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(Translated by John Payne)
I. BECAUSE I love and serve a whore sans glose, | |
| Think not therefore or knave or fool am I: | |
| She hath in her such goods as no man knows. | |
| For love of her, target and dirk I ply: | |
| When clients come, I hend a pot therenigh | 5 |
| And get me gone for wine, without word said: | |
| Before them water, fruit, bread, cheese, I spread. | |
| If they pay well, I bid them “Well God aid! | |
| Come here again, when you of lust are led, | |
| In this the brothel where we ply our trade.” | 10 |
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II. But surely before long an ill wind blows | |
| When, coinless, Margot comes by me to lie. | |
| I hate the sight of her, catch up her hose, | |
| Her gown, her surcoat and her girdle-tie, | |
| Swearing to pawn them, meat and drink to buy. | 15 |
| She grips me by the throat and cuffs my head, | |
| Cries “Antichrist!” and swears by Jesus dead, | |
| It shall not be; till I, to quell the jade, | |
| A potsherd seize and score her nose with red, | |
| In this the brothel where we ply our trade. | 20 |
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III. Then she, peace made, to show we’re no more foes, | |
| A hugeous crack of wind at me lets fly | |
| And laughing, sets her fist against my nose, | |
| Bids me “Go to” and claps me on the thigh; | |
| Then, drunk, like logs we sleep till, by and by, | 25 |
| Awaking, when her womb is hungerèd, | |
| To spare the child beneath her girdlestead, | |
| She mounts on me, flat as a pancake laid. | |
| With wantoning she wears me to the thread, | |
| In this the brothel where we ply our trade. | 30 |
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ENVOI. Hail, rain, freeze, ready baked I hold my bread: | |
| Well worth a lecher with a wanton wed! | |
| Whether’s the worse? They differ not a shred. | |
| Ill cat to ill rat; each for each was made. | |
| We flee from honour; it from us hath fled: | 35 |
| Lewdness we love, that stands us well in stead, | |
| In this the brothel where we ply our trade. | |
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