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Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850 by Various
page 43 of 63 (68%)
that Long Meg of Westminster is a fictitious personage. I believe her to
have been as much a real wonton as Moll Cutpurse was a century later.

If the large stone shown as Long Meg's grave had been anywhere else
within the walls of Westminster Abbey than where it is, I should have
had great dockets about the Westminster tradition. But Long Meg, there
is reason to believe from the numerous allusions to her in the
Elizabethan dramatists, was a heroine after the Reformation, and her
burial, therefore, in the cloisters, where few people of wealth or good
reputation were buried between 1538 and 1638, seems to me a common
occurrence. Had Islip or Esteney buried her among the abbots in the
cloister, I could then have joined in DR. RIMBAULT'S surprise. I have
altered the passage, however, to "marking, the grave, _it is said_."
This will meet, I trust, DR. RIMBAULT'S objection, though I have Gifford
to support me in the passage as it at present stands:

"There is a penny story-book of this tremendous virago
[Westminster Meg], who performed many wonderful exploits about
the time that Jack the Giant Killer flourished. She was buried,
as all the world knows, in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey,
where a huge stone is still pointed out to the Whitsuntide
visitors as her gravestone."

--Gifford's _Ben Jonson_, viii. 78.

Let me add, that I am much obliged to DR. RIMBAULT, as well as to other
correspondents, for corrections and still more valuable additions to my
book, printed in "NOTES AND QUERIES."

PETER CUNNINGHAM
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