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[DONCASTER]. [Drop-head title:] A warning to Sinners to Repent: being A very strange relation of Two Old Men, That were found living under ground, in Resington Wood, near Doncaster, in Yorkshire, on the Tenth of last month.

Redruth. Symons, Printer, [s.d., c. 1820]
Dimensions 190 x 300 mm. Single leaf broadside. Printed in double columns. Upper left-hand corner partially cut away.
An apparently unrecorded provincially published broadside relating a curious, and frankly likely spurious, occurrence in a Yorkshire wood. Whilst travelling through said wood, the Reverend Dr. Clark of Doncaster perceived 'a musical harmony, which bore a heavenly sound'. Unable to ascertain the source of the celestial chords, Clark enlisted the assistance of the minister of the parish. The pair returned to the wood and, once more detecting the melodious sounds, eventually happened upon their origin; a cave concealed behind a door 'artfully made with green boughs interwoven into each other'. Inside, the gentlemen were shocked to discover two wizened men 'whose silver beards hung down to the leather girdles they had about their lions'. The old men, who claimed to have been residing underground for several years, had no knowledge of the music which had revealed their location. The Reverend Clark took this as the providential working of the Almighty 'to direct them to these sages should be found out'. The two men were taken before local magistrates and proceeded to delivered portents of doom, 'related to them by angels', claiming that 'there would be great sickness in several parts of the kingdom' and 'a bad harvest in the North'. Discovered on the '10th of last month' the pair both expired on the '23d of the same month'.

Records show versions of this narrative, published in chapbook form, dated to the closing decades of the eighteenth century.
£ 250.00 Antiquates Ref: 29393