CHAP. II REYNARD THE FOX 9

cart, when you followed aloof for fear? Yet
you devoured the good plaice alone, and gave
him no more but the great bones which you -
could not eat yourself. The like you did
with the fat flitch of bacon, whose taste was so
good, that yourself alone did eat it up, and
when my uncle asked his part, you answered
him with scorn, “ Fair young man, thou shalt
have thy share.’ But he got not anything,
albeit he won the bacon with great fear and
hazard, for the owner came, and caught my
kinsman in a sack, from whence he hardly
escaped with life. Many of these’ injuries
hath Jsegrim done to Reynard, which |
beseech your lordships judge if they be
sufferable.

‘Now comes Ayward the hare with his
complaint, which to me seems but a trifle, for
if he will learn to read, and read not his lesson
aright, who will blame the schoolmaster /ey-
nard if he give him due correction? for if
scholars be not beaten and chastened they will
never learn.

‘Lastly complaineth Curtozs that he with
great pain had gotten a pudding in the winter,
being a season in which victuals are hard to
find; methinks silence would have become