Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

I was with Mr. Cornelius Lee yesternight, and amongst other things he assured me on his own and a great many more people’s words, that foxes, so many years old they are, so many livers they have, and that he himself saw one opened that had eight, and so they all judged him to be eight years old. I asked Mr. Lucas about it this day, and he says it is true. But that which I most boggled at is this. They said that, for a certain, the whelps of a she fox never breed so long as the dam liveth, though they be never so old, and this is the reason, said they, that there are more sheep than foxes.

Order the book

Subscribe to the free daily email

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

I was with Mr. Cornelius Lee yesternight, and amongst other things he assured me on his own and a great many more people’s words, that foxes, so many years old they are, so many livers they have, and that he himself saw one opened that had eight, and so they all judged him to be eight years old. I asked Mr. Lucas about it this day, and he says it is true. But that which I most boggled at is this. They said that, for a certain, the whelps of a she fox never breed so long as the dam liveth, though they be never so old, and this is the reason, said they, that there are more sheep than foxes.

124 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Fox (1) ·
• Pryme, Abraham de la (1671-1704) (13), Yorkshire antiquary and curate born to Huguenots: a Dutch-speaking father from Ypres and a Parisian mother ·
• Sheep (27) ·
• Superstition (14) ·
• Zoology (1) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 20 November 1697: Smooth-leaved holly as winter fodder for Pennine sheep
• 2 March 1665: A sighting of the northern lights at Northowram (Halifax) recalls the eve of the civil war
• 4 May 1698: In intense cold and lacking fodder, farmers at Halifax feed gorse to their livestock
• 9 August 1805: Joseph Locke, who made the railways pay, is born under indifferent auspices at Attercliffe (Sheffield)
• 22 October 1906: The Yorkshire Herald reports that the king of the Wensleydale dry-stone wallers has discovered a devil among the stones
• 30 January 1709: Charles Boswell, king of the gypsies, is buried at Rossington, Doncaster
• 11 November 1696: On communicating with Nathaniel Johnston, hidden historian of Yorkshire
• 24 March 1703: The mathematician and astronomer Abraham Sharp experiences the northern lights for the first time, at Little Hortonn, Bradford
• 7 March 1687: Governor John Reresby records a perjurious witch trial at the York assizes, and the absurd tale of the old woman’s guards
• 24 October 1733: Sir John Stapylton of Myton-on-Swale loses a fight with a sheep