“A marchaunt was ther with a forked berd,

In motteleye, and high on horse he sat,

Uppon his heed a Flaundrisch bever hat . . .

Ther wiste no man that he was in dette

So estately was he of governaunce.”

From the Ellesmere MS. • 245

[48]. Forest life; wood-cutters. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 100 b • 254

[49]. Forest life; a shooting casualty. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 203 a • 258

[50]. Reaping time. Labourers reaping corn under the supervision of the hayward. From the MS. 2 B. vii., fol. 78 b. English, early fourteenth century. “They dwell in fayre houses, and we haue the payne and traueyle, rayne and wynd in the feldes” (speech of John Ball, in Lord Berners’ Froissart, chap. ccclxxxi). The overseer shown in the drawing may possibly be a bailiff: “Supervidere debet ballivus falcatores, messores, cariatores,” &c. (“Fleta,” cap. 73), or a provost, who had about the same duties, but was practically chosen by the peasants themselves. But it seems more likely to be a hayward; the dress and attitude better suit a man in that station. The care of seeing that “repemen . . . repe besili and clenli,” was sometimes entrusted to such officers; see Skeat, “Notes to Piers the Plowman,” Early English Text Society, 1877, p. 273. A horn, such as our man bears, was always carried by haywards, who used to blow it to warn off people from straying in the crops. The rough and commanding attitude seen in the drawing would not be so readily expected from a bailiff with his juridical knowledge and com­par­a­tive­ly high function, or from a provost appointed by the peasants themselves, as from a hayward or garde champêtre • 267

[51]. In the stocks. A woman and a monk are put into them; a gentleman abuses them. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 187, where it forms part of a series of drawings illustrating a fabliau of the same sort as the one alluded to above (illustration No. 28). It is called, Du soucretain et de la fame au chevalier; the author is Rutebeuf, and it may be found in the works of this the most famous of the French thirteenth-century poets (ed. Jubinal, or ed. Kressner) • 272