What a find! Someone should put it online.
mj
David Latane wrote:
>Now for thoroughgoing anti-clerical verse, nothing
>beats "The Yahoo! a Satirical Rhapsody" (1830) a
>heavily footnoted, anonymous book-length rant
>apparently written by a pissed-off English engraver
>named William Watts. The book went into two London
>editions, but many more in America, where, let us
>note, the good-old-godly days of yore weren't what the
>current batch of ranters thinks.
>
>Here's a random swatch (p. 9, 2nd English edition),
>with notes:
>
>
>>From gospel-light, or rather gospel-dung, [47]
>What crops of muddled nincompoops have sprung!
>Hernhutters, Jumpers, Ranters, Harmonites,
>Revivers, Squatters, Calvinists, New Lights,
>Arminians, Quakers, Muggletonians,
>Socinians, Anabaptists, Antinomians,
>Swedenbourgs, Arians, Shilo-Southcotites;
>The major part rank fools, the rest rank bites.
>
> Such are the Christian Yahoos, who delight
>To blindfold reason with their _inward_ light. [48]
>Peter and Paul are conn'd; but, still perplex'd,
>They rummage Luke, and Mark, and Matthew next:
>>From text to text the pious buzzards fly,
>While "the land stinks, so num'rous are the fry."
>Yet some of these pure saints _now_ seem to think
>Young girls may too much in the bible squint;
>And stumbling upon passages obscene, [49]
>Must wonder what such paw-paw words can mean.
>
>[47] Whitfield, in one of his ranting sermons at
>Glasgow, in the year 1742, thus expresses himself: "O
>lord, dung us with Jesus Christ, that we may bring
>forth much fruit meet for thee." See _Lewis's
>Memoirs_. And in writing to Lady Huntingdon, the same
>preacher of the blessed gosepl says, "I have just now
>risen from the ground, after praying to the lord of
>all lords to water your soul every moment, honoured
>madam."--_Southey's Wesley._ Tom brown quotes the
>following prayer from one of the frothy spouters in
>his time: "Souse us, O lord, in the powdering-tub of
>thy grace, that we may become tripes fit for thy
>heavenly table: sweeten us with the sugar-candy of thy
>mercy, O lord, that we may all be rendered lollypops
>and bulls'-eyes for the rightous in kingdom come!"
>
>[48] 'Tis such a light as putrefaction breeds
>In fly-blown flesh, whereon the maggot feeds;
>Shines in the dark, but usher'd into day,
>The stench remains, the lustre dies away.--Cowper
>
>[49] Teaching the poor to read so generally has cut
>out plenty of employment for the spiritual
>sow-gelders, who are now as busy as the devil in a
>high wind in grubbing out the impurities from the holy
>balderdash, lest their chaste female devotees might
>now and then be shocked by reading so often about
>"going in unto her," &c.
>
>Some may be glad to hear that even with all the
>canon-busting going on nobody has stumbled across _The
>Yahoo!_ yet. I got my copy on eBay.
>
>
>
>David Latane
>http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine, Leeds)
>
>
>
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