Canterbury Tales

new modes, and its fantastic ornamentation, and for
its superfluity, and for the inordinate scantiness of it.
Alas! May not men see, in our days, the sinfully
costly array of clothing, especially in the matter of
superfluity, or else in inordinate scantiness?

As to the first sin, it lies in the superfluity of cloth-
ing, which makes cloth so dear, to the harm of the
people; not only the cost of embroidering, the elabo-
rate notching or barring, the waved lines, the stripes,
the twists, the diagonal bars, and similar waste of
cloth in vanity; but there is also the costly furring of
gowns, so much perforating with scissors to make
holes, so much slashing with shears; and then the
superfluity in length of the aforesaid gowns, trailing
in the dung and in the mire, a-horseback and afoot,
as well of man's clothing as of woman's, until all this
trailing verily, in its effect, wastes, consumes, makes
threadbare and rotten with dung the superfluity that
rather should be given unto the poor; to the great
harm of the aforesaid poor. And that in sundry wise:
this is to say, the more that cloth is wasted, the more
it costs the people because of its scarcity; and further-
more, if they would give such perforated and slashed
clothing to the poor folk, it would not be suitable for
their wearing, what of their state, nor sufficient to
help their necessity to keep themselves from the fury
of the elements. On the other hand, to speak of the
horrible inordinate scantiness of clothing, let us
notice these short-cut smocks or jackets, which, be-
cause of their shortness, cover not the shameful mem-
bers of man, to the wicked calling of them to atten-
tion. Alasl Some of them show the very boss of their
penis and the horrible pushed-out testicles that look
like the malady of hernia in the wrapping of their
hose; and the buttocks of such persons look like the
hinder parts of a she-ape in the full of the moon. And
moreover, the hateful proud members that they show
by the fantastic fashion of making one leg of their
hose white and the other red, make it seem that half

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