“I have good ale, gossip,” says the ale-wife, “will you assay it?” And so glutton, instead of going to church, takes himself to the ale-house, and many after him. A miscellaneous company that was. There, with Cicely the woman-shoemaker, were all manner of humble, and some disreputable, persons, among whom we are surprised to find a hermit. What should a hermit be doing in an ale-house? But, according to Langland’s own showing elsewhere, the country was infested with hermits who, refusing restriction to their damp and lonely hermitages, frequented the alehouses, and only went home, generally intoxicated, to their mouldy pallets after they had drunk and eaten their fill and roasted themselves before the fire. Here, then: Cesse the souteresse[1] sat on the bench, Watte the warner[2] and hys wyf bothe Thomme the tynkere, and tweye of hus knaues, Hicke the hakeneyman, and Houwe the neldere,[3] Claryce of Cockeslane, the clerk of the churche, An haywarde and an heremyte, the hangeman of Tyborne, Dauwe the dykere,[4] with a dozen harlotes, Of portours and of pyke-porses, and pylede[5] toth-drawers. A ribibour,[6] a ratonere,[7] a rakyer of chepe, A roper, a redynkyng,[8] and Rose the dissheres, Godfrey of garlekehythe, and gryfin the walshe,[9] An vpholderes an hepe. All day long they sat there, boozing, chaffering, and quarrelling: There was laughing and louring, and “let go the cuppe,” And seten so till euensonge and son gen vmwhile, Tyl glotoun had y-globbed a galoun and a Iille. By that time he could neither walk nor stand. He took his staff and began to go like a gleeman’s bitch, sometimes sideways and sometimes backwards. When he had come to the door, he stumbled and fell. Clement the cobbler caught him by the middle and set him on his knees, and then, “with all the woe of the world” his wife and his wench came to carry him home to bed. There he slept all Saturday and Sunday, and when at last he woke, he woke with a thirst--how modern _that_ is, at any rate! The first words he uttered were, “Where is the bowl?”