First series.—Labours of life.
1. A man thrashing; a man bat-fowling (agriculture and hunting).
2. Shepherd piping (pastoral life).
Second series.—Saints of the guild.
3. (Defaced.) Decapitation of a martyr, perhaps S. John the Baptist.
4. (Defaced.) The Assumption of the Virgin.
Third series.—Dance of Death.
5. A burial scene. Two men are laying the body, wrapped in a winding sheet, in an open grave; a priest, holding a torch in his hand, and two attendants stand near; mattock and spade are beside the grave.[739] On either side of the central carving Death is represented leading a mortal—in this case the pope—by the hand.
6. A man is being stripped of his shirt, symbolical perhaps of the fact that in dying we must relinquish all worldly possessions. A cripple, whom by the irony of fate Death has spared, watches the process of unclothing. The side subject has been cut off, but Death's companion is a bishop; see the outline of his mitre.
7. A death-bed scene; the sick person is in bed, his friends surround him.