Unnamed Relatives of Lump Snopes

Lump Snopes' mother in The Hamlet was one "of a moil of sisters and brothers" (218). 'Moil' is an archaic term that can mean 'confusion,' so the sense of this is that she was one of many children; this reading is confirmed when the narrator notes that her father was "a congenital failure" who "begot . . . more children whom he could not quite feed" (218).