"Swelled legs imply debility, and the remedy is beans."

Hilarious review in The Daily Telegraph of a vicar's memoir of ministering in the West Country in the 1840s and 50s. It reads like a screwball comedy:

In those times, the law stated that wedding vows must be exchanged before noon. One day, Thornton waits by the church in the village of Parracombe to marry a feckless couple who are terribly late. When they arrive, the bridegroom explains that the parish clerk is so jealous of him for marrying the girl he fancies that he has run off and hidden the keys. Thornton relates: "I rushed at the iron gates of the church, put my shoulder against one of them, heaved, and lifted it off its hinges. Down it came with a crash."
Next he gets the best man to climb on the bridegroom's shoulder and break a window in the church to dive in head first ("I can almost see his forked legs as he went down"). The bride says: "This, sir, is what I do call a regular jolly lark." "Silence, you scandalous woman," cries Thornton, and desperately tries to get the vows said on time. The groom puts the ring on the wrong finger and it gets stuck.
"You stupid jackass," shouts the bride. Leaving the church and declining to take a fee, Thornton turns to the couple and "blew them up sky-high, and rode off, declaring that Parracombe people might in future marry each other with whatever horrid rites they thought proper, but that I would never again be party to 'burgling' a church."