And then he clos’d his eyes, and died.’
To show the popular idea of a miller’s integrity, I may mention that the children in Somersetshire, when they have caught a certain kind of large white moth, which they call a Miller, chant over it this refrain:
‘Millery! millery! Dousty Poll!
How many sacks of corn hast thou stole?’
and then they put the poor insect to death on account of its imaginary misdeeds.
Even Chaucer must have his gird at the miller:
‘The millere was a stout carl for the nones,
Ful byg he was of brawn and eek of bones;
That proved wel, for over al ther he cam