THE LORD'S WIFE SEES HIM IN THE CELLAR. "Nay, pen sorowe come on my snowte 561 If they passe hens to-daye 564 567 570 573 576 579 582 585 588 591 594 Tylle that my lady come and see Howe þey would haue done wyth me, Butt nowe late me saye." Anon sche sent after the lady bryght Therto sche seyd noght; Sche told her what they hadde ment, Ther-of sche was fulle fayne: Whan sche came vn-to pe steyre abouen, And seyd, pis ys nott to leyne,-- Wyth gret trauayle and peyne; The carpentarys wyfe her answerd sykerly, Euerych in ther manere, Gold and syluer they me brought, The ryche gyftes so clere. Wyllyng þey were to do me schame, And ther they be alle thre." 2 17 you." 615 Then the Lord and lady go home, 618 as ADAM of COBSAM says. [Fol. 186. b.] 621 On their way home they halt, and the steward and proctor swear they'll 624 never go back for 627 five and forty years. mary so mutt me spede." For no thyng they would abyde ; Thys seyd Adam of Cobsam.* By the weye as they rode They hovyd stylle and bode. The stuard sware by godes ore, And so dyd the proctoure much more, That neuer in ther lyfe Would they no more come in þat wonne Whan they were onys thens come, *The letter between the b and a has had the lower part marked over. But it is more like a long than anything else. 630 MAY ALL GOOD WIVES GO TO HEAVEN! Thys forty yere and fyve. 19 633 636 639 642 Of the tresure that they brought The lady would geue hem ryght noght, I take wytnes att gret and smalle, So come thryste on ther hedys Here ys wretyn a geste of the wryght The coloure wylle neuer fade. 645 Now god þat ys heuyn kyng The lady gives The garland is fresh as ever. Thus true are all Here then is 648 651 654 Graunt vs alle hys dere blessyng Owre hertes for to glade; And alle tho that doo her husbondys ryght, Pray we to Ihesu fulle of myght, God grant us all his blessing, and may all true faithful wives That feyre mott hem byfalle, And that they may come to heuen blys, For thy dere moderys loue ther-of nott to mys, Alle good wyues alle. Now alle tho that thys tretys hath hard, come to heaven's bliss, and be such Ihesu graunt hem for her reward NOTE. The two first of the three operations of flax-dressing described in lines 526 — 529, p. 16, One of hem knockyd lyne, Anothyr swyngelyd good and fyne The thyrde did rele and spynne, must correspond to the preliminary breaking of the plant, and then the scutching or beating to separate the coarse tow or hards from the tare or fine hemp. Except so far as the swingle served as a heckle, the further heckling of the flax, to render the fibre finer and cleaner, was dispensed with, though heckles (iron combs) must have been in use when the poem was written-inasmuch as hekele, hekelare, hekelyn, and hekelynge, are in the Promptorium, ab. 1440 A.D. Under Hatchell, Randle Holme gives a drawing of a heckle. The final e after words in represents the line through the W's. The lines through the h's in the MS. are not, I believe, marks of contraction. There are no insettings of the third lines, or spaces on changes of subject, in the MS. For reference to two analogous stories to that of the Poem, I am indebted to Mr Thomas Wright. The first is that of Constant Duhamel in the third volume of Barbazan, and the second that of the Prioress and her three Suitors in the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, published by the Percy Society, ed. Halliwell. She In the Barbazan tale "the wife is violently solicited by three suitors, the priest, the provost, and the forester, who on her refusal persecute her husband. To stop their attacks she gives them appointments at her house immediately after one another, so that when one is there and stripped for the bath, another comes, and, pretending it is her husband, she conceals them one after another in a large tub full of feathers, out of which they can see all that is going on in the room. then sends successively for their three wives to come and bathe with her, the bath being still in the same room, and as each is stripped naked in the bath, she introduces her own husband, who dishonours them one after another, one à l'envere, with rather aggravating circumstances, and all in view of their three husbands; and finally the latter are turned out of the house naked, or rather well feathered, then hunted by the whole town and their dogs, well bitten and beaten." (If any one wants to see a justification of the former half of the proverb quoted by Roberd of Brunne, Frenche men synne yn lecherye And Englys men yn enuye, let him read the astounding revelation made of the state of the early French mind by the tales in the 3rd and 4th vols. of Barbazan's Fabliaux, ed. 1808.) The second story, told by Lydgate, is as follows:-A prioress is wooed by "a young knyght, a parson of a paryche, and a burges of a borrow." She promises herself to the first if he will lie for a night in a chapel sewn up in a sheet like a corpse; to the second, if he will perform the funeral service over the knight, and bury him; to the third, if he will dress up like a devil, and frighten both parson and knight. This the burges Sir John does well, but is himself terrified at the corpse getting up all three run away from one another: the knight falls on a stake, and into a snare set for bucks, and breaks his fore top in falling from the tree; the merchant gets tossed by a bull; the parson breaks his head and jumps into a bramble bush; and the prioress gets rid of them all, but not before she has made the "burges" or "marchaunt" pay her twenty marks not to tell his wife and the country generally of his tricks.-Minor Poems, p. 107-117, ed. 1840. |
