One day in April, a certain gentleman’s groom, Roger by name, was walking his master’s horses in some fallow ground.  There ’twas his good fortune to find a pretty shepherdess feeding her bleating sheep and harmless lambkins on the brow of a neighbouring mountain, in the shade of an adjacent grove; near her, some frisking kids tripped it over a green carpet of nature’s own spreading, and, to complete the landscape, there stood an ass.  Roger, who was a wag, had a dish of chat with her, and after some ifs, ands, and buts, hems and heighs on her side, got her in the mind to get up behind him, to go and see his stable, and there take a bit by the bye in a civil way.  While they were holding a parley, the horse, directing his discourse to the ass (for all brute beasts spoke that year in divers places), whispered these words in his ear:  Poor ass, how I pity thee! thou slavest like any hack, I read it on thy crupper.  Thou dost well, however, since God has created thee to serve mankind; thou art a very honest ass, but not to be better rubbed down, currycombed, trapped, and fed than thou art, seems to me indeed to be too hard a lot.  Alas! thou art all rough-coated, in ill plight, jaded, foundered, crestfallen, and drooping, like a mooting duck, and feedest here on nothing but coarse grass, or briars and thistles.  Therefore do but pace it along with me, and thou shalt see how we noble steeds, made by nature for war, are treated.  Come, thou’lt lose nothing by coming; I’ll get thee a taste of my fare.  I’ troth, sir, I can but love you and thank you, returned the ass; I’ll wait on you, good Mr. Steed.  Methinks, gaffer ass, you might as well have said Sir Grandpaw Steed.  O! cry mercy, good Sir Grandpaw, returned the ass; we country clowns are somewhat gross, and apt to knock words out of joint.  However, an’t please you, I will come after your worship at some distance, lest for taking this run my side should chance to be firked and curried with a vengeance, as it is but too often, the more is my sorrow.

The shepherdess being got behind Roger, the ass followed, fully resolved to bait like a prince with Roger’s steed; but when they got to the stable, the groom, who spied the grave animal, ordered one of his underlings to welcome him with a pitchfork and currycomb him with a cudgel.  The ass, who heard this, recommended himself mentally to the god Neptune, and was packing off, thinking and syllogizing within himself thus:  Had not I been an ass, I had not come here among great lords, when I must needs be sensible that I was only made for the use of the small vulgar.  Aesop had given me a fair warning of this in one of his fables.  Well, I must e’en scamper or take what follows.  With this he fell a-trotting, and wincing, and yerking, and calcitrating, alias kicking, and farting, and funking, and curvetting, and bounding, and springing, and galloping full drive, as if the devil had come for him in propria persona.

The shepherdess, who saw her ass scour off, told Roger that it was her cattle, and desired he might be kindly used, or else she would not stir her foot over the threshold.  Friend Roger no sooner knew this but he ordered him to be fetched in, and that my master’s horses should rather chop straw for a week together than my mistress’s beast should want his bellyful of corn.