So writes William Langland in his late fourteenth-century allegory Piers Plowman. Falling asleep one May morning on the Malvern Hills, Langland's narrator, Will, finds himself in an unknown wilderness, separated from the world yet able to look upon it from a privileged vantage point. He is distant from all that he sees but, in consequence, he is able to see clearly the intricate workings of society – the winners and wasters, the pious and pernicious – bounded on one side by the finely wrought tower of Heaven, on the other by the dreadful defile of Hell. Will's position may in some respects be likened to that of the modern viewer of misericords, party to a rich spectrum of flourishing medieval life which is consciously balanced between salvation and damnation, yet nonetheless separated from that life. Like Will, as we survey these scenes we may frequently find ourselves asking, ‘what may this be to mene?’ And, again like Will, it is to Holy Church that we must turn in order to find the answers to our perplexed questions. Before we engage with the matter of how meaning may be illuminated by Holy Church, however, it will be useful first to find our bearings by surveying the range of everyday activities, pastimes, trades and occupations to be found carved on misericords, ‘[o]f alle manere of men, the meene and the riche, / Werchynge and wandrynge as the world asketh’. Later in this chapter we shall focus upon the ploughman as a particularly striking example of the significance of representations of labour, but we shall begin by looking at depictions of more leisurely activities.

In surveying the types of subjects and activities represented on English misericord carvings, Francis Bond refers to ‘a large and interesting class in which there is no ulterior intent other than to portray faithfully the daily life of humble folk’. Such is the way in which we may perceive these lively scenes which depict the work and play undertaken by, in general, the less elevated classes of late medieval society.