‘Many villeins would not abide longer in the vill but fled into the greenwood to drive the hart and the doe instead of the plough and the cart, and to sustain the heat, the cold, the snow, the frost, the rain of God’s heaven, rather than the inhumanity of Christian men. Corn, flesh, cheese, and butter were so scarce and dear that few had wherewith to keep them from starving, for where there was so little hope of harvest, men would not trouble to sow or plant or plough. Some fled to foreign boroughs where they were not known, to live as freemen, and some, who erstwhile had been men of substance, left the village secretly to go on alms. Never elsewhere was more wretchedness seen. ‘Hither to this village came one morning a wandering minstrel. Lo, good fellows all, he was the pitifullest figure a man might conceive, his hosen and jerkin all torn, his hair sticking out from the holes in his cap, his toes projecting from his bursten shoes, and white with dust from head to foot as though he had walked many miles between Matins and Prime. He seemed half pined for lack of food, there was no flesh on his bones, and I ween you might have counted his ribs. His face was like a pale flower, his faint blue eyes wandered when he spoke to any, so that folks easily judged him to be one of God’s innocents. Around his neck upon a cord he bore a fiddle, and the bow thereof swung by a string from his shoulder. Of these he took great care, as though they had been treasures of worth. ‘He came to the folk who sat idly by the watermill, and looked vacantly upon them with his lustreless eyes. ‘“Will ye have any mirth?” he asked, fingering his fiddle and speaking in a thin, sad voice, like a sick child’s. ‘They were silent at first. Then they began to speak in bitter jest, as desperate men will do. ‘“We are merry devils enough without thy mirth,” said one. ‘“Hast _thou_ any mirth?” asked another. “I wot thou hadst been Death himself.” ‘“We have done nothing but sing and play here the last half-score of years,” said another. “I am sick of mirth; hast thou no bread?” ‘“I had rather use my teeth than my ears,” said another. ‘But one of the women, casting her eyes upon him, cried, “Nay, thou art but a child and half dead at that, poor knave. Sit thee down and rest awhile. Thou art a true foreigner, else thou wouldst know that the villeins of Beaumont have naught to put into their own bellies, much more to give away. But stay; God forbid that one of His innocents should perish by the wayside.”