16–17 and be hayward: The Seneschaucy, ch. 4 (ed. Oschinsky 281), says in part: “During the hay harvest [the hayward] ought to supervise the mowers, gatherers, and carriers and in August he ought to assemble the reapers, boon workers, and hired labourers. He ought to see that the grain is well and cleanly reaped and gathered. Late and early he should keep watch that nothing is stolen, eaten by the beasts, or spoilt.”
Cf. Homans’s analysis (1941:291): “Harvest was the time when people were afraid of having that stolen from them which they valued most—their crops…. The corn was ripe for cutting or was left standing in sheaves which could easily be spirited away, and there were a large number of harvest laborers about, who had no ties to the neighborhood and were often with justice suspected of being evil-doers. On some manors it was the duty of the hayward to watch all the crops of the village during harvest but on others the duty fell on the men who were especially elected by the people.” See further Justice 1994:178–84 and Baldwin 1990:78 (including the citations in n22).
Homans (294) also identifies the horn as the hayward’s badge of office. The horn was perhaps more appropriate to the official’s usual duties as “hedge-warden” (the etymological sense of the title); the hayward looked after the hedges, set up to protect the corn from animals loosed in communal grazing areas (cf. the nursery rhyme “Little Boy Blue”). He repaired breaches, impounded any animals he caught straying in the crops, and arranged the prosecution of their owners. Like the office of rypereue, being a hayward cuts into one’s sleep, a prospect particularly unattractive to the dreamer. See further Menner 1949 (and 13.43–51); and Friedman 1995, esp. 116, 137–41. At PLM 3983–87, Orgoill appears as a hayward to prevent the dreamer from breaking through the thorn hedge of Penitence to his proper path (although given her status as Pride, her horn segues from being the hayward’s implement to an aristocrat’s hunting horn at 4180–95).
18 or shep and kyne kepe; 19 or swyn or gees dryue: These jobs may form a skeptically insulting anticlimax to Reason’s list of occupations. Hanawalt (1986:43, 51) notes the use of boys (but over six years old) for such functions: “He could not do the heavy work in the fields and the member of the family who herded was exempt from harvest work for the lord” (51). The Seneschaucy imagines cowherds, swineherds, and shepherds as responsible adults but probably is describing the person responsible for decisions about husbandry and such productive work as shearing, not the person with mundane daily guard duty.
20 eny other kynes craft: Just as prevalent in the poem as Will’s desire for a kynde knowyng that would help him save his soul (cf. 1.79–80, 137–38) is the alternate question implicitly posed here. Even at the poem’s end, in his extreme old age, he is still seeking a proper craft, one that would provide catel to meet necessities; cf. 22.207–11.
21: This line appears diversely in the two genetic families of C manuscripts. The x copies, in essence, follow the implications of Statute language. The p reading, which RK emend into the text (explained pp. 153–54), makes Will responsible for the support of licit mendicants.
Hem þat bedreden be byleue to fynden (the p version). Translate: “(Do you know any kind of craft) with which you may provide food for those who are bed-ridden?” Along with 33–34, which broach a topic with an ample later history in the poem (see 8.128n), this version of the line introduces those who are not required to labor for sustenance but who have claims to that produce won through the labor of others. The Statutes are uninterested in such a dole, although, from their inception, they only apply to those “able in body” (see 7–8n). At 7.107, the bedreden comprise one of the three classes of “God’s minstrels”: they are obviously infirm, if not crippled, not those who sleep in hopes of having visions (cf. line 9).
That þou betere therby þat byleue the fynden (the x version). Translate: “(Do you know any kind of craft) to benefit those people who provide you with food?” This form of the line, Pearsall1’s adjustment of X, preferable to the form RK print, inscribes an important false step in Reason’s argument. In spite of following on the extensive list of necessary agricultural labors that the dreamer will shortly admit he is unprepared to perform, it leaves one possibility open to him. This claim of returning a spiritual benefit to his benefactors is derived from Imaginative’s command of B 12.17: “bidde for hem þat ʓyueþ þee breed” (see 1–108n and for another echo of the B precursor to this passage, 84n; cf. Godden 1990:7, 89). The dreamer will exploit this opening, claiming spiritual (whether communal, as Reason insists in line 20, recalling Prol.144 in addition to the Statute, is moot) benefits, at lines 48–67. Godden (1984) discusses tensions in the poem between two varieties of judgment (which he finds reconciled in this passage)—those favoring labor and those favoring the life of prayer.
22–25 Will as dishonest steward: These lines, as Pearsall suggests (see 1–108n above), cast the scene into the form of gospel parable, the story of the dishonest steward of Luke 16. When his lord hears of his steward’s alleged crimes, he calls him to account (v. 2): “redde rationem villicationis tuae; jam enim non poteris villicare” (give an account of thy stewardship, for thou canst be steward no longer). Holychurch tells Will (1.13–16) that humans are created with unique powers so that they may honor Truth, may exert these powers in a service appropriate to Him: such physical and mental strengths are loans, “talents,” for whose use humans must answer. In these terms, L follows the parable in presenting Reason as a fastidious and terrifying account-keeper (cf. the rationem of Luke 16:2), heaven’s registrar, as Alford (1988b:205–6) notes; for other examples, see B 5.272–73n. Such an accounting accords with Wimbledon’s reading of the parable; cf. lines 136–44 of his sermon.
On hearing this threatening news, the steward of the gospel responds (v. 3): “Quid faciam, quia dominus meus aufert a me villicationem? fodere non valeo, mendicare erubesco” (What shall I do, because my lord taketh away from me the stewardship? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed). Like the steward, Will claims that he is physically incapable of basic agricultural labor (on diking and delving, see further 6.369 and 8.350n); yet continuing his effort at distinguishing himself from lollers and lewd hermits, he will simultaneously allege that he has a licit vocation, that he is not the sort of begging faitour Reason suspects (29–30). Will’s last statement under interrogation (94–98L) invokes a language of mercantilism equally dependent on the gospel parable and reminiscent of the steward’s unscrupulous charity to debtors, an action that moves his lord.
In the claim of vocation, Will adopts a “modern” reading of the parable, one that uses it as a proof-text in support of learned Latinate activities. Conventionally, readings of Luke 16 follow Bede, In Lucam 5 (PL 92:529–30; CCSL 120:297/esp. 61–65); see Wailes 1987:245–53. In this interpretation, the call to render accounts represents death. “Digging signifies active striving for virtue, which can no longer be pursued after death…. Begging can be either good or bad, for it is good to beg spiritual aid in this life, but evil to reach the time of accounting so destitute of merit that one must beg, as did the five foolish girls of ‘The Ten Virgins’ ” (248). To this reference to Matt. 25:8 (cf. 1.185), Bede subjoins a second, to Prov. 20:4 (which L cites at 8.245L, in another discussion of the refusal to labor). One might further note, given L’s other uses of the parable (see below and 84n), a number of commentators who associate digging with penance (Wailes 249–50; Bede speaks of the “mattock of devout compunction” [lig[o] deuotae compunctionis]). Will develops such argumentation further in 45–52 (see the note); cf. 7.182–204n. Thomas Hoccleve’s self-presentation, with his various worries over his status as royal counsellor, persistently echo L’s preoccupations here and elsewhere; cf. DRP 981–87, 1013–28 (both an appeal for seeing writing as just as back-breaking a labor as agriculture), 1807; and Lawton’s discussion (2011:141–44). Similarly, Rigg and Brewer’s Langlandian enthusiast caught the reference (and its penitential bearings); he ascribes “fodere non valeo” to Robert the robber at Z 5.142.
But equally, there exists a “goliardic” reading of Luke 16:3 that Will adopts as appropriate for his purposes. Mann (1980:85 and n74) notes three uses, in a poem