No breakfast of custom provide for to save,
But only for such as deserveth to have.
Very near Hesiod indeed!
For your dinner at noon you were more hospitably served. First of all, it was ready for you:
By noon see your dinner be ready and neat:
Let meat tarry servant not servant his meat.
And you were to have enough—plain fare, but enough.
Give servants no dainties, but give them enow;
Too many chaps wagging do beggar the plow;
but even here you would get according to your deserts. If you were lazy at your threshing, you would be given a "flap and a trap," whatever those may be. And you were expected to eat the trencher bare:
Some gnaweth and leaveth, some crusts and some crumbs:
Eat such their own leavings, or gnaw their own thumbs.
In the hot weather you had time for sleep allowed you:
From May to mid-August an hour or two
Let Patch sleep a snatch, howsoever ye do.
Though sleeping one hour refresheth his song
Yet trust not Hob Grouthead for sleeping too long.