When we are in the tavern, we do not care about what earth is (i.e. what we are made of), we set about gambling and over that we always sweat. We must investigate what happens in the tavern where money is the butler; pay attention to what I say.
Some gamble, some drink, some live without discretion. From those who spend their time in gambling, some are stripped bare, some win clothes, some are dressed in sacks; there no-one fears death, but for the wine they throw dice.
First, for the payment of the wine (i.e. who pays for the wine). Then the boozers start to drink; they drink once to those in prison, after that, three times for the living, four times for all Christendom, five times for the faithful departed, six times for sisters of loose virtue, seven times for soldiers of the forest, eight times for brothers in error, nine times for scattered monks, ten times for those who sail, eleven times for men quarrelling, twelve times for those doing penance, thirteen times for those on journeys.
For pope and king alike all drink without restraint.
The mistress drinks, so does the master, the soldier drinks, so does the cleric, that man drinks, that woman drinks, the servant drinks with the maid, the fast man drinks, so does the slow, the white man drinks, so does the black, the stay-at-home drinks, so does the wanderer, the fool drinks, so does the scholar.
The poor drink, and the sick, the exile and the unknown, the boy, the greybeard, the bishop, the deacon, sister, brother, old woman, mother, that woman, this man, they drink by the hundred, by the thousand.
Large sums of money last too short a time when everybody drinks without moderation and limit, even though they drink with a happy heart; in this everyone sponges on us and it will make us poor.
Damnation to those who sponge on us! Put not their names in the book of Just.
