SPECIAL ARTICLE. TWO MEDIAEVAL POEMS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18545, 21 November 1925, Page 13

SPECIAL ARTICLE. TWO MEDIAEVAL POEMS.

AND SOME REMARKS ON PILGRIMS. ♦ (srSCULLY WHITTZS JOB "TBZ PRESS.") (By W. Douglass Andrews.) Quid est quod fuit? Ipsum quod futurum net Quid cet quod factum est? Ipsnm quod faciendum est. Tradition has it that in beginning an essay it is a good thing to begin off the • subject, and not too far off, neither. Which things being so, fnc following long quotation seems to be clearly indicated: "A change was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and ail the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of tlic old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The flot>r of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk "back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe. In the fabric of habit in which they had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. "And now it is all gone—like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us and our imagination can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of "the cathedral, only as we gaze upon their silent figures, sleeping on their tombs, some faint conceptions float before us of what these men wero when they were alive; and perhaps in the the sound of church bells, that peculiar creation of mediaeval age, which falls upon the ear like the ecno 0 f a vanished world.'' Those are stately paragraphs, and must make an intimate appeal to all lovers of nobly-moulded prose. They come from that' fascinating chapter of Fronde's History which deals, as its title tells, with the social conditions of England in the 16th century. And they deiervo quotation, if only for the delicate harmonies of their rhythms, and their haunting echoes of the work of a yet mightier master craftsman. But here they have a more immediate mission, and set out a negative view which challenges combat. For it is perhaps too absolute to say that the pre-Befor-mation English lie beyond a gulf unbridgeable, "they cannot come to us, and our imagination can but fedbly penetrate to them." Books are not absolutely dead things, so at least John Milton, who knew something about books, assures us. And ho must be dull indeed who could read through the ' . Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," And yet gain no insight into the times and people of Edward 111. Or if original texts are;too strong meat, there is M. JUsserand's "English Wayfaring Life," which unrolls before our eyeß the whole pageantry of that far-off world, the flux and Teflux on highway and byway along which in those distant days ebbed and flowed the varie3 tide of life. But Jusserand's informative and entertaining book is only mentioned in passing. For, after all, originals are better guides than even the finest of commentaries, and we arc pledged to treat of two original poems; the first that inimitable, though often imitated, Prologue adverted to above; the second onowliich shall in due time be revealed. Every schoolboy, or at any rate every Sixth Form boy, should be steeped in the Prologue and have cut into his memory so deeply that no lapse of years can efface them, many of the more pungent lines, and all • the masterly character sketches. Who. can forget, if once he has made her acquaintance, the Lady Prioress who fed her pet dogs so delicately and was so refined at table that Bhe never snatched at her food or failed to wipe grease off her lips; so - accomplished that not merely could she fluently speak French "after the scole . ' , Stratford atte Bowe," but sing Divine service with the right Bible ■ twang; "entuned in Tier nose full ' merchant with his forked beard who Worthy man ful wel his wit bisette ■Ther wiste no wight that he was in detteJ „ the Clerk of Oxenford, who .liopkwi Hollow, and thereto sobrely, and was so unworldly and devoted to learning thati though he was a philosopher, and might therefore reasonably be supposed able to transmute the baser metals into gold, he' had but little cash v.. in his strong box? Or the Scrgeant-at- > Law who % "a such, whose wordes weren so wise .*u*tice he was ful often, in Assize? .. .Or the Doctour of Physik, so thoroughlv versed in astrology, whoso ■Slodie was but litel on the Bibel, hot who had such phenomenal skill that ; Tie Cause y known and of his harm to • - roote *Bon he cave tho site man his boote (remedy). ~ ,?( or should it be forgotten that he had .his pet apothecary- to make up his prettnptions, and that of hem made oothcr for to wynne. a company they are, etched by a hand in their habits as thev and with all their varied humours • happily touched off. Types, too, as as 'individuals, and walking about us in other garments and • <Ww other names! v"* 8 Chaucer dealt with them, they, *OO, liko Jusseraud's multitudinous folk, ere travelling along the highway, this - jon^on to Canterbury, moved , , spirit of the spring which makes \ e . O, M> to go on pilgrimages. Their nominal aim was the shrine of St. . nomag of Canterbury-, whither thev *®»«de their way • k'jsful martyr for to seke : * hoipeo whan that they were Bat there were in the Middle Ages pil- , SjJOs and pilgrims, likewise palmers, whom require a word or two. Tho Wmer'was at times a pilgrim, returned nhJu - ° Laud, who wore cockle--1 aid carried a palm '' P a^m .^ in symbolic wit- • ?• achievement; and- again, nirfJj*' 3 . a monk, or more mar, under perpetual vow of ' ]? eann S °ut his life in constant shrine to shrine. "The 80mo , home or dwclUn S" '' tho P almcr had none. Tho to some certain de-

signed place, or places, but the palmer to all. Tho pilgrim went at liis own charges, but the palmer professed wilful poverty, and went upon alms." That quaint passage comes from a 17th century writer quoted in the Oxford Dictionary, but it hardly covers those merry pilgrims of the Prologue. Some, no doubt, were devout children of Holy Church like the knight, the parson, and the ploughman, unless, indeed, these latter had the Lollard taint, some were licensed libertines or mere scoundrels, others were out rather i'or a holidav jaunt than from motives more pious, and one and all readily agreed to the plan of Harry Bailey, host of the Tabard Inn, where they assembled, to beguile the tedium of the way with tales, and give a supper at the general cost to the teller of the best by way of prize'. For the pilgrim, and " Rom-rennere," was very often the prototype of the globe-trotter, and went largely for the fun and excitement of new and strange experience, for relief from the monotony of everyday life. Poor dear, he sometimes had cause to regret it, more especially if lie went by sea. And here comes in original poem number two. It is preserved among i the precious MSS. of Trinity College, Cambridge, and it dates from the reign of the ill-fated Henry VI. It has been published, with parts of its brief text obviously mangled, by the Early English Text Society, and its highly suggestive name is "The Pilgrim's Sea Voyage and Sea Sickness." It is written in a lively metre, recalling, though not identical with, "The Rhyme of Sir Thopas, ' or that daintiest of Elizabethan fantasies, Drayton's "Pigwiggin." Each stanza consists of a double group of rhyming triplets linked into unity by an interjected medial chiming in with the extra terminal line. James the son of Zcbedec somehow found his way, so it was believed, to Northern Spain, and after him was named a city of Galicia, Santiago de C'ompostclla, famous to this day for his shrine. This shrine in due course became so widely known that a visit to it ranked with one to Rome, or even to Jerusalem, and it was, probably from motives of economy, the most popular foreign resort for English pilgrims, and the particular goal of those conjmemoratcd in these verses. They open (the verses i.e.) with a stanza far too good to omit— Men may leve alls gamys That savlen to saynt Jamys, Tor many a man it gramys (afflicts) When they begyn to sayle. For when they have take tho see, At Sanrlwych, or st Wynchylsee, At Bristow, or where that it be, Theyr hertcs begyn to fayle. How permanent are the foundation facts of human nature; how unstable in all ages the human stomach! "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." There follow some lively, vivid verses on the bustle of departure, and then the dominant note recurs— Bestowe the boote, Bote-swayne, anon That our pylgryms may pley thereon, For somo are lyke to cowgh and grono Or it bo ful mydnyght. Thereupon dinner is ordered, though, or possibly because, "our pylgryms have 110 lust to cte," and the skipper, like a right,' Englishman, calls for a pot of bt-er. Then, with further not too intelligible nautical directions, the good ship is moving fast before a wind that threatens soon to freshen into a ga,lc, and'alas, and alas— This menewhyle the pylgryms lie And havo their bowlys (basins) fast them by, And cry after hot malvesy "Thou help for to restore." And other things they do, that you can see. dono any day on the Northern ferry— And some wold have a saltyd tost. For they myght ete ne sode ne rost; A man might Bone pay for theyr cost, As for oo day or twayne. Some layde theyr bookys on theyr kne. And rad so long they myght not se; "Allaal rayno hede wolle cleve on threl" Thus seyth another certayne. - And then the "ownere" (can it mean the "skipper"?) comes along and bids the carpenter make the cabins, in those days shelters hastily improvised below or on deck. But in a crowded ship many had to lie in the open- • A sak of strawe were then ryght good. For some must lay them in theyr hood; I had as lefe be in the wood, Withoute mete or drynk; For when that we shall go to bedde, The pumpe was nygh our. beddes hede, A man were as good to be dede. As smell thereof the stynkl

And: here, just where the interest culminates, comes "Explicit," an& marks the end. But there is quite enough to show that the writer was a Calverley or a Seaman in his way, a quaintly humorous fellow whom even Chaucer might have smiled over. And in incident and humour the fragment is almost as helpful as the familiar Prologue to throw a flying bridge over that yawning gulf between the modern and the mediaeval world, so eloquently deplored by Froude. and to enable us to get "close-ups" of our far-off forefathers at least in some of their moods and moments.