Quotes / The Black Death

What's that coming up the Silk Road, out of China?
The Black Death!
Black Death, woo!
What's that creepin' 'round your pee-pee and your vagina?
The Black Death!
Black Death, woo!
The Black Death!
It's gonna get ya
It's the Black Death!
It's gonna hit ya
With those blisters, oozing like syrup
That pesky little pestilence is killing half of Europe
It's the Black Death
And it's coming for you!

—Something Rotten!, "The Black Death"

First... you...
Feel a little poorly, and then you start to swell! (Phrrp!)
Then you start to spit some blood and then you really smell! (Pong!)
Then you know it's time to ring your, fu-ner-al bell! (Dong!)
Along comes Mister Death, and swishes you to Hell! (Gone!)

—Horrible Histories, "The Plague Song"

"When will posterity believe this to have been a time in which nearly the whole world—not just this or that part of the earth—is bereft of inhabitants, without there having occurred a conflagration in the heavens or on land, without wars or other visible disasters? When at any time has such a thing been seen or spoken of? Has what happened in these years ever been read about: empty houses, derelict cities, ruined estates, fields strewn with cadavers, a horrible and vast solitude encompassing the whole world? Consult historians, they are silent; ask physicians, they are stupefied; seek the answer from philosophers, they shrug their shoulders, furrow their brows, and with fingers pressed against their lips, bid you be silent. Will posterity believe these things, when we who have seen it can scarcely believe it, thinking it a dream except that we are awake and see these things with our open eyes, and when we know that what we bemoan is absolutely true, as in a city fully lit by the torches of its funeral we head for home, finding our longed-for security in its emptiness? O happy people of the next generation, who will not know these miseries and most probably will reckon our testimony as a fable."

— Petrarch, Letters on Familiar Matters (1349)