Once upon a time in Flanders there was a company of young men, who gave
themselves up to every kind of dissipation and debauchery--haunting the
taverns where dancing and dicing continues day and night, eating and
drinking, and serving the devil in his own temple by their outrageous life
of luxury. It was horrible to hear their oaths, how they tore to pieces
our blessed Lord's body, as if they thought the Jews had not rent Him
enough; and each laughed at the sin of the others, and all were alike
immersed in gluttony and wantonness.

And so one morning it befel that three of these rioters were sitting over
their drink in a tavern, long before the bell had rung for nine o'clock
prayers. And as they sat, they heard a bell clinking before a corpse that
was being carried to the grave. So one of them bade his servant-lad go
and ask what was the name of the dead man; but the boy said that he knew
it already, and that it was the name of an old companion of his master's.
As he had been sitting drunk on a bench, there had come a privy thief,
whom men called Death, and who slew all the people in this country; and he
had smitten the drunken man's heart in two with his spear, and had then
gone on his way without any more words. This Death had slain a thousand
during the present pestilence; and the boy thought it worth warning his
master to beware of such an adversary, and to be ready to meet him at any
time. "So my mother taught me; I say no more." "Marry," said the keeper
of the tavern; "the child tells the truth: this Death has slain all the
inhabitants of a great village not far from here; I think that there must
be the place where he dwells." Then the rioter swore with some of his big
oaths that he at least was not afraid of this Death, and that he would
seek him out wherever he dwelt. And at his instance his two boon-
companions joined with him in a vow that before nightfall they would slay
the false traitor Death, who was the slayer of so many; and the vow they
swore was one of closest fellowship between them--to live and die for one