WHEN he saw me so close by, he leapt off and went his way. I went to her in great heaviness. I went deep in that mire and water before I could break the ice, and she suffered great pain until she could remove her tail; and even then she left a gobbet behind. And it seemed as if both would lose our lives; for before she came out she howled and cried so loud with the smart that she had, that the men of the village came out with staves and billhooks,* with flails* and pitchforks, and the wives with their distaves,* and cried contemptuously ‘Kill them, kill them, strike them right down!’ I was never so afraid in my life.
Narrowly we escaped. Had it not been night, we would certainly have been killed. They said we had worried their sheep, and cursed us with many a curse. We came to a field full of brambles and they dared follow us no further by night, but returned home. Behold, my lord, this foul business — this is murder,* and rape, and treason, and you ought to do justice on it sharply.
modernised, abridged
* A billhook is an agricultural tool in the form of a short, broad blade bent round at the tip, with a wooden handle.
* A flail is a tool for use in threshing grain, in the form of a long stick with a cord or something similar attached to the end, and wielded like a whip.
* A distaff (plural distaffs or distaves) is a short stick or spindle upon which coarse fibres are wound, so they can be gradually drawn off and spun into thread using a spinning wheel.
* Isegrim is referring to the whole matter of Reynard’s crimes, which included the murder of poor Kyward, the Hare.