reasty

Of another poem, "The greate assemblie of the parliamente," Bellany and McRae--properly disposed as editors to think the best of the material they transcribed and annotated--say only this: "Much of the humour depends on a correlation between political corruption and the physical corruption of a piece of bacon." Drawing to the present the poem's speaker ends by asking "now how to remedy this rustie bacon /I doe not know unless it be downe taken" (Early Stuart Libels, Mii5), rusty here having the sense of reasty, rancid (OED adj.2).