother, upon whose flesh they had fed 20 days past, and having eaten all from the feet upward to the bare bones, roasting it continually by a slow fire, were now come to the eating of her said entrails in like sort roasted, yet not divided from the body, being as yet raw. - Fynes Moryson, An History of Ireland, From the Year 1599 to 1603 (1617)
Notes	Implicit reference to a 17th narrative of children eating the body of their mother who has died of hunger (implied). The poem opens with epigraph from Moryson's An History of Ireland (1617), and refers to the war of Boudicca against the Romans in eastern Britain, and the destruction of the cities of Colchester and London.