Part 5 (1/2)
At thi burch at thi bare Sainte Nicholaes bring us wel thare.
'Bare' here means shrine, literally, but G.o.dric is thinking also of the name of the 'burgh', the city of Bari to which the relics of the saint had been lately brought.
Religious lyric poetry is not separate from other kinds, and it frequently imitates the forms and language of worldly songs. The _Luve Ron_ of the Friar Minor Thomas de Hales is one of the earliest poems of a type something between the song and the moral poem-a lyric rather far away from the music of a song, more like the lyrics of modern poets, meant to be read rather than sung, yet keeping the lyrical stave. One pa.s.sage in it is on the favourite theme of the 'snows of yester year'-
Where is Paris and Heleyne That were so bright and fair of blee!
This is earlier in date than the famous collection in the Harleian MS., which is everything best worth remembering in the old lyrical poetry-
Betwene Mersche and Averil When spray beginneth to springe.
The lyrical contents of this book (there are other things besides the songs-a copy of _King Horn_, e.g.)-the songs of this Harleian MS.-are cla.s.sified as religious, amatory and satirical; but a better division is simply into songs of love and songs of scorn. The division is as old and as constant as anything in the world, and the distinction between 'courtly' and 'popular' does not affect it. In the older court poetry of Iceland, as in the later of Provence and Germany, the lyric of scorn and the lyric of praise were equally recognized. The name 'Wormtongue' given to an Icelandic poet for his attacking poems would do very well for many of the Provencals-for Sordello, particularly, whose best-known poem is his lyrical satire on the Kings of Christendom. It depends, of course, on fas.h.i.+on how the lyrical attack shall be developed. In England it could not be as subtle as in the countries of Bertran de Born or Walter von der Vogelweide, where the poet was a friend and enemy of some among the greatest of the earth. The political songs in the Harleian ma.n.u.script are anonymous, and express the heart of the people. The earliest in date and the best known is the song of Lewes-a blast of laughter from the partisans of Simon de Montfort following up the pursuit of their defeated adversaries-thoroughly happy and contemptuous, and not cruel. It is addressed to 'Richard of Almain', Richard the king's brother, who was looked on as the bad counsellor of his nephew Edward-
Sir Simon de Montfort hath swore by his chin, Hadde he now here the Erl of Warin Sholde he never more come to his inn With shelde, ne with spere, ne with other gin To helpe of Windesore!
_Richard! thah thou be ever trichard,_ _Trichen shalt thou never more!_
This very spirited song is preserved together with some others dealing with later events in the life of Edward. One of them is a long poem of exultation over the death of the King's Scottish rebels, Sir William Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser; the author takes great pleasure in the treatment of Wallace by the King and the hangman-
Sir Edward oure King, that full is of pite The Waleis' quarters sende to his owne countre On four half to honge, here mirour to be Ther upon to thenche, that monie mihten see And drede: Why nolden hie be war, Of the bataile of Donbar How evele hem con spede?
The same poet gibes at a Scottish rebel who was then still living and calls him a 'king of summer' and 'King Hob'-
Nou kyng Hobbe in the mures gongeth.
This King Hob of the moors was Robert the Bruce, wandering, as Barbour describes him, over the land. There is another very vigorous and rather long piece on a recent defeat of the French by the Flemings at Courtrai-
The Frenshe came to Flaundres so light so the hare Er hit were midnight, hit fell hem to care Hie were caught by the net, so bird is in snare With rouncin and with stede: The Flemishe hem dabbeth on the hed bare, Hie nolden take for hem raunsoun ne ware Hie doddeth off here hevedes, fare so hit fare, And thare to haveth hie nede.
This style of political journalism in rhyme was carried on later with much spirit, and one author is well known by name and has had his poems often edited-Lawrence Minot, a good workman who is sometimes undervalued.
Lawrence Minot has command of various lyrical measures; he has the clear sharp phrasing which belongs generally to his northern dialect, and he can put contempt into his voice with no recourse to bad language. After describing the threats and boasting of the French, when Minot remarks
And yet is England as it was,
the effect is just where it ought to be, between wind and water; the enemy is done for. It is like Prior's observation to Boileau, in the _Ode_ on the taking of Namur, and the surrender of the French garrison-
Each was a Hercules, you tell us, Yet out they marched like common men.
Besides the songs of attack, there are also comic poems, simply amusing without malice-such is the excellent Harleian piece on the _Man in the Moon_, which is the meditation of a solitary reveller, apparently thinking out the problem of the Man and his thorn-bush and offering sympathy: 'Did you cut a bundle of thorns, and did the heyward come and make you pay? Ask him to drink, and we will get your pledge redeemed'.
If thy wed is y-take, bring home the truss; Set forth thine other foot, stride over sty!
We shall pray the heyward home to our house, And maken him at ease, for the maistry!
Drink to him dearly of full good bouse, And our dame Douce shall sitten him by; When that he is drunk as a dreynt mouse Then we shall borrow the wed at the bailie!
A Franciscan brother in Ireland, Friar Michael of Kildare, composed some good nonsensical poems-one of them a rigmarole in which part of the joke is the way he pretends to rhyme and then sticks in a word that does not rhyme, asking all through for admiration of his skill in verse. As a poetical joke it is curious, and shows that Brother Michael was a critic and knew the terms of his art. There are many literary games in the Middle Ages, nonsense rhymes of different sorts; they are connected with the serious art of poetry which had its own 'toys and trifles'-such feats of skill in verse and rhyming as Chaucer shows in his _Complaint of Anelida_. Tricks of verse were apt to multiply as the poetic imagination failed-a subst.i.tute for poetry; but many of the strongest poets have used them occasionally. Among all the artistic games one of the most curious is where a Welsh poet (in Oxford in the fifteenth century) gives a display of Welsh poetical form with English words-to confute the ignorant Saxon who had said there was no art of poetry in Wales.
The stanza forms in the Harleian book are various, and interesting to compare with modern stanzas. There is an example of the verse which has travelled from William of Poitiers, about the year 1100, to Burns and his imitators. Modern poetry begins with William of Poitiers using the verse of Burns in a poem on _Nothing_-
The song I make is of no thing, Of no one, nor myself, I sing, Of joyous youth, nor love-longing, Nor place, nor time; I rode on horseback, slumbering: There sprang this rhyme!
Two hundred years after, it is found in England-