The parson who had paid for the midwife's license used to ride about on a "lean, sorry, jack-ass of a horse," even though he owned a very handsome silver-studded saddle. On his horse he was the scandal of the parish and the target of jests and malice. Years before, however, he had owned fine horses, fit for the handsome saddle, but since the nearest midwife lived seven miles away, people in distress borrowed his horse constantly. The result was inevitably a broken-down horse, one after the other. He decided to set up a midwife right there and to ride the same horse — "the last poor devil, such as they had made him . . . to the very end of the chapter" — in order not to be accused of ulterior motives. But malice is always present, and his parishioners maintained that selfishness and pride were his reasons. The malice persisted to his death ("about ten years ago").
The name of the parson was Yorick, and Tristram says that he was descended from that same Yorick who supposedly was a part of Hamlet's court in Denmark. Yorick was a simple-hearted person, innocent in the ways of the world; he was full of jokes and merriment, and he disliked gravity and seriousness. Because of his jokes and the fun he poked at serious people — seriousness, he said, was a "mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind" — he made powerful enemies, although he could never believe that a joke could make someone hate him. But it was true, and that hate and malice broke his spirit and brought him to an early grave. On his tombstone, his dear friend Eugenius had these words engraved: "Alas, poor YORICK!" Passersby who noticed his grave would sigh, "Alas, poor YORICK!" As a tribute to his dear friend Yorick, Tristram inserts a leaf that is completely black on both sides.
