We know very little about Langland. So little do we know that we are not sure if his name was really William or not. But in his poem called The Vision of Piers the Ploughman he says, "I have lived in the land, quoth I, my name is long Will." It is chiefly from his poem that we learn to know the man. When we have read it, we seem to see him, tall and thin, with lean earnest face, out of which shine great eyes, the eyes that see visions. His head is shaven like a monk's; he wears a shabby long gown which flaps in the breeze as he strides along.
Langland was born in the country, perhaps in Oxfordshire, perhaps in Shropshire, and he went to school at Great Malvern. He loved school, for he says:—
"For if heaven be on earth, and ease to any soul,
It is in cloister or in school. Be many reasons I find
For in the cloister cometh no man, to chide nor to fight,
But all is obedience here and books, to read and to learn."
Perhaps Langland's friends saw that he was clever, and hoped that he might become one of the great ones in the Church. In those days (the Middle Ages they were called) there was no sharp line dividing the priests from the people. The one shaded off into the other, as it were. There were many who wore long gowns and shaved their heads, who yet were not priests. They were called clerks, and for a sum of money, often very small, they helped to sing masses for the souls of the dead, and performed other offices in connection with the services of the Church. They were bound by no vows and were allowed to marry, but of course could never hope to be powerful. Such was Langland; he married and always remained a poor "clerk."
But if Langland did not rise high in the Church, he made himself famous in another way, for he wrote Piers the Ploughman. This is a great book. There is no other written during the fourteenth century, in which we see so clearly the life of the people of the time.
There are several versions of Piers, and it is thought by some that Langland himself wrote and re-wrote his poem, trying always to make it better. But others think that some one else wrote the later versions.
The poem is divided into parts. The first part is The Vision of
Piers the Ploughman, the second is The Vision Concerning Do Well,
Do Bet, Do Best.
In the beginning of Piers the Ploughman Langland tells us how
"In a summer season when soft was the sun,
I wrapped myself in a cloak as if I were a shepherd
In the habit of a hermit unholy of works,
Abroad I wandered in this world wonders to hear.
But on a May morning on Malvern Hills
Me befell a wonder, a strange thing. Methought,
I was weary of wandering, and went me to rest
Under a broad bank by a burn side.
And as I lay, and leaned, and looked on the waters
I slumbered in a sleeping it sounded so merry."
If you will look back you will see that this poetry is very much more like Layamon's than like the poetry of Havelok the Dane. Although people had, for many years, been writing rhyming verse, Langland has, you see, gone back to the old alliterative poetry. Perhaps it was that, living far away in the country, Langland had written his poem before he had heard of the new kind of rhyming verses, for news traveled slowly in those days.