Master: What do your companions know?
Disciple: They are plowmen, shepherds, oxherds, huntsmen, fishermen, falconers,
merchants, cobblers, salt-makers, and bakers.
Master: What sayest thou plowman? How do you do your work?
Plowman: O my lord, I work very hard: I go out at dawn, driving the cattle to
the field, and I yoke them to the plow. Nor is the weather so bad in winter that I dare to
stay at home, for fear of my lord: but when the oxen are yoked, and the plowshare and
coulter attached to the plow, I must plow one whole field a day, or more.
Master: Have you any assistant?
Plowman: I have a boy to drive the oxen with a goad, and he too is hoarse with
cold and shouting.
Master: What more do you do in a day?
Plowman: Certainly I do more. I must fill the manger of the oxen with hay, and
water them and carry out the dung.
Master: Indeed, that is a great labor.
Plowman: Even so, it is a great labor for I am not free.
Master: What have you to say shepherd? Have you heavy work too?
Shepherd: I have indeed. In the grey dawn I drive my sheep to the pasture and I
stand watch over them, in heat and cold, with my dogs, lest the wolves devour them. And I
bring them back to the fold and milk them twice a day. And I move their fold; and I make
cheese and butter, and I am faithful to my lord.
Master: Oxherd, what work do you do?
Oxherd: O my lord, I work hard. When the plowman unyokes the oxen I lead them to
the pasture and I stand all night guarding them against thieves. Then in the morning I
hand them over to the plowman well fed and watered.
Master: What is your craft?
Fisherman: I am a fisherman.
Master: What do you obtain from your work?
Fisherman: Food and clothing and money.
Master: How do you take the fish?
Fisherman: I get into a boat, and place my nets in the water, and I throw out my
hook and lines, and whatever they take I keep.
Master: What if the fish should be unclean?
Fisherman: I throw out the unclean fish and use the clean as food.
Master: Where do you sell your fish?
Fisherman: In the town.
Master: Who buys them?
Fisherman: The citizens. I cannot catch as much as I can sell.
Master: What fish do you take?
Fisherman: Herring, salmon, porpoises, sturgeon, oysters, crabs, mussels,
periwinkles, cockles, plaice, sole, lobsters, and the like.
Master: Do you wish to capture a whale?
Fisherman: No.
Master: Why?
Fisherman: Because it is a dangerous thing to capture a whale. It is safer for
me to go to the river with my boat than to go with many ships hunting whales.
Master: Why so?
Fisherman: Because I prefer to take a fish that I can kill rather than one which
with a single blow can sink or kill not only me but also my companions.
Master: Yet many people do capture whales and escape the danger, and they obtain
a great price for what they do.
Fisherman: You speak the truth, but I do not dare because of my cowardice.
Source.
From: Thomas Wright, ed., Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, (London:
Trubner, 1884), Vol. I, p. 88, reprinted in Roy C. Cave & Herbert H. Coulson, A
Source Book for Medieval Economic History, (New York: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936;
reprint ed., New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1965), pp. 46-48.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton.
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© Paul Halsall, September 1998
