"She promised us that we should know almost as quick as she did, and commanded old Rowe to ring a peal, and then strike one bell loud between if 'twere a boy, and two if 'twere a girl child.

'Tis a boy, heard you, and 'twas like her wit to invent such a way to tell us." In four other villages the chimes rang just as loud and merrily, and the women talked, and blessed her Grace and her young child, and casks of ale were broached, and oxen roasted, and work stopped, and dancers footed it upon the green.
"Surely the new-born thing comes here to happiness," 'twas said everywhere, "for never yet was woman loved as is his mother." In her stately bed her Grace the duchess lay, with the face of the Mother Mary, and her man-child drinking from her breast.

The duke walked softly up and down, so full of joy that he could not sit still.

When he had entered first, it was his wife's self who had sate upright in her bed, and herself laid his son within his arms.
"None other shall lay him there," she said, "I have given him to you.

He is a great child, but he has not taken from me my strength." He was indeed a great child, even at his first hour, of limbs and countenance so noble that nurses and physicians regarded him amazed.