163. Robert Southey to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, 28 June 1796 ⁠* 

SIR,

THE story of the Mysterious Mother is of an earlier date than the noble author [1]  imagined: it may be found in a work of bishop Hall, [2]  entitled Resolutions and Decisions of divers Practical Cases of Conscience, in continual Use amongst Men; of which the second edition, dated 1650, is now lying before me. The bishop says, he had it long ago from the relation of Mr. Perkins, [3]  and since that, met with it in the report of two several German authors. [4] 

Fuller [5] , in his Holy State, says of this Perkins, that “he was an excellent chirurgeon at joynting of a broken soul; and would pronounce the word ‘Damn’ with such an emphasis, as left a doleful echo in his auditors’ ears a good while after.” He was lame of the right hand; and Hugh Holland, in his Icones, saith of him:

The same story is told by Julian de Medrano, of whose Common-place Book an edition was published, 1608, by Cesar Oudin, secretary and interpreter to Henry IV, of France. [7]  The Spanish writer says, he heard the story in the Bourbonois, where the people showed him the house the parties had lived in, and the place where they were buried, and repeated to him the epitaph:

The author of the Mysterious Mother adds, in his preface, that there is a similar story in the Tales of the Queen of Navarre. [9]  It may be worth remarking, that Julian Medrano was a cavalier of her court, and dedicated his book to that princess; he, of course, would never have taken the story from a book of tales, and given it as a fact that he had learned in his travels.

June 28, 1796.

B.