Thinking that they might be related to the catchpole that was bastinadoed, we asked them the occasion of their grief.

They replied that they had too much cause to weep; for that very hour, from an exalted triple tree, two of the honestest gentlemen in Catchpole-land had been made to cut a caper on nothing.

Cut a caper on nothing, said Gymnast; my pages use to cut capers on the ground; to cut a caper on nothing should be hanging and choking, or I am out.

Ay, ay, said Friar John; you speak of it like St.
John de la Palisse.
We asked them why they treated these worthy persons with such a choking hempen salad.

They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools of the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish.