[facetious absurdities] of the Old Comedy, of which ARISTOPHANES was chief, was not so much to imitate a man; as to make the people laugh at some odd conceit, which had commonly somewhat of unnatural or obscene in it.

There only may the spurious passion glow, Where not one laurel decks the caitiff's brow, 100 Obscene with crimes avow'd, of every dye, Corruption, lust, oppression, perjury.

"But, though the funeral was painfully obscene, it was not so obscene as the view of life I was treated to last week....

The females, accustomed from their youth up to this gross depravity of manners, neither manifest, nor apparently feel, any delicacy in stating and describing circumstances of the most shameful nature before an assemblage of men, whose language is often obscene beyond description" (105).

A few rather improper tales regarding the sun and moon are recorded in Woods's Native Tribes by Meyer, who thus sums up two of them (200); the other being too obscene for citation here: The sun they consider to be a female, who, when she sets, passes the dwelling-places of the dead.

Thus, while with heavenly charity she spoke, A streaming blaze the silent shadows broke; 650 Shot from the skies; a cheerful azure light: The birds obscene to forests wing'd their flight, And gaping graves received the wandering guilty sprite.