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The Collation

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

There is a place in the north Atlantic Ocean where emerald waters and sandy shores await your toes—at least, according to a 2015 holiday brochure on Barbados. The royalist Richard Ligon scarpered there in 1647 after backing the losing side during the English Civil wars (1642–1649) and finding himself a “stranger in my owne Country.” Three years later he returned to England and wrote about his escapades in A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados, first published in 1657. The words in this month’s crocodile challenge are Ligon’s (from page 96 of his account) but they come to us via the secretary hand of Henry Oxinden on the verso of the back endleaf of his miscellany (ca.1642–1670; V.b.110).

the May crocodile (click on the image to see the full, zoomable page)

The Folger’s transcription of these lines reads:

Sugar as itt hath a facultie to preserue. all fruits that grow in the
world from corruption, & putrefaction, so it hath a vertue being
rightly applyed to preserue men in their healthes.

Well done to all the Collation readers who came close with their transcriptions. In addition to what was transcribed in the comments section, we also noticed a second “t” on “itt” and a period between “preserue” and “all.”

And a spoonful of sugar goes to Stephen Ferguson who noted that Oxinden is paraphrasing Ligon’s sweet prescription for good health and long life: 

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