The Very Horny Pilgrim: a true story of the Plymouth Plantation
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Pilgrim map |
Totally by accident and having nothing to do with the holiday, I
happened to be reading books by and about the Mayflower Pilgrims and
their early descendants. In so doing, just this morning I ran across this passage in Of
Plymouth Plantation, by the primary leader, second governor
and Mayflower passenger William Bradford. It is part of a chapter
called "Wickedness Breaks Forth."
Please see my numbered annotations
following, although sometimes I think I am being too callous and flippant and that I should have sympathy for this person, who was probably mentally ill:
After a time of the writing of these things befell a very sad
accident of the like foul nature in this government, this very year,
which I shall now relate. There was a youth whose name was Thomas
Granger. He was servant to an honest man of Duxbury, being about 16
or 17 years of age. He was this year detected of buggery and
indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep,
two calves and a turkey.[1] Horrible it is to mention, but the truth
of the history requires it. He was first discovered by one that
accidentally [2] saw his lewd practices towards
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Pilgrim book |
the mare. (I
forebear particulars. [3]) Being upon it examined and committed, in
the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time,
but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of
the forenamed in his indictment. And this his free confession was
not only in private to the magistrates (though first he strived to
deny it) but to sundry, both ministers and others, and afterwards,
upon his indictment, to the whole Court and jury; [4] and confirmed
at his execution. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be
known by his description of them, [5] others with them were brought
before him and he declared which were they and which were not. [6]
And accordingly he was cast by the jury and condemned, and after
executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it
was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser
cattle [7] were killed before his face [8], according to the law,
Leviticus xx.15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were
all cast into a great large pit that was digged of purpose for them,
and no use made of any part of them.
Upon the examination of this person and also of a former that
had made more sodomitical attempts upon another... [9]
Notes:
- Is this an indication of what we should be doing with our turkeys, if we
really want to be like the Pilgrims?
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Yeah, right, "accidentally."
- Bummer. Puritans are so frustrating.
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Bestial and proud. I bet they tortured him, though. They tortured a lot. Puritans never change...
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Where's that one sheep with the perty mouth?
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Did that one, yeah. That one, too, oh yeah. No, not that one, c'mon, I do have standards.
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Lesser cattle? Oh, right, that one goat really wasn't very accomplished.
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Okay, this is getting brutal.
- Further Pilgrim wickedness I shall spare you. But there was
some.
Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody.
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