THE SCENE: The hardest part about being a diviner (a.k.a. soothsayer, fortune-teller, etc.) is that everyone will always blame you for being unable to prevent your own death.
THE TEXT: Before the duke left the Somme, a clerk had come to him, who knew, he said, astronomy and necromancy, and held himself a good diviner, and predicted many things. So he divined for the duke, and predicted that he should pass the sea safely, and succeed in his expedition, without fighting at all; for that Harold would make such promises, and come to such terms, that he would hold the land of the duke, and become his liegeman, and so William would return in safety. As to the good passage, he predicted right enough; but as to not fighting, he lied. When the duke had crossed, and arrived safely, he remembered the prediction, and inquired for the diviner. But one of the sailors said he had miscarried and was drowned at sea, being in one of the lost ships. “Little matters it,” said the duke; “no great deal could he have known. A poor diviner indeed must he be about me, who could predict nought about himself. If the things to come were known to him, he might well have foreseen his own death; foolish is he who trusts in a diviner, who takes heed for others but forgets himself; who knows the end of other men’s work, and can not discern the term of his own life.” Such was the end of the diviner.
– Roman de Rou, Master Wace, 12th Century AD
