Darby and Joan

A loving, old-fashioned, virtuous couple. The names belong to a ballad written by Henry Woodfall, and the characters are those of John Darby, of Bartholomew Close, who died 1730, and his wife, “As chaste as a picture cut in alabaster. You might sooner move a Scythian rock than shoot fire into her bosom.” Woodfall served his apprenticeship to John Darby.