Gervase the Swineherd, of Muckle Sump

Age 12: a late frost bit the blossom. A thin year ahead.

Age 13: fever took both your parents in a season. The parish took you in, grudgingly.

Age 14: a winter fever laid you low, but the fire held it off.

Age 17: a tree came down where you'd been standing a moment before.

Age 18: gleaned the stubble after the reapers and got by.

Age 19: the sheep rot came through and thinned the flock.

Age 20: a winter fever laid you low, but the fire held it off.

Age 21: kicked by a donkey. Held a grudge. So did the donkey.

Age 22: a learned physician applied leeches, a horoscope, and a large bill.

Age 24: paid the tithe and received a nod from the priest.

Age 25: a parish upbringing is a hungry one. You learned to make a turnip last a week.

Age 28: confessed your sins at Easter. The priest had heard worse, but not much worse, and not recently.

Age 29: took the sweats, and sweated through it.

Age 30: made pilgrimage to a shrine and bought a small lead badge to prove it.

Age 34: a winter fever laid you low, but the fire held it off.

Age 35: a winter fever laid you low, but the fire held it off.

Age 36: shivered through a bout of the ague.

Age 38: the tax was counted twice and corrected never.

Age 40: your tithing was fined for a crime none of you did. Collective responsibility, they call it.

Age 43: the king's men took your grain 'for the royal table', with a promise of payment. The promise was the payment.

Age 46: an afternoon in the pillory. The children were merciless.

Age 51: drove the pigs into the woods for pannage. They fattened; so, quietly, did you.

Age 52: died of the flux, having ignored the physician's advice to be bled, which was also wrong.

Survived by no one. Even the pig looked relieved.