Wherefore, Holy God, Put Him Among Thy Best Beloved Saints
In Thy Bliss Of Paradise, For He Hath Well Deserved It.
And then
they make a great fire, and burn the body.
And then everych of his
friends take a quantity of the ashes, and keep them instead of
relics, and say that it is holy thing. And they have no dread of
no peril whiles they have those holy ashes upon them. And [they]
put his name in their litanies as a saint.
CHAPTER XX
OF THE EVIL CUSTOMS USED IN THE ISLE OF LAMARY. AND HOW THE EARTH
AND THE SEA BE OF ROUND FORM AND SHAPE, BY PROOF OF THE STAR THAT
IS CLEPT ANTARCTIC, THAT IS FIXED IN THE SOUTH
FROM that country go men by the sea ocean, and by many divers isles
and by many countries that were too long for to tell of. And a
fifty-two journeys from this land that I have spoken of, there is
another land, that is full great, that men clepe Lamary. In that
land is full great heat. And the custom there is such, that men
and women go all naked. And they scorn when they see any strange
folk going clothed. And they say, that God made Adam and Eve all
naked, and that no man should shame him to shew him such as God
made him, for nothing is foul that is of kindly nature. And they
say, that they that be clothed be folk of another world, or they be
folk that trow not in God. And they say, that they believe in God
that formed the world, and that made Adam and Eve and all other
things. And they wed there no wives, for all the women there be
common and they forsake no man. And they say they sin if they
refuse any man; and so God commanded to Adam and Eve and to all
that come of him, when he said, CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMINI ET
REPLETE TERRAM. And therefore may no man in that country say, This
is my wife; ne no woman may say, This my husband. And when they
have children, they may give them to what man they will that hath
companied with them. And also all the land is common; for all that
a man holdeth one year, another man hath it another year; and every
man taketh what part that him liketh. And also all the goods of
the land be common, corns and all other things: for nothing there
is kept in close, ne nothing there is under lock, and every man
there taketh what he will without any contradiction, and as rich is
one man there as is another.
But in that country there is a cursed custom, for they eat more
gladly man's flesh than any other flesh; and yet is that country
abundant of flesh, of fish, of corns, of gold and silver, and of
all other goods. Thither go merchants and bring with them children
to sell to them of the country, and they buy them.
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