Various scandals in Copenhagen

A short time after I was entered on the King’s books and had sworn the oath, it happened one morning early that I was crossing the iron grating by the entrance to the churchyard of the cathedral, which is called Our Lady’s Church (that is to say, the Church of the Blessed Virgin), to look for the student Thorlák Thorkelsson. A man and a woman went just ahead of me to the well there situate ¹ , to fetch water. And when they looked into the well, they gave a loud scream, and cried out that a dead girl-baby was floating in the well ² . I hastened thither and saw what had happened. Such a singular incident was soon bruited over the town, and various enquiries made, and in that parish 500 servant girls were had up to the town-hall that morning, and examined to see if there were milk in their breasts, but it was not so with any of them. And because of this occurrence the town was full of lamentation and weeping, and in the churches prayers were made to God that the thing might be made plain, which however did not conclusively happen, except in so far as conjectures were made that it came from the house of a very learned person M. Hr. M. Soon afterwards the talk about it ceased, until three years had passed, when it so happened that two misshapen children were brought into the world in the street known as Vognmandsstræde ³ , and in the funeral oration preached over them by the minister Master Menelaus ¹ various abuses were mentioned, which seemed to him to be becoming more frequent and to be on the increase in the town. Amongst other matters he mentioned this infant, and he gravely rebuked the spiritual pastors of the people for their heedlessness, both with regard to forbidden extravagances and the displeasing fashions of maidens’ costumes. For the deformities of these two misshapen girl-babies just mentioned had the appearance of hair-braids, peaked caps, high furbelows on the shoulders, together with fringed petticoats and high-heeled shoes with other such vain extravagances. Such monstrous births have happened frequently both there and in many other places, God being indeed compelled to such acts by various extravagances and by the misuse of His gifts.