THE RED FOLIOT
own booths to be served of great plenty of wine and good and delicate meats, and sent them musicians and a minstrel to gladden them with songs and stories of old time, that they might lack nought of entertainment. But for his other guests he let bear in the massy cups of silver, and the great eared wine jars holding two firkins apiece, and he let pour forth to the Witches and the Foliots, and they drank the cup of memory unto King Gorice XI., slain that day by the hand of Goldry Bluszco. Thereafter when their cups were brimmed anew with foaming wine the Red Foliot spake among them and said, "O ye lords of Witchland, will you that I speak a dirge in honour of Gorice the King that the dark reaper hath this day gathered?" So when they said yea to this, he called to him his player on the theorbo and his player on the hautboy, and commanded them saying, "Play me a solemn music." And they played softly in the Aeolian mode a music that was like the wailing of wind through bare branches on a moonless night, and the Red Foliot leaned forth from his high seat and recited this lamentation:
I that in heill was and gladness
Am trublit now with great sickness
And feblit with infirmitie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory,
The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
The state of man does change and vary,
Now sound, now sick, now blyth, now sary,
Now dansand mirry, now like to die:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
No state in Erd here standis sicker;
As with the wynd wavis the wicker,
So wannis this world's vanitie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
