By St. Paul (quod Pierce), these are profitable : words!

Wend thee, Hunger, when thou wilt, yet well be thou ever!

For this is a lovely lesson, Lord it thee for-yield !

Bihote God! (quod Hunger) hence ne will I

I

wend

Till I have dined, by this day, and drunken both.

I have no penny, (quod Pierce) pullets for to buy, Ne neither goose, ne grys; but two green cheeses, A few curds, and cream, and an haver-cake, 3 And two loaves of beans and bran, bake for my folk. And yet, I say by my soul, I have no salt bacon,

Ne no

4

cokeney, 5 by Christ! collops for to make.

And I have parsley, and porets, and many coleplants,

And eke a cow and a calf, and a cart-mare

To draw a-field my dung the while the drought

lasteth;

And by this live-lod I must live 'till Lammas time.

By that, I hope to have harvest in

And then I may dight my

If God permit?

3

Oat-cake

9

my croft;

dinner as my

dear liketh.

Gryce, pig. Bannatyne Gloss.

7" Dress my dinner as me pleaseth."

Leeks. Fr.

And all the poor people tho peas-cods fet;

Beans and baken apples they brought in her laps, Chyboles, and chervil, and ripe cherries many,

I

And proffer'd Pierce this present to please with Hunger.

("Poor folk feed Hunger"-marginal note.)

All Hunger ate in haste, and asked after more. Then poor folk, for fear, fed Hunger yern2 With green poret, and peasen; to poison him they thought.

By that it nighed to harvest; new corn came tocheaping. 3

Then was folk fain, 4 and fed Hunger with the best, With good ale, as Glutton taught, and gart 5 Hunger asleep.

And tho would Waster no work, but wandren about;

Ne no beggar eat bread that beans in were,

But of coket and clermatyne,? or else of clean wheat;

Ciboule. Fr. cipolla.
Eagerly. Sax.

$ Made. Sax.

6 A particular sort of bread.

7 Perhaps another sort of bread used at breakfast.

Ne no half-penny ale in no wise drink,

But of the best and of the brownest that in burth'

is to sell.

Labourers that have no land to live on but her

hands

Deigned not to dine a day night old wortes : 3

May no penny-ale hem pay, nor no piece of bacon; But if it be fresh flesh, other fish fried either or bake, And that chaud or plus chaud, for chilling of her maw, &c.

[Crowley's first edition, fol. 35. pass. vi.]

The following passage has the marginal admo"Read this" indeed the prediction with which it concludes is very curious.

nition,

And now is Religion a rider, a roamer by street, A leader of lovedays, and a loud beggar,

4

• In some editions the word not is omitted, which will only increase the perplexity. The meaning, as the line stands here (from ed. I. 1550), seems to be, that labourers, &c. refused their usual dinner (or rather supper) of old cabbage; this, however, is strangely expressed,

worts or

3

4

Cabbage.

Loveday (says Tyrwhitt, note on v. 260 Cant. Tales) is a day appointed for the amicable settlement of differences.

A pricker of a palfrey from manor to manor,
An heap of hounds at his—as he a lord were:
And but if his knave1 kneel that shall his cope bring,
He loured on him, and asked, who taught him.
courtesy ?

Little had lords to done to give lands from her heirs

To Religious, that have no ruth if it rain on her

altars.

In many places there the parsons be by hemself at

ease;

Of the poor have they no pity: and that is her charity!

And they letten hem as lords, her lands lie so broad.

AND THERE SHALL COME A KING and confess you, Religious,

And beat you, as the bible telleth, for breaking of your rule,

And amend monials, monks, and canons,

And put hem to her penance—

*

And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon, and all his

The limits of the present publication will not admit of many extracts from this curious work, but the following description, in which Nature or Kind is represented as sending forth diseases from the planets, at the command of Conscience, and of his attendants Age and Death, is too striking to be omitted: particularly since it appears to have suggested to Milton his sublime description of the lazar-house (Paradise Lost, B. xi. l. 477). This coincidence is remarked by Mrs. Cooper, in her" Muses' Library."

Kind Conscience tho herd, and came out of the planets,

And sent forth his forriours,2 fevers, and fluxes, Coughs, and cardiacles,3 cramps, and tooth-aches,

Boils, and botches, and burning agues,

Phrenesis, and foul evil, foragers of Kind!

There was "Harowe! and help! here cometh Kind "With Death that is dreadful to undone us all!"

Age the hoar, he was in the va-ward,

And bare the banner before Death; by right he it claimed.

Foragers, Fr. 3 Cardialgia, heart-ache, Gr.