subs. (venery).—The pubic hair: see FLEECE. Hence PARSLEY-BED = the female pudendum: see MONOSYLLABLE; TO TAKE A TURN AMONG THE PARSLEY = to copulate.
1707. Old Song [FARMER, Merry Songs and Ballads (1897), 1 S. III. 131], ‘The Praise of the Dairy-maid.’
| At length it was said, | |
| That one Mr. Ed——mond, | |
| Did both dig and sow in her PARSLY-BED. |
1719. WARD, The London Spy, I. 36. I am very glad its no worse; I was never so scar’d since I pop’d out of the PARSLEY BED.
1851. Notes and Queries, 1, S. vi. 517. I was told that little girls came out of a PARSLEY-BED, and little boys from under a gooseberry bush. Ibid., 5 S. iii. (1875) ‘Babies in Folk-lore.’ In England every little girl knows that the male babies come from the nettle-bed, and the female ones from the PARSLEY-BED.
