Lubberland

Good mother, how ſhall we finde a pigge, if we doe not looke about for't? will it run off o'the ſpit, into our mouths thinke you? as in Lubberland? and cry, we, we?

“Truth!” I cried, “though the Heavens crush me for following her: no Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of Apostasy.”

In such prophesied Lubberland, of Happiness, Benevolence, and Vice cured of its deformity, trust not, my friends! Man is not what one calls a happy animal; his appetite for sweet victual is so enormous.

All action and story, all individuality of persons, objects, and events, is merged in a pervading atmosphere of tranquil, sunny repose,—as of a holiday-afternoon. It may seem to us an idle lubberland, a paradise of do-nothings;—Mr. Ruskin sees in it only a "dim, stupid, serene, leguminous enjoyment."

Lubberland symbolized a place of relaxed, lusty ease, a place of unimpeded libidinal energies and uninterrupted flows of carnal desire that stood in sharp contrast to the disciplined, ordered, and morally upright culture of Byrd's world—the social and cultural universe of the eighteenth century tidewater planter.