~~~~~~~~~~~
Elf.Ed. Note: Click on the footnote number or “Notes” and it will take you down to that note, click on that footnote number and you will jump up to where you were in the text.
From Legends and Satires From Mediæval Literature, edited by Martha Hale Shackford; Ginn and Company; Boston; 1913; pp. 131-133.
~~~~~~~~~~~
131
THE COMPLAINT OF THE HUSBANDMAN1
I heard men upon earth make many a moan,
Of how they were harried in their task of tilling:
Good years and grain are both of them gone,
We enjoy here no tales, and have no song to sing.
Now we must work, no way else is known,
I may no longer live by my gleaning.
Yet even a bitterer demand has upgrown,
For ever the fourth penny goes to the king.
Thus we complain of the king and have cares that are cold;
Though we dream of recovery we are ever downcast.
He who has any goods which he hoped he could hold
Learns that what we love most we must lose at the last.
Loath are we to lose what little there is,
And we have our henchmen who will for pay sue.
The hayward2 bodes harm if we have aught of his,
The bailiff3 with blows shows how well he can do,
The woodward4 awaits in the watched wilderness:
Neither riches nor rest will arise for us few.
Thus they pillage the poor, who have little of bliss,
And must sweat at their toil and waste away too.
He must needs waste away, whatever he swore,
Who hath not a hood his own head to hide.
Thus will walks in the land, and law is no more,
And picked from the poor is the persecutor’s pride.
132
Thus they pillage the poor and pick them all clean,
And the rich men are ruling without any right;
Their lands and their people all lie very lean,
Through demands of the bailiffs such sorrows alight.
Men of religion5 are abject and mean
As are baron and bondman,6 the clerk and the knight.
Thus will walks in the land and sorrow is seen,
Falsehood grows fat and mars all with his might.
He stands still in a spot and shows a stern soul,
Who makes beggars wander with long staves and bags;
Thus we are hunted from hall and from hole,
And those who wore robes are now wearing rags.
Then come the beadles7 with many a boast:
“Supply me with silver for the green wax,8
Thou art set down in my writ as thou thyself know’st,”
Yet more than ten times have I paid my tax.
Then I must furnish hens for the roast,
And fairly, each fish day, have lamprey and lax.9
If I go to the market, I lose, at the most,
Though I sell my bill10 and my bix axe.
I may place my pledge well if I will,
Or sell my corn when it’s green as the grass;
Yet I am a foul churl, though they have their fill;
What I’ve save all the year I must spend at this pass.
Needs must I spend what I’ve saved from of yore,
Against the coming of catchpoles I must take care;
133
The master beadle comes in like a brutish boar
And says he will make my dwelling all bare,
So then I must bribe him, with one mark or more,
Although I at the set day should sell my own mare;
Thus the green wax grieves us neath our garments poor,
So that men hunt us as hound does the hare.
They hunt us as hound does a hare on a hill;
Since I took to the land such woe I’ve been taught.
The beadles have never had quite all their fill.
For they slip away, and it’s we who are caught.
Thus I catch and I carry cares that are cold,
Since I have had cottage and reckoning to keep.
To seek silver for the king, my seed I have sold,
And my land has lain fallow and learned how to sleep.
Since they took my fair cattle away from the fold,
When I think of old joys I am ready to weep;
Thus are bred so many of these beggars bold,
And our rye is rotten and rank ere we reap.
Rank is our rye and rotten in the straw.
Because of foul weather by brook and by shore;
Thus wakes in this world the worst woe men e’er saw,
As well waste away, as work thus evermore.
Translated by M. H. S.
FOOTNOTES
1 See Notes.
2 hedge-warden, over-seer.
3
under-steward.
4 wood-warden.
5 religious orders.
6 peasant.
7 over-seers.
8 wax for king’s seal.
9 salmon.
10 implement for pruning.
[174]
THE COMPLAINT OF THE HUSBANDMAN
The “complaint” or “song,” was written during the thirteenth century when the persecutions of the poor farmers by lords and their officers were most extreme. The poem explains very fully the various abuses which finally so incensed the poor that they rose in revolt and won certain rights from their oppressors. The Middle English text is found in K. Boeddeker’s “Altenglische Dichtungen,” p. 102, Berlin, 1878, and in T. Wright’s “Political Songs,” Camden Society, Vol. VI, p. 149.
The meter and rime of the original have been kept, in this translation, even at the risk of a few very slight changes in the order or in the phrasing of the original, because the versification is illustrative of the transition from the old alliterative line to the elaborate stanza forms of the French period.
~~~~~~~~~~~
