Ac on a May mornynge on Malverne hulles but hills
Me byfel a ferly, A wonder befell me,
offairy me thoughte; from fairyland it seemed to me
I was wery forwandred tired out with wandering
and went me to reste
Under a brode banke bi a bornes side, broad stream’s
And as I lay and lened and loked in the wateres, leaned
I slombred in a slepyng,
it sweyved so merye. flowed along so sweetly
The author is said in a manuscript ofc.1400 to be William Langland(c.1330–
c.1386), probably from near Malvern. A married cleric in minor orders, he writes
more about London and Westminster than Malvern. He revised his great work
several times; it survives in fifty-two manuscripts and three or four versions, known
as the A,B, C and Z texts; the above quotation is from the B text.
The sleeper dreams that the world is a fair field full of folk, between the tower of
Truth and the dungeon of Hell:
Than gan I to meten a merveilouse swevene, dream vision
That I was in a wildernesse, wist I never where. knew
As I bihelde into the Est, and heigh to the sonne, up
I seigh a toure on a toft trielich ymaked; a tower on a hill, truly built
A depe dale binethe, a dongeon thereinne
With depe dyches and derke and dredful of sight. to see
A faire felde ful of folke fonde I there bytwene, I could see
Of alle maner of men, the mene and the riche, humble
Worchyng and wandryng as the world asketh. requires52 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500
The Dreamer falls asleep:
‘And as I lay and lened
and loked in the wateres,
I slombred in a slepyng,
it sweyved so merye’.
Historiated initial letter of a 15th-century
manuscript of Piers Plowmanshowing the
Dreamer (MS CCC 201f.1).