Tuesday, June the 7th, 2016

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Our Lady Of The Bumpkins

Our Lady of the Bumpkins is the object of dribbling veneration by the peasantry hereabouts. That is pretty much all you need to know about her. More pertinent, perhaps, is why the peasants' veneration is accompanied, always, by dribbling. To find out, let us enter a peasant hovel. I would recommend a powerfully fragrant nosegay.

Once our eyes become accustomed to the gloom, we can see a midden of unutterable filth. Such is the home life of our own dear peasantry. Well, mayhap not so dear. You will be thankful for the nosegay. You may also wish to have armed yourself with a sharp pointy stick, to keep the peasant at bay should he approach you. But there is little danger of that, because he is wholly occupied with veneration. He is sprawled on the ground, mouth open, dribbling freely, his idiot gaze fixated upon a statue of Our Lady of the Bumpkins. It is raised above the piles of gruesome clutter, resting on a sort of shrine or altar. It emits an unearthly glow, and is the one clean thing for miles around. When he is not venerating it, the dribbling peasant spends untold hours spraying it with polish from an aerosol canister and buffing it with rags.

We poke him with the pointy stick to gain his attention. Still dribbling, he turns his head to look at us.

“Can you not venerate Our Lady of the Bumpkins with your mouth closed?” we ask.

In reply, the peasant grunts, and returns to his dribbling veneration.

Before leaving, we note that he collects his dribbles in a rough-hewn wooden cup, artfully placed beneath his chin.

And later, when we call in to the village's one-stop-shop to return our rented nosegay and pointy stick, we note that there are shelves stacked with similar cups of dribble. These are for sale, at a hefty price, to pilgrims who come from far and wide. Thus does the One True Faith maintain the rural economy in times of blight.