“And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now, you'd see the ragged, mouldy bedclothes a-heaving and a-heaving like seas." "And a-heaving and a-heaving with what?" he says. "Why, with the rats under 'em.
'Tom Tiddler's Ground' by Charles Dickens, 1861”
―
M.R. James,
Rats