Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Tidings of Doomsday (Author: [unknown])

section 20

Not happy then will be the road of those sinners: they get not drink nor food, but constant hunger, and great thirst, and great cold. It is they that will be brought thereafter to the Devil's house, with noise of despair, with heavy yearning sighs. Sad are the cry and shout, wailing and screaming, woe and hand beating, of those sinful people there, at the dragging of them to Hell's torture. But that will be sadness of repentance without profit thereon, for there their prayer will not be heard. For they prepared not at first while they were here in possession both of their bodies and their souls. Then will be shut the sinners' three locks, to wit, shutting of Hell for ever on them, and shutting of their eyes on the world to which they gave love, and shutting of the heavenly kingdom on them. Thereafter they will sit a merciless seat on glowing coals of great fire before the king of evil in the Glen of tortures, wherein they shall have heavy punishments, to wit, death without life: dark fire: life woeful, sad, foul, unclean: a place wherein shall be many dogs keen, greedy, gluttonous, broad-eared, longclawed, sharppawed, beside them. And toads, keen, rough, destroying one another. And adders poisonous, very swift, around the Devil's city. And lions fierce, rending. And many in their dark mass and in their dark light. A place wherein shall be birds hideous (?), taloned, fearful, made of iron. And stinking lochs, stormy, cold, hellish. Fires dark, ever burning. Red flags under feet. Swords maiming. Cats scratching and furrowing. Fiends torturing. Wounds without healing. Flame without quenching. Gag on tongues. Strangling on throats. Vexing on heads. Yelling and gagging on voices. Fettering on soles. A place wherein beside every evil shall be the Monster, conspicuous, awful, manyheaded, with crowds of red glowing coals. Somewhat of his description, to wit: a hundred necks upon him and a hundred heads on each neck, and five hundred teeth in each head. A hundred hands upon him, and a hundred palms on each hand, and a hundred nails on every palm. A place wherein existence is without lovingness,


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without friendship, in thirst, in hunger, in great cold, in great heat, in want of every good thing and in fulness of every evil thing, in union with the disunion of the fiends and the household of Hell. Then will be there woe and lamentation, wail and crying, groan and scream of every mouth, and a curse without resting from the sinners on their Abbot, to wit, on the Devil, for he it is that puts them in endurance of punishment for every evil they did through his temptation, and a curse, too, from him on monks about him, to wit, on the sinners, since the greater is his own punishment for every evil they did through his seduction of them, inciting every evil.