ABSTRACT
This indignant satire is directed against the blacksmiths who kept the poet awake at night. Their assaults on his senses inspired a rich vocabulary of invective, the force of which the modern reader may occasionally miss. The poet calls his tormentors “water-burners” (l. 22) because of their practice of plunging the glowing iron in cold water in order to temper it. He calls them “horse-clothiers” (l. 21) perhaps because they prepared stylish armor for horses or perhaps simply because they prepared shoes and harnesses for farmhorses.
