When the devil was going out of the possessed person, he was supposed to do so with reluctance: “The spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.” (St. Mark, ix. 26.) The tears and struggles of the infant would therefore be a convincing proof that the Evil One had departed. In Ireland (as every clergyman knows) nurses will decide the matter by pinching the baby, rather than allow him to remain silent and unlachrymose.

It will be so ridiculous to see all his letters directed to him with an M.P.—But do you know, he says, he will never frank for me?

At the same time, she crossed the boundaries separating men from women not with a cozy androgyny, nor even with the 'glam rock' stylizations of the period, but by displaying a cold and forbidding, more-than-masculine, and ultimately ungenderable hardbody.

[A]ll the inhabitauntes confortynge and exhortynge eche other to die, rather than to violate the leage and amitie that they of longe tyme had contynued with the Romaynes, by one hole assent, after that they hadde made sondry great pyles of wode and of other mater to brenne, they layde in it all their goodes and substaunce, and laste of all, conuayenge them selfes in to the saide pyles or bonefires with their wyfes and children, sette all on fire, and there were brenned or Annyballe coulde entree the citie.