Decemberdetails

(page 1543)

An old tonsured man wearing a monk’s robe and a gown is supping lustily from a giant bowl of liquid. He rides a goat, representing the lasciviousness of the festivals at December.

A poem under the image reads as follows:
DECEMBER.
And after him came next the chill December;
Yet he, through merry feasting which he made
And great bonfires, did not the cold remember;
His Saviour’s birth so much his mind did glad.
Upon a shaggy bearded goat he rode,
The same wherewith Dan Jove in tender years,
They say was nourisht by the Idæan mayd;
And in his hand a broad deepe bowle he beares,
Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peers.   Spenser.