Ye Old Grave Digger

A "pox" is any of several viral diseases producing a rash of pimples that become pus-filled and leave pockmarks on healing.

The new, much younger, much stronger gravedigger is the old dead gravedigger's son in the poem.
Hey, it was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.

In the fourteenth century, Europe suffered numerous catastrophes that would go down in history as "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"; a reference to the book of Revelation in which four great ordeals which Earth had to endure in its final days before judgement. The Black Death stands out as the most dramatic and lifestyle changing event during this century. This was a widespread epidemic of the Bubonic Plague that passed from Asia and through Europe in the mid fourteenth century. The first signs of the Black Plague in Europe were present around the fall of 1347. In the span of three years, the Black Death killed one third of all the people in Europe. This traumatic population change coming into the Late Middle Ages caused great changes in European culture and lifestyle. Infected rats brought abroad aboard ships then released onto European shores are now attributed as the primary cause and contributor to the rapid, wild-fire spread of the disease.