Long Meg Poems

Mary Tattle-well and Joane Hit-him-home, The Womens Sharpe Revenge, 1640 (EEBO)

The poem in the epistle to the reader in The Womens Sharpe Revenge is as follows:

Why raise you quiet soules out of the grave?
To trouble their long sleep? what peevish Knave
Hath wakned my dead ashes? and breath'd fire
Into colde embers? never to respire,
Till a new resurrection? so forc't now:
(Through innocent Womens clamours) that I vow,
Th'earth could not hold mee, but I was compeld
To look on what ('tis long since I beheld)
The Sun and Day; what have wee women done,
That any one who was a mothers sonne
Should thus affront our sex? hath he forgot
From whence hee came? or doth hee seek to blot
His owne conception? Is hee not asham'd,
Within the list of Mankinde to bee nam'd?
Or is there in that Masculine sex another
(Saving this Monster) will disgrace his mother?
I Margery, and for my upright stature
Sirnam'd Long Megge: of well disposed nature,
And rather for mine honour, then least scorne
Titled from Westminster, because there borne.
And so Long Megge of Westminster; to heare
Our fame so branded, could no way forbeare
But rather then disgest so great a wrong,
Must to my ashes give both life and tongue.
And then (poor Poet) whatsoere thou beest,
That in my now discovery, thy fault seest.
Confesse thine errour, fall upon thy knees,
From us, to begge thy pardon by degrees.
Else, I that with my sword and buckler durst
Front swaggering Ruffians, put them to the worst.
Of whom, the begging souldier, when he saw
My angry brow; trembled, and stood in awe.
I that have frighted Fencers from the Stage,
(And was indeed, the wonder of mine Age)
For I have often, to abate their prides,
Cudgeld their coats, & lamm'd their legs and sides.
Cross mee no Tapster durst at any rate,
Lest I should break his Jugs about his pate.
'Tis knowne the service that I did at Bulloigne,
Beating their French armes close unto their woollein:
They can report, that with my blows and knocks
I made their bones ake, worse then did the Pocks.
Of which King Henry did take notice then,
And said; amongst my brave and valiant men,
I know not one more resolute, or bolder,
And would have laid his sword upon my shoulder,
But that I was a woman: And shall I
Who durst so proud an Enemy defie?
So fam'd in field, so noted in the Frenches,
A president to all our Brittish Wenches,
Feare to affront him; or his soule to vexe,
Who dares in any termes, thus taunt our sex?
Therefore relent thine errour I advise thee
Else in what shape soere thou shalt disguise thee,
I shall inquire thee out: nay if thou should
Take on thee all those figures Proteus could,
It were in vain: nay, (which the more may daunt thee)
Even to the grave, I vow my ghost shall haunt thee.
Therefore, what's yet amisse, strive to amend,
Thou knowest thy doom, if farther thou offend.