By the Greenwood Side

Our neighbor's dog just won't stop howling today. It makes me think of this thing from THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY: "In the year 1012, at Colewiz, in Saxony, on Christmas Eve, a company of young men and maids, whilst the Priest was at Mass in the Church, were singing catches and love-songs in the Church-yard; he sent to them to make less noise, but they sung on still; and if you will, you shall have the very song itself: A fellow rid by the greenwood side,/ And fair Meswinde was his bride,/ Why stand we so, and do not go?" The priest prays to Saint Magnus that he will force these scalawags to keep singing for a year! That'll show 'em. "...and so they did, without meat and drink, wearisomeness or giving over." Anyway, I think something like that happened to this dog.