Clump shifted his rough tunic from loose about his shoulders to more tightly bound with a single pull on a leather thong, this being the sum and substance of his morning toilette. He stepped out of his mud hut and into the commons, a circular clearing around which stood in humble slouches the similar abodes of his villein neighbors. In the center of the circle a fire burned and several men and women were warming themselves, fussing with a boiling pot of some kind of tea or just standing still, struggling to grapple with the awakening consciousness that is the lot of all peasants in all times. Clump grabbed a green onion and began to chew, hoping to replace the flavor of duck that currently inhabited his mouth.

"Morning Clump," one of the elders gummed, his teeth having fled long ago along with his youth.

"Morning Throd," Clump returned.

Several other "Ugh's" and "Morn's" rose from the assemblage, intoned in that guttural timbre of their shared Germanic mother tongue. Clump acknowledged in kind.

"Un Moor Balott Clump." someone said.

"Oh my god. Un Moor Balott" Clump thought to himself. Suddenly Clump longed to be back in his hut, laying in his straw and clutching the duck, dreaming of great mountains of potatoes and onions. "Un Moor Balott."

The mere sound of that phrase was like a dull pain in the knee or elbow, like the pain that comes with too many hours in the fields rooting and planting and otherwise tending the earth. Everyone in the village had this same reaction and so this phrase was never intoned except on the actual day of the ritual. In these times the ritual was being observed more and more frequently but still no one uttered the phrase except on the day itself.

It had not always been so. Clump remembered that his father's father had spoken of a "Balott" but it seemed as though the memory was of a happier ritual. And the father's father had described only one Great Balott, not the serial repetitions of the now times. Clump's father had spoken of three or four re-enactments of the Great Balott which in his father's time were called "Un Balott." These rituals were not as happy as the original but were unremarkable compared to the Great Balott and the details had been easily lost to memory. It was Clump's fate that observance of the ritual was becoming a commonplace, and thus the villeins called it "Un Moor Balott."

The contemporary ritual was not rigidly proscribed but its major elements were always the same. First the King would herald an upcoming Balott. The day of the observance was named in the herald. The place was always the same, the great open plain that stood before the King's fortress. The peasants were commanded to assemble on the plain at the hour of maximum discomfort, the high hour of the day. Of course the day's work had to be compressed into the few morning hours that were free before this convocation formed. So the crowd once assembled was already tired and shall I say acquiescent in mood thinking as much about an afternoon nap as about the goings on right in front of them.

First to emerge from the fortress were the well to do merchants and highborn relations of the real princes. Dressed in finery that glinted in the sunlight and rustled with soft sounds never heard in the village commons, they strode in a long procession before the assemblage. The crowd seemed to shrink in size as the shoulders of the peasants shrunk down and any stiffness in the back was replaced by the curved bow of some hapless supplicant.

Next came the knights with their shinning armaments. Sunbeams danced from their swords and dotted the crowd with speckles of yellow and white. Such a show of force of arms had the effect of shaping the crowd as if an invisible fence had been erected around it. The crowd was now still and in the shape of a trapezoid with smoothed sides.

Finally the King, flanked by the princes, emerged. They took up a line in front of the wellborn and the knights and, as the king stood in the center in silence, the princes began to speak, all at once. Their speaking intonation was soft, lacking the native guttural harshness. And the words were soft with endings that drifted off like "ience" and "ent" and "oise" and "illions." Some gestured as if to give a warning. Others showed open hands as if asking for help. Yet others wrung their hands with anxiety or gripped their foreheads as if in deep thought. Clump, like all the others in the crowd, could make no sense of the words but the message was clear, and the same as it always was with this ritual. Some great danger threatened the realm. It was very complicated and even mysterious. There was much cause for worry.

This display went on, as it always did in the ritual, for some time until the king stepped forward, raising his hand. The princes fell silent. Facing the princes and in a voice loud enough to be heard by all in the crowd, the king inquired "Un Moor Balott?" The princes responded in an affirmative tone "Un Moor Balott" The king then turned to the crowd and again asked "Un Moor Balott?" The crowd knew its part. As one they responded like the princes "Un Moor Balott." This call and response between the king and the mob was repeated three times. Then the king raised both hands and this time in his own affirmation said "Un Moor Balott." And it was over. The rulers disappeared into the fortress and the ruled turned and began their journey back home.

As he walked home, Clump wondered about this now oft repeated ritual. "What is the point?" he thought. If they want a "Balott" then have a "Balott," one big one and get it over with, as it had been with his father's father. Why serial "Balotts," and why always Un Moor Balott. "You are right" Clump heard someone behind him say. It seems Clump had been thinking out loud. He turned around and it was one of his fellow villagers, Krug. "There should be a great Balott like in the before times. The gods will not take kindly to being nagged repeatedly. The outcome of all these incantations may be very bad for us all."

Clump wasn't sure if Krug was right or the princes were right or the king was right but Clump was certain that his daily work would remain unchanged and that soon again there would be "Un Moor Balott." Such was the wisdom of the ordinary man in the age of knights and chivalry.