Quote of the day

This meditation on solidarity, oppression and the vicissitudes of history comes from William Morris‘ A Dream of John Ball, A King’s Lesson:

But while I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name — while I pondered all this, John Ball began to speak again in the same soft and dear voice with which he had left off.

“Good fellows, it was your fellowship and your kindness that took me out of the archbishop’s prison three days agone, though God wot ye had nought to gain by it save outlawry and the gallows; yet lacked I not your fellowship before ye drew near me in the body, and when between me and Canterbury street was yet a strong wall, and the turnkeys and sergeants and bailiffs.

John Ball and the Peasant's Revolt of 1381