Wherefore, with no accompaniment of music, the Sheriff elect and the retiring Sheriff, accompanied by the town councillors, proceed to the churchyard to perform this ceremony, standing within the gate of the churchyard, there to await the masters of the City Guilds coming with their salutations.
All of them came in procession to meet the Sheriff elect, with the badges of their respective Guilds. One by one they salute the new Sheriff, but none of them give him gifts; they do but show them to him, and then take them back again, to signify that he hath first to deserve these same gifts before he receive them.
First of all the millers approach him and exhibit to him a fine white loaf of well-winnowed wheat, and say—
"We will nourish thee with fine white loaves after this sort, if thou wilt be a faithful Sheriff unto us."
Then the vintners, who in those days were a rich and goodly Guild, address him in like manner, and exhibit to him a cask of red wine.
In like manner the weavers, the furriers, and the cobblers all allured the new Sheriff with the hope of receiving of their masterpieces, to wit, beautiful white pieces of cloth, rich cambric, shaggy furs, and bravely embroidered shoes, if so be he remain faithful to their city to the end of his term.
Last of all come the carpenters, who exhibit to the new Sheriff a brand-new waggon, to which horses are harnessed, filled with smoothly planed boards.
And when the master of the Guild of Carpenters stands before the Sheriff, he thus addresses him—
"Behold, now, we have piled up this brave heap of hornbeams that we may burn thee therewith if thou do betray us."
It was usual to say this on the occasion of the election of a Sheriff in the city of Caschau, and nobody was offended thereby. For in those sad times we were often forced to defend our cities with fire and steel against foes of three different nations, whilst as a fourth enemy we reckoned the numerous freebooters, who had turned Turks after once being Christians, and prowled in the environs of the city at night, to snap up any women and children who might fall in their way and sell them to the Turks. And our fifth enemy were the malefactors lurking in the town itself; and our sixth enemy was the terrible pestilence which so often visited our gates; while our seventh and most ancient adversary was the infernal Evil One himself, from whom Heaven in its mercy defend us. Thus in those days the Sheriff had to defend the city against seven divers sorts of enemies, and see to it that they were all kept well outside the gates, wherefore he had to sustain many sieges, guard the walls day and night, cudgel in fist, persecute evildoers, or threaten them with the terrible hárum palzarum,[14] fumigate or steep in lye all goods brought into the city by foreign chapmen, avert religious strife, frustrate the wiles of Satan, always endeavouring to judge righteous judgments, neither for the sake of lucre nor because of any interior impulse pronouncing any sentence which might call to Heaven for vengeance or make Hell applaud.