Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices From a Medieval Village

Pask states that he doesn’t know when he ran away, but it was likely almost a year ago. The timing is significant, because when he has been in town for a year and a day, he will be considered free. The son of a villein, he remembers his father telling him that he wished “he’d run away when he was young and had no wife and children” (62). Pask’s father was unable to provide for his family because of the lord’s greed, and he then became ill and died.

Pask considers what type of work he’d like to do when he is free, and he weighs the possibilities of making ropes or barrels or meat pies. He also wants to buy a blue ribbon for the “girl who works up at the kennels” (63). He then relates his interaction with Lowdy, explaining that when he had sheltered in the kennel during snowstorm, she noticed him shivering and starving in the cold and offered him the dogs’ porridge straight from her hand. Pask thinks, “Even as I was eating, I knew how queer it all was, but I didn’t care. She was a stranger and stank of dog, but I licked her palm as if it were a golden plate” (63). He plans to go back to her when he is a free man and give her a blue ribbon to tie up her shaggy hair.

This background section addresses the growth of towns and the tradespeople who worked there. During the Middle Ages, most people were farmers: “villeins” (feudal tenants) whose lives depended on what kind of land they were lucky enough to own and what kind of lord they were obligated to serve. However, if a villein ran away to town, he would earn his freedom after living there for a year and a day. There was a growing market economy in which people could make a living through various trades. Tradesmen usually started as apprentices, a practice in which a master was paid to teach a student.

After three years as a glassblower’s apprentice, Piers asks when he will begin to learn the actual trade and is frustrated when the glassblower tells him, “When I choose to teach you” (66). When the glassblower announces that it is time for Piers to learn, the boy is surprised and caught off-guard. He tries to blow the glass, and his narrative describes the process of heating the glass and blowing the pipe in detail. His first attempt fails, and he is instructed to try again. This time, he forms the air bubble in the glass after a great effort, but he is crestfallen when he realizes that the glass is lopsided and ruined. He doesn’t dare lift his head to see the glassblower’s reaction, and he is surprised when the glassblower praises his effort. Piers ends the monologue with a prayer to Saint Luke to help him try again and to “keep [his] master well” (68).

Both Mariot and Maud discuss the fact that Piers has impressed their father. Mariot suggests that no other apprentice “ever won Father’s / approval like Piers” (69), and Maud notes that Piers “has the eye for it” (69). He is in line to inherit the business, the girls note, if he “marries / one of us two” (69). Maud speaks, showing her derision for Piers. She thinks he is rude and repulsive. She assumes that her sister feels the same, and she is concerned that Mariot may be forced to marry Piers because she is older. Maud states:

How can I sacrifice

Her to that

Boy with the

Sticking-out ears?

How can our father

be so tyrannical?

Nobody in her right mind

would want Piers! (70).

The narrative then shifts back to Mariot’s perspective as the girl reflects that Piers would probably prefer to marry Maud, who is younger and prettier. She also notes that Piers “isn’t bad-looking” (71). As Mariot continues to express her wish to befriend Piers and help him, Maud continues to expound on how much he disgusts her. The narrative alternates between the two sisters’ viewpoints, with Mariot concluding that she will wed Piers, while Maud concludes that she would rather be dead than wed Piers.

Nelly opens her monologue with the statement that she was not born lucky, but that she was “lucky soon after and ever after” (75). She explains that when she was born and her father saw that she was a girl, he had planned to drown her because the family was already starving and couldn’t afford to feed another child. However, she held onto the side of the bucket and didn’t drown, and her “father’s heart went soft, and he could no more drown [her] than himself” (75). She notes that her family also started experiencing good luck after her birth; they inherited pigs from an uncle and were offered employment as eel catchers.

Nelly highlights her skills at catching eels and frogs for bait, and she notes that she can swim faster than Drogo, the tanner’s apprentice. She suggests that he is always watching her. She also relates the fact that they fought not long ago, accusing each other of making the river stink with their respective trades. Nelly admits that she pretends not to know him, but she is aware that he continually watches her and shows off for her benefit.

Drogo explains that he doesn’t “mind the stink” (77) of his work as a tanner, because he grew up as a butcher’s son. He describes the hard work of his trade but emphasizes that he doesn’t mind doing it. He is bothered by “the jeering / of Nelly the sniggler” (77) and the other townsmen who suggest that he “foul[s] the waters” (77). Drogo is indignant at this accusation and asks incredulously: “By Saint Bartholomew, thinks thou / a man can make leather without filth?” (77). He suggests that if people want leather, they should stop complaining about the messy aspects of the process. He addresses the audience directly, asking, “Do you want good shoes or don’t you?” (78).

Giles introduces himself as a beggar, “the best of my trade!” (79). He then describes his grifting routine. He says that when he begs, he pretends to have a wounded foot. He then enters a town with his crutch, begging for food and money, and collapses strategically in the road. His father then arrives, though they pretend not to know each other. Giles’s father is a “peddler, the dealer in relics” (80), and in this part of the pair’s act, he produces holy water and proclaims that he will heal “this unfortunate brat” (80).

He then anoints Giles’s feet with the “authentic holy water” (80). This is Giles’s cue to cry out about seeing angels and apostles. Giles then begins to walk, having been fully “healed.” He and his father meet out of town to eat what they earned and to pray for the Lord to look after them and to send more people whom they might fool with their performance.