"The vicar Andreas Lunnæus of Femsjö parish in southwestern Sweden was out surveying his fields in the spring of 1681. No matter what his mood was like when he set out, it certainly turned foul at the sight of one of his fields. He had entrusted his farmhand to sow the field, but the lazy scoundrel had absconded halfway through! The seeds were sown, but had not been covered over with soil, and thus served as an open buffet for all birds in the parish. The vicar surmised that the young farmhand had probably gone home to his parents in Vallshult, as he sometimes did, with or without permission. Lunnæus hastily saddled his horse and brought along a sturdy cane as he set out for Vallshult with the intention of teaching his lazy servant a lesson or two. He had guessed correctly – the farmhand was indeed spending his self-awarded vacation at his parents’ home in Vallshult. From where he sat inside the house, he probably didn’t see the highly agitated priest riding up the road – but his mother did, she was in another building at the time. As Lunnæus dismounted his horse next to the dunghill and started walking towards the door, cane in hand, she took off running to intercept him. The fuming vicar suddenly found his path blocked by a mother determined to protect her son. “Move aside, woman!” he commanded with all his priestly authority, but she wouldn’t move an inch. He pushed her, but she didn’t budge. He tried once again, and would probably have succeeded in shoving her aside, had not the woman decided to break all the rules and ignore hundreds of years of respect for the church – she grabbed the vicar’s beard and pulled with all her might! In another house nearby, Märta Svensdotter was going about her everyday chores, when she suddenly heard a strange “whimpering and puffing” sound. Curious, she poked her head out the door to investigate. First, she saw an unknown horse, grazing peacefully near the dunghill. Then she discovered the source of the strange sound – the respectable old parish priest was brawling with the neighbour’s wife! She was tugging his beard with one hand, and had grabbed the vicar’s cane with the other, in an attempt to prevent him from whacking her over the head. Märta ran over to make peace. She succeeded in squeezing herself in between the two fighters to separate them. The vicar staggered back a few steps as his enemy fell back onto the threshold, holding her trophy - a tuft of clerical beard - in her hand. The priest aimed a final, sullen kick at his opponent, but missed. At this point, Jöns Bengtsson, father of the negligent farmhand came home. “I would like to talk to you, but not to that bengäla*!”, Lunnæus exclaimed to Jöns, pointing at the exhausted woman in the doorway. The two men started talking, but could very well have come to blows; as Jöns noticed a swelling of substantial size developing below his wife’s eye, and realised what had caused it, he was understandably enraged. In the end, the two resolved the conflict peacefully. The vicar rode home with a smarting chin, and Jöns Bengtsson sent his son to finish his work on the fields. The whole debacle could very well have disappeared in the mists of time, had not the vicar brought the matter to the assizes court of Västbo härad a few months later. He claimed that Jöns Bengtssons wife was the first to resort to violence, and that he had merely defended himself, whilst Jöns Bengtsson claimed that the vicar had attacked his wife without provocation and beaten her so badly that she had not yet completely recovered. The court found it difficult to come to a verdict. The only witnesses (Märta and Jöns) had not seen who initiated the fight. The court attached no importance to the claim that Jöns Bengtssons wife had been ailing for months, since it was well known that she had travelled far and wide to tell her story and brag about the hairs she robbed from the vicar. In the end, the vicar was fined 6 marker and Jöns Bengtssons wife 3 marker." My source for this tale is the court records of the Västbo assizes court of 20th of July 1681: ​https://sok.riksarkivet.se/nad?postid=Arkis%204ebcb98e-615e-4206-80ea-eab6611751c1 *bengäla – an old insult, meaning “cruel woman”. It’s a corruption of the name Berengaria, in the local dialect. Berengaria was the wife of the Danish king Valdemar Sejr in the 13th century and was considered cruel and haughty.