Alas, I've never been fond of Monty Python. But I once worked with someone
who was always quoting Monty Python - with a creditable British Accent
despite being from Tennessee. I suppose I could be remembering some Monty
Python from his quotes, but I didn't have Monty Python or my old work-mate
in mind when I wrote the poem.
I have read a lot of medieval history and have a creditable medieval
library. I doubt that I could produce a source and say "this I where I
first heard these words, but at one time I was very fond of Daniel Defoe,
and there is this from his Journal of the Plague Years:
The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and
crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked
out and said with an angry, quick tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a
voice of one that was crying, "What d'ye want, that you make such a
knocking?" He answered, "I am the watchman. How do you do? What continued is
the matter?" The person answered, "What is that to you? Stop the dead cart."
This, it seems, was about one o'clock. Soon after, as the fellow said, he
stopped the dead cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered; he
continued knocking, and the bellman called out several times, "Bring out
your dead;" but nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart, being
called to other houses, would stay no longer, and drove away.
I tend to think I encountered these events more than once in the medieval
histories as well as from DeFoe, but I won't swear to anything - other than
if I was ever influenced by Monty Python it was from a time of trying to
ignore an annoying work-mate and not quite managing. ;-)
Lawrence
