Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 51: March 1666-67
by Samuel Pepys
- Pages
- about 66
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 73 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
March 1st. Up, it being very cold weather again after a good deal of warm
summer weather, and to the office, where I settled to do much business
to-day. By and by sent for to Sir G. Carteret to discourse of the
business of the Navy, and our wants, and the best way of bestowing the
little money we have, which is about L30,000, but, God knows, we have need
of ten times as much, which do make my life uncomfortable, I confess, on
the King's behalf, though it is well enough as to my own particular, but
the King's service is undone by it. Having done with him, back again to
the office, and in the streets, in Mark Lane, I do observe, it being St.
David's day, the picture of a man dressed like a Welchman, hanging by the
neck upon one of the poles that stand out at the top of one of the
merchants' houses, in full proportion, and very handsomely done; which is
one of the oddest sights I have seen a good while, for it was so like a
man that one would have thought it was indeed a man.
[From "Poor Robin's Almanack" for 1757 it appears that, in former
times in England, a Welshman was burnt in effigy on this
anniversary. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, in his edition of Brand's "Popular
Antiquities," adds "The practice to which Pepys refers . . . was
very common at one time; and till very lately bakers made
gingerbread Welshmen, called taffies, on St. David's day, which were
made to represent a man skewered" (vol. i., pp. 60,61).]
Being returned home, I find Greeting, the flageolet-master, come, and
teaching my wife; and I do think my wife will take pleasure in it, and it
will be easy for her, and pleasant. So I, as I am well content with the
charge it will occasion me. So to the office till dinner-time, and then
home to dinner, and before dinner making my wife to sing. Poor wretch!
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