es to the full number of the bumbees and myrmidons to go
a-handsel-getting on the first day of the new year, at that very time when
they give brewis to the oxen and deliver the key of the coals to the
country-girls for serving in of the oats to the dogs. All the night long
they did nothing else, keeping their hands still upon the pot, but
despatch, both on foot and horseback, leaden-sealed writs or letters, to
wit, papal commissions commonly called bulls, to stop the boats; for the
tailors and seamsters would have made of the stolen shreds and clippings a
goodly sagbut to cover the face of the ocean, which then was great with
child of a potful of cabbage, according to the opinion of the
hay-bundle-makers. But the physicians said that by the urine they
could discern no manifest sign of the bustard's pace, nor how to eat
double-tongued mattocks with mustard, unless the lords and gentlemen of the
court should be pleased to give by B.mol express command to the pox not to
run about any longer in gleaning up of coppersmiths and tinkers; for the
jobbernolls had already a pretty good beginning in their dance of the
British jig called the estrindore, to a perfect diapason, with one foot in
the fire, and their head in the middle, as goodman Ragot was wont to say.

Ha, my masters, God moderates all things, and disposeth of them at his
pleasure, so that against unlucky fortune a carter broke his frisking whip,
which was all the wind-instrument he had. This was done at his return from
the little paltry town, even then when Master Antitus of Cressplots was
licentiated, and had passed his degrees in all dullery and blockishness,
according to this sentence of the canonists, Beati Dunces, quoniam ipsi
stumblaverunt. But that which makes Lent to be so high, by St. Fiacre of
Bry, is for nothing else but that the Pentecost never comes but to my cost;
yet, on afore there, ho! a little rain stills a great wind, and we must
think so, seeing that the sergeant hath propounded the matter so far above
my reach, that the clerks and secondaries could not with the benefit
thereof lick their fingers, feathered with ganders, so orbicularly as they
were wont in other things to do. And we do manifestly see that everyone
acknowledgeth himself to be in the error wherewith another hath been
charged, reserving only those cases whereby we are obliged to take an
ocular inspection in a perspective glass of these things towards the place
in the chimney where