An engraving of the wedding night: the bride is walking, with a pot and a candle in her hand, followed by four men, one playing a hurdy-gurdy.This print is a pair to that on the preceding folio (RCIN 807525). The candle carried by the bride allows one man, her drunken lover, to see well enough to fondle her chest, but cannot provide illumination for the hurdy-gurdy player as he is blind. The pot and candle are loaded with innuendo referring to act of copulation. In the French verse below, the girl is referred to as Alison, a regular figure in Parisian farce theatre from around the late 1620s. In this print she is shown leading on those who desire her and the last part of the inscription reveals her intentions: "To induce him to do his duty soon. Alison treats him like a drunkard, so she can lead him to bed". The subject of these prints became a short musical comedy (La nopce de village) by Guillame Marcoureau Brécourt that premiered at the Hotel de Bourgogne in August 1666.
This print is lettered at the upper centre: "L'ESPOVSEE, DE VILLAGE"; along the bottom: "A voir la grace et l'embon-point / De cette fille de village, / Il seroit, ma foy, grand dommage/ Que Colin ne l'espousat point. / Pour l'induire á se dépécher / De faire bien-tost sa besoigne, / Alison le traitte en yuroigne, / Puis qu'elle le mene coucher, // Auec priuilege de Roy Jaspar Isac excudit le 21 Aoust 1634".

This print is inlaid in folio 48 of the Dutch Drolls album (RCIN 970362). This album originally contained 99 prints on 72 folios, with the prints numbered 1-99 in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand on the mount sheet above each print. A number of other prints were added later, mostly on the versos of the existing sheets and on two additional folios at the end of the album (fols 73-74), probably during the nineteenth century.

 

For more information see Mark McDonald, The Print Collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo. I: Ceremonies, Costumes, Portraits and Genre, 3 vols, Royal Collection Trust 2017, part of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, cat. no. 422.