which should go wooing to a fair
maid. His mother did warn him beforehand, saying, "When thou dost look
upon her, cast a sheep's-eye, and say, 'How do ye, sweet pigsnie?'" The
fellow went to the butcher's and bought seven or eight sheep's eyes; and
when this lusty wooer did sit at dinner, he would cast in her face a
sheep's eye, saying, "How dost thou, my pretty pigsnie?" "How do I?"
said the wench. "Swine's-face, why dost thou cast the sheep's eye upon
me?" "O sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!" "I defy thee,
Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, "What,
sweet pigsnie! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou
wilt be a foul sow." "Walk, knave, walk!" said she; "for if thou live
till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a lubber, and a fool."

It is very evident that the men of Gotham were of "honest" Jack
Falstaff's opinion that the better part of valour is discretion: On a
time there was a man of Gotham a-mowing in the meads and found a great
grasshopper. He cast down his scythe, and did run home to his
neighbours, and said that there was a devil in the field that hopped in
the grass. Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with
halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the grasshopper. When
they did come to the place where the grasshopper should be, said the one
to the other, "Let every man cross himself from the devil, or we will
not meddle with him." And so they returned again, and said, "We were all
blessed this day that we went no farther." "Ah, cowards," said he that
had his scythe in the mead, "help me to fetch my scythe." "No," said
they; "it is good to sleep in a whole skin: better it is to lose thy
scythe than to mar us all."

There is some spice of humour in the concluding tale of the printed
collection, although it has no business there: On Ash Wednesday the
priest said to the men of Gotham, "If I should enjoin you to prayer,
there is none of you that can say your paternoster; and you be now too
old to learn. And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not
eat a good meal's meat in a year. Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour
all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will
come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner." Another man he
did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after
another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might
have part of his