Page:The English Peasant.djvu/23

 is continually preaching "hard work" to the "dikeres and the delveres" and other workmen on the land; and is ceaseless in the expression of his abomination of idle and lazy vagabonds who waste what others win; and he has no toleration for beggars, especially of the canting sort, who array themselves as "heremites" and "freres," "ancres" and "pilgrymes," who,

The stern way in which he carries out in his own family this duty of fulfilling by hard work the labourers' part of the covenant, is seen in the names of his wife and children,—

Behind this stern exterior he hides so tender a heart that he cannot bear even to see "wastoures wolves kynnes" starving; nevertheless he clokes his compassion in rough words. But his heart once opened, his pity for the miserable idlers increases with every beat, and from letting them "eat with hogges," he soon rises to feeding them on "melke and mene ale." For real poverty his sympathy is unbounded even if they have done evil; let God be the avenger. He has evidently known what it was himself to feel "Hunger at his maw."

For although the labourers' position was rising so fast that they would no longer dine of stale vegetables, and were not even content with penny ale and bacon, but expected fresh meat or fish fried or baked, and that straight from the fire, the husbandman who preferred independence to a full stomach had many a struggle, especially during the month preceding harvest.

"'I have no peny,' quod peres, 'poletes forto bigge, Ne neyther gees ne grys, but two grene cheses, A fewe cruddes and creem, and an haver cake, And two loves of benes and bran, y-bake for my fauntis. And yet I say, by my soule, I have no salt bacoun;