Owain saw where a grisly-looking wheel turned; huge it was, burning
like a brand as it wound around, and covered with hooks. A hundred
thousand souls and more were hanging from the wheel. The fiends turned
it about so fast that Sir Owain could not recognize anybody there. Out
of the earth came a burning blue fire; it smelled foully, and it went
around the wheel, burning the souls to a very fine powder. The wheel
that runs thus is for the punishment of covetousness that now reigns
everywhere. The covetous man has never enough gold or silver or even
ploughs until Death fells him. The fiends said to the knight, "Thou
hast been covetous of winning land and men; upon this wheel thou shalt
be placed unless thou wilt return at once to thine own country." When
he refused, the fiends seized him, bound him fast upon the revolving
wheel, and cast him in the midst. When the hooks tore him and the fire
burned him, he thought of Jesus Christ. An angel bore him from the
wheel, and all the fiends there could do him no harm.
Further he was led in great pain, until they came to a mountain that
was red as blood. Men and women stood on it, in misery, it seemed, for
they cried as if they were mad. The fiends then said to the knight,
"Thou art wondering about these men who make such doleful cheer. They
have deserved the wrath of God; soon they shall have such a drink as
they will not think pleasant." No sooner had he spoken than there came
a blast of wind that took fiends and souls and knight up almost into
the firmament, and then cast them down into a foul-smelling river that
ran under the mountain of fire as an arrow from a cross-bow. It was
as cold as ice, and no one can describe the pain that he suffered.
Owain was almost drowned in the water, and became so frenzied and
faint that he was well-nigh lost. As soon as he could think upon God
he was brought out of the water and carried to land. That pain is the
punishment of wrath and envy. Envy was the blast of wind which cast him
into the smelling water. Let every man beware of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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