The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (21 page)

SUMMER
: We call'd thee not, Orion, to this end,
To tell a story of dogs' qualities.
With all thy hunting how are we enrich'd?
What tribute payest thou us for thy high place?

ORION
: What tribute-should I pay you out of nought?
Hunters do hunt for pleasure, not for gain.
While dog-days last, the harvest safely thrives;
The sun burns hot, to finish up fruits' growth;
There is no blood-letting to make men weak.
Physicians with their
Cataposia
,
Recipe Elinctoria
,
Masticatorum
and
Cataplasmata
;
⁸⁴
Their gargarisms,
⁸⁵
clysters,
⁸⁶
and pitched cloths,
⁸⁷
Their perfumes, syrups, and their triacles,
⁸⁸
Refrain to poison the sick patients,
And dare not minister till I be out.
Then none will bathe, and so are fewer drown'd;
All lust is perilsome, therefore less us'd.
In brief, the year without me cannot stand:
Summer, I am thy staff and thy right hand.

SUMMER
: A broken staff, a lame right hand I had,
If thou wert all the stay that held me up.
Nihil violentum perpetuum
:
⁸⁹
‘No violence that liveth to old age.'
Ill-governed star, that never bod'st good luck,
I banish thee a twelve-month and a day,
Forth of my presence. Come not in my sight,
Nor show thy head, so much as in the night.

ORION
: I am content, though hunting be not out;
We will go hunt in hell for better hap.
One parting blow, my hearts, unto our friends,
To bid the fields and huntsmen all farewell.
Toss up your bugle horns unto the stars:
Toil findeth ease: peace follows after wars. [
Exit
]

[
Here they go out, blowing their horns and hallooing, as they came in
.]

WILL SUMMERS
: Faith, this scene of Orion is right
prandium caninum
, ‘a dog's dinner', which as it is without wine, so here's a coil about dogs without wit. If I had thought the Ship of Fools
⁹⁰
would have stayed to take in fresh water at the Isle of Dogs, I would have furnished it with a whole kennel of collections to the purpose. I have had a dog myself, that would dream and talk in his sleep, turn round like Ned Fool,
⁹¹
and sleep all night in a porridge-pot. Mark but the skirmish between Sixpence
⁹²
and the fox, and it is miraculous how they overcome one another in honourable courtesy. The fox, though he wears a chain, runs as though he were free, mocking us (as it is a crafty beast) because we, having a
lord and master to attend on, run about at our pleasures, like masterless men. Young Sixpence, the best page his master hath, plays a little and retires. I warrant he will not be far out of the way when his master goes to dinner. Learn of him, you diminutive urchins, how to behave yourselves in your vocation. Take not up your standings in a nut-tree, when you should be waiting on my lord's trencher. Shoot but a bit at butts; play but a span at points.
⁹³
Whatever you do,
memento mori
: remember to rise betimes in the morning.

SUMMER
: Vertumnus, call Harvest.

VERTUMNUS
: Harvest, by west, and by north, by south and southeast,
Show thyself like a beast.
Goodman Harvest, yeoman, come in and say what you can.
Room for the scythe and the sickles there!

[
Enter Harvest with a scythe on his neck, and all his reapers with sickles, and a great black bowl with a posset in it borne before him. They come in singing
.]

THE SONG

Merry, merry, merry, cherry, cherry, cherry,
Trowl the black bowl to me.
Hey derry, derry, 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.

SUMMER
: Harvest, the bailie of my husbandry,
What plenty hast thou heap'd into our barns?
I hope thou hast sped well, thou art so blithe.

HARVEST
: Sped well or ill, sir, I drink to you on the same.
Is your throat clear to help us to sing ‘Hooky, hooky'?

[
Here they all sing after him
.]

Hooky, hooky, we have shorn,
And we have bound,

And we have brought Harvest
Home to town.

AUTUMN
: Thou Corydon, why answer'st not direct?

HARVEST
: Answer? Why, friend, I am no tapster, to say ‘Anon, anon, sir'. But leave you to molest me, goodman tawny leaves, for fear (as the proverb says, ‘leave is light') so I mow off all your leaves with my scythe.

WINTER
: Mock not and mow not too long, you were best, For fear we whet not your scythe upon your pate.

SUMMER
: Since thou art so perverse in answering,
Harvest, hear what complaints are brought to me.
Thou art accused by the public voice,
For an engrosser
⁹⁴
of the common store:
A carl,
⁹⁵
thou hast no conscience, nor remorse,
But dost impoverish the fruitful earth,
To make thy garners rise up to the heavens.
To whom givest thou? Who feedeth at thy board?
No almës, but unreasonable gain,
Digests what thy huge iron teeth devour:
‘Small beer, coarse bread', the hinds and beggars cry,
Whilst thou withholdest both the malt and flour,
And giv'st us bran and water, fit for dogs.

HARVEST
: Hooky, hooky! If you were not my lord, I would say you lie. First and foremost, you say I am a grocer. A grocer is a citizen, I am no citizen, therefore no grocer. A hoarder-up of grain: that's false, for not so much but my elbows eat wheat every time I lean on them. A carl: that is as much to say as a coney-catcher of good fellowship. For that one word you shall pledge me a carouse; eat a spoonful of the curd to allay your choler. My mates and fellows, sing no more ‘Merry, merry', but weep out a lamentable ‘Hooky, Hooky', and let your sickles cry:

Sick, sick, and very sick,
And sick, and for the time;

For Harvest your master is
Abus'd without reason or rhyme.

I have no conscience, I? I'll come nearer to you, and yet I am no scab, nor a louse. Can you make proof wherever I sold away my conscience, or pawned it? I think I have given you the pose:
⁹⁶
blow your nose, Master Constable. But to say that I impoverish the earth, that I rob the man in the moon, that I take a purse on the top of Paul's steeple: by this straw and thread, I swear you are no gentleman, no proper man, no honest man, to make me sing ‘Oh man in desperation'.
⁹⁷

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 jetted
¹⁰⁰
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-fs, 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 Mingo
¹⁰⁴
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