Gammer Gurton's Needle - Faculty & Staff Web Pages

Hodge: 'Cham goodly rewarded, 'Cham I not, do you think?
'Chad a goodly dinner for all my sweat and swink! 1
Neither butter, cheese, milk, onions, flesh, nor fish,
Save this poor piece of barley bread – 'tis a pleasant costly dish! 2
Gammer Gurton's Needle 16
Diccon: Hail, fellow Hodge, and well to fare 3 with thy meat – if thou hast any!
But by thy words, as I them smelled, thy dainties be not many!
Hodge: Dainties, Diccon? Gog's soul, man, save this piece of dry horse-bread,
'Chave bit no bite this live-long day; no crumb's come in my head;
My guts, they yawl-crawl, 4 and all my belly rumbleth;
The puddings 5 cannot lie still, each one over t'other tumbleth.
By Gog's heart, 'Cham so vext 6 and in my belly penned,
'Chould one piece were at the spittlehouse, another at the castle's end! 7
Diccon: Why, Hodge, was there none at home thy dinner for to set?
Hodge: Gog's bread, Diccon, Ich came too late; was nothing there to get!
Gib – a foul fiend might on her light! – licked the milk pan so clean –
See, Diccon, 'twas not so well washed these seven years, I ween! 8
A pestilence 9 light on all ill luck! 'Chad thought yet, for all this,
Of a morsel of bacon behind the door at worst I should not miss;
But when Ich sought a slip to cut, as Ich was wont to do,
Gog's soul, Diccon, Gib our cat hat eat the bacon, too! 10
Diccon: Ill luck, says he? Marry, 11 swear it, Hodge! This day, the truth to tell,
Thou rose not on the right side, or else blessed thee not well. 12
Thy milk slopped up, thy bacon filched – that was too bad luck, Hodge!
1 Swink: hard work; toil
2 Hodge is complaining; his speech is ironic and sarcastic – after all his hard work, for his supper he gets no butter, cheese,
milk, onions, meat, or fish, but just a piece of coarse, cheap barley bread.
3 Well to fare: I hope you enjoy
4 Yawl-crawl: growl and cramp
5 The puddings: my guts
6 'Cham so vext: Ich am so vext, I am so troubled
7 'Chould one . . . end! I would (I wish) one [of the two women, Gammer and Tyb] were in the hospital, and the other locked
up in the castle dungeon!
8 Ween: believe
9 Pestilence: plague
10 Well . . . no. The audience knows that Diccon stole the hanging bacon and traded it to Dame Chat for his ale.
11 Marry: a mild oath: "By the Virgin Mary"
12 Thou rose . . . well: You didn't get out of the right side of the bed, or else you didn't say your prayers.