The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works
Page 16
SUMMER: I must give credit unto what I hear,
For other than I hear, attract I nought.
HARVEST: Ay, ay: nought seek, nought have.
An ill husband is the first step to a knave.
You object I feed none at my board. I am sure if you were a hog you would never say so, for, surreverence of their worships, they feed at my stable table every day. I keep good hospitality for hens and geese. Gleaners are oppressed with heavy burdens of my bounty:
They rake me and eat me to the very bones,
Till there be nothing left but gravel and stones.
And yet I give no alms, but devour all? They say, when a man cannot hear well, ‘You hear with your harvest ears.’98 But if you heard with your harvest ears, that is, with the ears of corn which my alms-cart scatters, they would tell you that I am the very poor man’s box of pity, that there are more holes of liberality open in Harvest’s heart than in a sieve or a dust-box. Suppose you were a craftsman, or an artificer, and should come to buy corn of me, you should have bushels of me: not like the baker’s loaf that should weigh but six ounces, but usury for your money, thousands for one.99 What would you have more? Eat me out of my apparel if you will, if you suspect me for a miser.
SUMMER: I credit thee, and think thou wert belied. But tell me, hadst thou a good crop this year ?
HARVEST: Hay, God’s plenty, which was so sweet and so good, that when I jetted100 my whip and said to my horses but ‘Hay’, they would go as they were mad.
SUMMER: But ‘hay’ alone thou say’st not, but ‘Hay-ree’.
HARVEST: I sing ‘hay-ree’, that is ‘hay and rye’, meaning that they shall have hay and rye their belly-fulls, if they will draw hard. So we say ‘Wa hay’, when they go out of the way, meaning that they shall want hay if they will not do as they should do.
SUMMER: How thrive thy oats, thy barley and thy wheat?
HARVEST: My oats grow like a cup of beer that makes the brewer grow rich; my rye, like a cavalier that wears a huge feather in his cap but hath no courage in his heart, had a long stalk, a goodly husk, but nothing so great a kernel as it was wont. My barley, even as many a novice is crossbitten as soon as ever he peeps out of the shell, so was it frost-bitten in the blade, yet picked up his crumbs again afterward, and bade ‘Fill pot, hostess’, in spite of a dear year. As for my pease and my fetches,101 they are famous and not to be spoken of.
AUTUMN: Ay, ay, such country buttoned-caps as you do want no fetches to undo great towns.
HARVEST: Will you make good your words, that we want no fetches?
WINTER: Ay, that he shall.
HARVEST: Then fetch us a cloak-bag, to carry away yourself in.
SUMMER: Plough-swains are blunt, and will taunt bitterly.
Harvest, when all is done, thou art the man,
Thou doest me the best service of them all.
Rest from thy labours till the year renews,
And let the husbandmen sing of thy praise.
HARVEST: Rest from my labours, and let the husbandmen sing of my praise? Nay, we do not mean to rest so. By your leave, well have a largesse amongst you ere we part.
ALL: A largesse, a largesse, a largesse!
WILL SUMMERS: Is there no man that will give them a hiss for a largesse?102
HARVEST: No, that there is not, goodman lundgis.103 I see charity waxeth cold, and I think this house be her habitation, for it is not very hot. We are as good even put up our pipes and sing ‘Merry, merry’, for we shall get no money.
[Here they go out all singing.]
Merry, merry, merry, cherry, cherry, cherry,
Trowl the black bowl to me.
Hey derry, deny, with a poop and a lerry,
I’ll trowl it again to thee.
Hooky, hooky, we have shorn and we have bound,
And we have brought Harvest Home to town.
WILL SUMMERS: Well, go thy ways, thou bundle of straw. I’ll give thee this gift: thou shalt be a clown while thou liv’st. as lusty as they are, they run on the score with George’s wife for their posset, and God knows who shall pay Goodman Yeomans for his wheatsheaf. They may sing well enough ‘Trowl the black bowl to me, trowl the black bowl to me’, for a hundred to one but they will be all drunk ere they go to bed. Yet of a slavering fool that hath no conceit in anything but in carrying a wand in his hand with commendation when he runneth by the highway side, this stripling Harvest hath done reasonable well. Oh that somebody had had the wit to set his thatched suit on fire, and so lighted him out. If I had had but a jet ring on my finger, I might have done with him what I list I had spoiled him, I had took his apparel prisoner; for, it being made of straw, and the nature of jet to draw straw unto it, I would have nailed him to the pommel of my chair till the play were done and then have carried him to my chamber door, and laid him at the threshold as a wisp, or a piece of mat, to wipe my shoes on every time I come up dirty.
SUMMER: Vertumnus, call Bacchus!
VERTUMNUS: Bacchus, Baccha, Bacchum, god Bacchus, god fatback!
Baron of double beer and bottle ale,
Come in and show thy nose that is nothing pale.
Back, back there, god barrel-belly may enter!
[Enter Bacchus riding upon an ass trapped in ivy, himself dressed in vine-leaves, and a garland of grapes on his head, his companions having all jacks in their hands and ivy garlands on their heads. They come in singing.]
THE SONG
Monsieur Mingo104 for quaffing doth surpass,
In cup, in can, or glass.
God Bacchus, do me right,
And dub me Knight Domingo.
BACCHUS: Wherefore didst thou call me, Vertumnus? Hast any drink to give me? One of you hold my ass while I light. Walk him up and down the hall, till i talk a word or two.
SUMMER: What, Bacchus? Still animus in patinis, 105 no mind but on the pot?
BACCHUS: Why, Summer, Summer, how wouldst do but for rain? What is a fair house without water coming to it? Let me see how a smith can work if he have not his trough standing by him. What sets an edge on a knife? The grindstone alone? No, the moist element poured upon it, which grinds out all gaps, sets a point upon it, and scours it as bright as the firmament So, I tell thee, give a soldier wine before he goes to battle, it grinds out all gaps, it makes him forget all scars and wounds, and fight in the thickest of his enemies as though he were but at foils amongst his fellows. Give a scholar wine, going to his book, or being about to invent, it sets a new point on his wit, it glazeth it, it scours it, it gives him acumen. Plato saith vinum esse fomitem quemdam, et incitabilem in-genii virtutisque.106 Aristotle saith: Nulla est magna scientia absque mixtura dementiae: There is no excellent knowledge without mixture of madness.’ And what makes a man more mad in the head than wine? Qui bene vult poyein, debet ante pinyen: ‘he that will do well must drink well.’ Prome, prome, potum prome: ‘Ho, butler, a fresh pot!’ Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero terra pulsanda.107 A pox on him that leaves his drink behind him! Hey, Rendezvous!108
SUMMER: It is wine’s custom to be full of words: I prithee, Bacchus, give us vicissitudinem loquendi.109
BACCHUS: A fiddlestick! Ne’er tell me I am full of wouds. Faecundi calices, quem non fecere disertum?110 Aut epi, aut abi: ‘either take your drink, or you are an infidel.’
SUMMER: I would about thy vintage question thee. How thrive thy vines? Hadst thou good store of grapes?
BACCHUS: Vinum quasi venenum. Wine is poison to a sick body; a sick body is no sound body; ergo, wine is a pure thing and is poison to all corruption. Trilill, the hunters’ hoop111 to you. I’ll stand to it, Alexander was a brave man and yet an arrant drunkard.
WINTER: Fie, drunken sot, forget’st thou where thou art?
My Lord asks thee what vintage thou hast made.
BACCHUS: Our vintage was a vintage, for it did not work upon the advantage.112 It came in the vanguard of summer,
And winds and storms met it by the way,
And made it cry ‘Alas and welladay�
�.
SUMMER: That was not well, but all miscarried not?
BACCHUS: Faith, shall I tell you no lie? Because you are my countryman and so forth, and a good fellow is a good fellow, though he have never a penny in his purse. We had but even pot-luck, a little to moisten our lips, and no more. That same Sol is a pagan and a proselyte.113 He shined so bright all summer that he burned more grapes than his beams were worth, were every beam as big as a weaver’s beam. A fabis abstinendum:114 faith, he should have abstained. For what is flesh and blood without his liquor?
AUTUMN: Thou want’st no liquor, nor no flesh and blood.
I pray thee, may I ask without offence?
How many tuns of wine hast in thy paunch?
Methinks that belly, built like a round church,
Should yet have some of Julius Caesar’s wine.
I warrant, ‘twas not broach’d this hundred year.
BACCHUS: Hearest thou, dough-belly? Because thou talk’st, and talk’st, and dar’st not drink to me a black jack, wilt thou give me leave to broach this little kilderkin115 of my corpse against thy back? I know thou art but a micher,116 and dar’st not stand me. A vous, Monsieur Winter, a frolic upsey-freeze. Cross, ho! Super nagulum!117
[Knocks the jack upon his thumb.]
WINTER: Grammercy, Bacchus, as much as though I did. For this time thou must pardon me perforce.
BACCHUS: What, give me the disgrace? Go to, I am no pope to pardon any man. Ran, ran, tarra: cold beer makes good blood. Saint George for England: somewhat is better than nothing! Let me see: hast thou done me justice? Why so, thou art a king, though there were no more kings in the cards but the knave. Summer, wilt thou have a demi-culverin,118 that shall cry ‘Hufty Tufty’ and make thy cup fly fine meal in the element?119
SUMMER: No, keep thy drink, I pray thee, to thyself.
BACCHUS: This Pupillonian in the fool’s coat shall have a cast of martins and a whiff.120 To the health of Captain Rinocerotry!121 Look to it, let him have weight and measure.
WILL SUMMERS: What an ass is this! I cannot drink so much, though I should burst.
BACCHUS: Fool, do not refuse your moist sustenance. Come, come, dog’s head in the pot,122 do what you are born to!
WILL SUMMERS: If you will needs make me a drunkard against my will, so it is. I’ll try what burthen my belly is of.
BACCHUS: Crouch, crouch on your knees, fool, when you pledge god Bacchus.
[Here Will Summers drinks, and they sing about him. Bacchus begins]
ALL: Monsieur Mingo for quaffing did surpass,
In cup, in can, or glass.
BACCHUS: Ho, well shot! A toucher,123 a toucher! For quaffing Toy doth pass, in cup, in can, or glass.
ALL: God Bacchus do him right,
And dub him knight
[Here he dubs Will Summers with the black jack.]
BACCHUS: Rise up, Sir Robert Tosspot.
SUMMER: No more of this, I hate it to the death.
No such deformer of the soul and sense
As is this swinish damn’d-born drunkenness.
Bacchus, for thou abusest so earth’s fruits,
Imprisoned live in cellars and in vaults.
Let none commit their counsels unto thee;
Thy wrath be fatal to thy dearest friends;
Unarmed run upon thy foeman’s swords;
Never fear any plague before it fall;
Dropsies and watery tympanies124 haunt thee,
Thy lungs with surfeiting be putrefied,
To cause thee have an odious stinking breath.
Slaver and drivel like a child at mouth;
Be poor and beggarly in thy old age;
Let thy own kinsmen laugh when thou complain’st,
And many tears gain nothing but blind scoffs.
This is the guerdon125 due to drunkenness;
Shame, sickness, misery, follow excess.
BACCHUS: Now on my honour, Sim Summer, thou art a bad member, a dunce, a mongrel, to discredit so worshipful an art after this order. Thou hast cursed me, and I will bless thee. Never cup of nippitaty126 in London come near thy niggardly habitation. I beseech the gods of good fellowship, thou may’st fall into a consumption with drinking small beer. Every day may’st thou eat fish, and let it stick in the midst of thy maw for want of a cup of wine to swim away in. Venison bevenenum127 to thee, and may that vintner have the plague in his house that sells thee a drop of claret to kill the poison of it. As many wounds may’st thou have as Caesar had in the Senate House, and get no white wine to wash them with. And to conclude, pine away in melancholy and sorrow, before thou hast the fourth part of a dram of my juice to cheer up thy spirits.
SUMMER: Hale him away! He barketh like a wolf. It is his drink, not he, that rails on us.
BACCHUS: Nay, soft, brother Summer. Back with that foot. Here is a snuff128 in the bottom of the jack, enough to light a man to bed withal. We’ll leave no flocks behind us, whatsoever we do.
SUMMER: Go drag him hence, I say, when I command.
BACCHUS: Since we must needs go, let’s go merrily. Farewell, Sir Robert Tosspot Sing amain ‘Monsieur Mingo’ whilst I mount up my ass.
[Here they go out singing ‘Monsieur Mingo’ as they came in.]
WILL SUMMERS: Of all gods, this Bacchus is the ill-favourd’st, misshapen god that ever I saw. A pox on him, he hath christened me with a new nickname of Sir Robert Tosspot that will not part from me this twelvemonth. Ned Fool’s clothes are so perfumed with the beer he poured on me that there shall not be a Dutchman129 within twenty mile, but he’ll smell out and claim kindred of him. What a beastly thing is it to bottle up ale in a man’s belly, when a man must set his guts on a gallon pot last, only to purchase the alehouse title of a boon companion? ‘Carouse, pledge me and you dare!’ ‘Swounds, I’ll drink with thee for all thou art worth!’ It is even as two men should strive who should run furthest into the sea for a wager. Methinks these are good household terms: ‘Will it please you to be here, sir? I commend me to you. Shall I be so bold as trouble you? Saving your tale, I drink to you.’ And if these were put in practice but a year or two in taverns, wine would soon fall from six and twenty pound a tun, and be beggar’s money, a penny a quart, and take up his inn with waste beer in the alms tub. I am a sinner as others: I must not say much of this argument. Everyone, when he is whole, can give advice to them that are sick. My masters, you that be good fellows, get you into corners and sup off your provender closely. Report hath a blister on her tongue; open taverns are tell-tales. Non peccat quicunque potest peccasse negare.130
SUMMER: I’ll call my servants to account, said I?
A bad account: worse servants no man hath.
Quos credis fidos effuge, tutus eris:131
The proverb I have prov’d to be too true.
Totidem domi hostes habemus, quot servos.132
And that wise caution of Democritus:
Servus necessaria possessio, non autem dulcis:133
Now here fidelity and labour dwells.
Hope-young134 heads count to build on had-I-wist.
Conscience but few respect; all hunt for gain.
Except the camel have his provender
Hung at his mouth, he will not travel on.
Tyresias to Narcissus promised
Much prosperous hap and many golden days,
If of his beauty he no knowledge took.
Knowledge breeds pride, pride breedeth discontent.
Black discontent, thou urgest to revenge.
Revenge opes not her ears to poor men’s prayers.
That dolt destruction is she without doubt,
That hales her forth and feedeth her with nought
Simplicity and plainness, you I love:
Hence, double diligence, thou mean’st deceit
Those that now serpent-like creep on the ground,
And seem to eat the dust they crouch so low,
If they be disappointed of their prey,
Most traitorously will, trace135 their t
ails and sting.
Yea, such as, like the lapwing, build their nests
In a man’s dung, come up by drudgery,
Will be the first that, like that foolish bird,
Will follow him with yelling and false cries.
Well sung a shepherd, that now sleeps in skies,
‘Dumb swans do love, and not vain chattering pies.’136
In mountains, poets137 say, Echo is hid,
For her deformity and monstrous shape.
Those mountains are the houses of great lords,
Where Stentor138 with his hundred voices sounds
A hundred trumps at once with rumour filled.
A woman they imagine her to be,
Because that sex keeps nothing close they hear;
And that’s the reason magic writers139 frame
There are more witches women than of men,
For women generally, for the most part,
Of secrets more desirous are than men,
Which having got, they have no power to hold.
In these times had Echo’s first fathers lived,
No woman, but a man, she had been feign’d
(Though women yet will want140 no news to prate).
For men, mean men, the scum and dross of all,
Will talk and babble of they know not what,
Upbraid, deprave, and taunt they care not whom.
Surmises pass for sound approved truths;
Familiarity and conference,
That were the sinews of societies,
Are now for underminings only us’d,
And novel wits, that love none but themselves,
Think wisdom’s height as falsehood slyly couch’d,
Seeking each other to o’erthrow his mate.
Oh friendship, thy old temple is defac’d.
Embracing every guileful courtesy141
Hath overgrown fraud-wanting honesty.
Examples live but in the idle schools:
Sinon142 bears all the sway in princes’ courts.