I thought;

Som seyde, it was long on the fyr-making,
Som seyde, nay! it was on the blowing....
"Straw," quod the thridde, "ye been lewede and nyce,
It was nat tempred as it oghte be."

A fourth discovers a fourth cause: "Our fyr was nat maad of beech." What
wonder, with so many causes for a failure, that it failed? We will begin
over again.[536]

Or else, we have representations of those interested visits that
mendicant friars paid to the dying. The friar, low, trivial,
hypocritical, approaches:

"Deus hic," quod he, "O Thomas, freend, good day."

He lays down his staff, wallet, and hat; he takes a seat, the cat was on
the bench, he makes it jump down; he settles himself; the wife bustles
about, he allows her to, and even encourages her. What could he eat? Oh!
next to nothing, a fowl's liver, a pig's head roasted, the lightest
repast; his "stomak is destroyed;"

My spirit hath his fostring in the Bible.

He thereupon delivers to the sick man a long and interested sermon,
mingled with Latin words, in which the verb "to give" comes in at every
line: whatever you do, don't give to others, give to me; give to my
convent, don't give to the convent next door:

A! yif that covent half a quarter otes!
A! yif that covent four and twenty grotes!
A! yif that frere a peny and let him go....
Thomas, of me thou shalt nat ben y-flatered;
Thou woldest ban our labour al for noght.[537]

Pay then, give then, give me this, or only that; Thomas gives less
still.

Familiar scenes, equally true but of a more pleasing kind, are found in
other narratives, for instance in the story of Chauntecleer the cock, so
well localised with a few words, in a green, secluded country nook:

A poure widwe, somdel stope in age
Was whylom dwelling in a narwe cotage,
Bisyde a grove, standing in a dale.

Her stable, her barn-yard are described; we hear the lowing of the cows
and the crowing of the cock; the tone rises little by little, and we get
to the mock-heroic style. Chauntecleer the cock,

In al the land of crowing nas his peer.
His vois was merier than the mery orgon
On messe-days that in the chirche gon;
Wel sikerer was his crowing in his logge
Than is a clokke, or an abbey orlogge....
His comb was redder than the fyn coral,
And batailed, as it were a castel-wal!

He had a black beak, white "nayles," and azure legs; he reigned
unrivalled over the