“I purpose in a tavern to die,
   Place to my dying lips the flowing bowl,
   May choirs of angels coming from on high
   Sing, ’God be gracious to the toper’s soul.’[42]

  “The race of poets shun both drink and food,
   Avoid disputes, withdraw from public strife,
   And to make verses that shall long hold good
   O’ercome with labour, sacrifice their life.

  “Nature allots to each his proper course,
   In hunger I could never use my ink,
   The smallest boy then equals me in force,
   I hate as death the want of food and drink.”

In one of these poems, Golias calls down every kind of misery, spiritual and temporal, upon the man who has stolen his purse.  He hopes he may die of fever and madness, and be joined to Judas in hell.  One of the most amusing pieces is a consultation held among the priests, on account of the Pope having ordered them to dismiss their women-servants.  They finally come to the conclusion that parish priests should be allowed two wives, monks and canons three, and deans and bishops four or five.  We are not surprised to hear that such effusions as these called down the displeasure of the heads of the Church, and in 1289, a statute was published that no clerks should be “joculatores, goliardi seu bufones.”

About the middle of the fourteenth century, a French monk, Robert Langlande, wrote the “Vision of Piers Plowman,” an account of a dream he is supposed to have had when among the Malvern Hills.  It is possible that the sight of the grand old abbey may have suggested his theme, for he inveighs not only against the laity, but especially against the ecclesiastics for their neglect of the poor.  The poem is remarkable for being without rhythm, but alliterative, such as was common in the neighbouring district of Wales.  It somewhat resembles one of the old “Mysteries,” introducing a variety of allegorical characters.  Some of the personifications are very strange.  He says that,

  “Dowel and Dobet and Dobest the thirde coth he
   Arn thre fair vertues and ben not fer to fynde.”

  “Dobest is above bothe, and berith a bieschopis crois
   And is hokid on that on ende to halie men fro helle
   And a pike is in the poynt to putte adon the wyked.”

In another place, the effects of starvation are described “both the man’s eiyen wattred,” and “he loked like a lanterne.”

In another work by the same hand, “Piers, the Ploughman’s crede,” the author—­a simple man—­wishes to know how he is to follow Christ, and betakes himself to the friars for information.  But he finds that each order thinks of little beyond railing against some other.  The friars preachers are thus described,

  “Than turned I ayen whan I hadde al ytoted
   And fond in a freitoure a frere on a benche
   A greet chorl and a grym, growen as a tonne,
   With a face so fat, as a ful bleddere
   Blowen bretful of breth, and as a bagge honged.”