Our pair are left without a saddlepack.
They're up a creek. How will they paddle back?
It's easy for a loony knave,
Attack some mourners, traveling grave-
ward. Loot the corpse. Break someone's leg.
And when they're down, just make them beg
for mercy. Then just steal their stuff.
As if the injury weren't enough.
By now most readers will be thinking
our Don's behaving like a stinking
turd, whose acts, e'en for a mad guy
seem suited to some Mafia bad guy.
Chapter 20.
Nothing happens, really. Noises in the night, Don prattling, Sancho takes a dump. For God's sake, I'm supposed to weave this into some kind of tapestry of rhyme???
Plain people of Ireland: (expectantly)
We're ..... WAITING .... here.
MOTP: Oh, ALL RIGHT then!!!
Don prates 'bout things eschatological
Sancho's behavior's scatological
"Fulling-hammers" in the night
Give quite a fright to squire and knight.
Plain people of Ireland: (grudgingly)
Not too bad. Gotta admire those internal rhymes in that last line. But what are "fulling-hammers"?
MOTP: Why, I'm so glad you asked. "Fulling" is what these jolly ladies are doing -
It basically consists of beating cloth into submission, and used to involve urine (a.k.a. "lant") for softening purposes, and repeated blows e.g. from dainty feet, as in the picture above, or in the case of Quixote, hammers powered by a water mill.
Chapter 21.
A barber who must serve two villages
Is the next victim of Don's pillages
His battered brassy shaving basin's
A lure to Don, like fleece to Jason.
Once again, like a bambino
He steals. "The Helmet of Mambrino".
REVIEWER'S ASIDE -
By this point, I confess, dear Reader
My view of Don had reached its nadir
Thought "If this is Mickey's obra maestra,
Then he can shove it up his keister!"
But thought of you, my little cupcakes,
Made me continue, for your poor sakes.
Chapter 22.
Next up, to prove he's not all bad
Don does something that made me glad
Frees troop of prisoners, decked in chains
But doesn't get much for his pains.
Freed ruffians, spoiling for a fight,
Attack fat squire and scrawny knight,
And steal their stuff (payback's a bitch)
And leave our duo in the ditch.
Chapter 23.
Our heroes, suffering and in pain, are
Next seen in the Sierra Morena
In dark and craggy mountain pass
Freed prisoner steals poor Sancho's ass.
(But here, at times, it seems Mick's clueless.
Can't quite remember Sancho's muleless.
The donkey, stolen by a badass,
Appears and vanishes like a mad ass.
Mule reappears for a few pages,
Then vanishes, just like Don's rages.)
They find a bag, in mountains jagged.
With gold and such, and then a ragged
Creature, who at first seems mad,
But, it turns out, is not all bad.
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