England's Antiphon

I would I were hid somewhere out of sight,
That men should me nowhere see nor know;
If I be taken I am aflyght afraid.
In mekyl shame I shall be throwe. much.

Scribe. Alas the time that this betyd! happened.
Right bitter care doth me embrace.
All my sins be now unhid,
Yon man before me them all doth trace.
If I were once out of this place,
To suffer death great and vengeance able,[15 - Able to suffer, deserving, subject to, obnoxious to, liable to death and vengeance.]
I will never come before his face,
Though I should die in a stable.

Upon this follows The Raising of Lazarus; next The Council of the Jews, to which the devil appears as a Prologue, dressed in the extreme of the fashion of the day, which he sets forth minutely enough in his speech also. The Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; The Betrayal; King Herod; The Trial of Christ; Pilate's Wife's Dream come next; to the subject of the last of which the curious but generally accepted origin is given, that it was inspired by Satan, anxious that Jesus should not be slain, because he dreaded the mischief he would work when he entered Hades or Hell, for there is no distinction between them either here or in the Apocryphal Gospel whence the Descent into Hell is taken. Then follow The Crucifixion and The Descent into Hell—often called the Harrowing of Hell—that is, the making war upon or despoiling of hell,[16 - The word harry is still used in Scotland, but only in regard to a bird's nest.] for which the authority is a passage in the Gospel of Nicodemus, full of a certain florid Eastern grandeur. I need hardly remind my readers that the Apostles' Creed, as it now stands, contains the same legend in the form of an article of faith. The allusions to it are frequent in the early literature of Christendom.

The soul of Christ comes to the gates of hell, and says:
Undo your gates of sorwatorie; place of sorrow.
On man's soul I have memorie;
There cometh now the king of glory,
These gates for to breke!
Ye devils that are here within,
Hell gates ye shall unpin;
I shall deliver man's kin—
From woe I will them wreke. avenge.
* * * * *
Against me it were but waste
To holdyn or to standyn fast;
Hell-lodge may not last
Against the king of glory.
Thy dark door down I throw;
My fair friends now well I know;
I shall them bring, reckoned by row,
Out of their purgatory!

The Burial; The Resurrection; The Three Maries; Christ appearing to Mary; The Pilgrim of Emmaus; The Ascension; The Descent of the Holy Ghost; The Assumption of the Virgin; and Doomsday, close the series. I have quoted enough to show that these plays must, in the condition of the people to whom they were presented, have had much to do with their religious education.

This fourteenth century was a wonderful time of outbursting life. Although we cannot claim the Miracles as entirely English products, being in all probability translations from the Norman-French, yet the fact that they were thus translated is one remarkable amongst many in this dawn of the victory of England over her conquerors. From this time, English prospered and French decayed. Their own language was now, so far, authorized as the medium of religious instruction to the people, while a similar change had passed upon processes at law; and, most significant of all, the greatest poet of the time, and one of the three greatest poets as yet of all English time, wrote, although a courtier, in the language of the people. Before selecting some of Chaucer's religious verses, however, I must speak of two or three poems by other writers.

The first of these is The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman,—a poem of great influence in the same direction as the writings of Wycliffe. It is a vision and an allegory, wherein the vices of the time, especially those of the clergy, are unsparingly dealt with. Towards the close it loses itself in a metaphysical allegory concerning Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest.[17 - Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best.] I do not find much poetry in it. There is more, to my mind, in another poem, written some thirty or forty years later, the author of which is unknown, perhaps because he was an imitator of William Langland, the author of the Vision. It is called Pierce the Plough-man's Crede. Both are written after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxon poetry, and not after the fashion of the Anglo-Norman, of which distinction a little more presently. Its object is to contrast the life and character of the four orders of friars with those of a simple Christian. There is considerable humour in the working plan of the poem.

A certain poor man says he has succeeded in learning his A B C, his Paternoster, and his Ave Mary, but he cannot, do what he will, learn his Creed. He sets out, therefore, to find some one whose life, according with his profession, may give him a hope that he will teach him his creed aright. He applies to the friars. One after another, every order abuses the other; nor this only, but for money offers either to teach him his creed, or to absolve him for ignorance of the same. He finds no helper until he falls in with Pierce the Ploughman, of whose poverty he gives a most touching description. I shall, however, only quote some lines of The Believe as taught by the Ploughman, and this principally to show the nature of the versification:

Leve thou on our Lord God, that all the world wroughté; believe.
Holy heaven upon high wholly he formed;
And is almighty himself over all his workés;
And wrought as his will was, the world and the heaven;
And on gentle Jesus Christ, engendered of himselven,
His own only Son, Lord over all y-knowen.
* * * * *
With thorn y-crowned, crucified, and on the cross diéd;
And sythen his blessed body was in a stone buried; after that.
And descended adown to the dark hellé,
And fetched out our forefathers; and they full fain weren. glad.
The third day readily, himself rose from death,
And on a stone there he stood, he stey up to heaven. where: ascended.

Here there is no rhyme. There is measure—a dance-movement in the verse; and likewise, in most of the lines, what was essential to Anglo-Saxon verse—three or more words beginning with the same sound. This is somewhat of the nature of rhyme, and was all our Anglo-Saxon forefathers had of the kind. Their Norman conquerors brought in rhyme, regularity of measure, and division into stanzas, with many refinements of versification now regarded, with some justice and a little more injustice, as peurilities. Strange as it may seem, the peculiar rhythmic movement of the Anglo-Saxon verse is even yet the most popular of all measures. Its representative is now that kind of verse which is measured not by the number of syllables, but by the number of accented syllables. The bulk of the nation is yet Anglo-Saxon in its blind poetic tastes.

Before taking my leave of this mode, I would give one fine specimen from another poem, lately printed, for the first time in full, from Bishop Percy's manuscript. It may chronologically belong to the beginning of the next century: its proper place in my volume is here. It is called Death and Liffe. Like Langland's poem, it is a vision; but, short as it is in comparison, there is far more poetry in it than in Piers Plowman. Life is thus described:

She was brighter of her blee[18 - Complexion.] than was the bright sun;
Her rudd[19 - Ruddiness—complexion.] redder than the rose that on the rise[20 - Twig.] hangeth;
Meekly smiling with her mouth, and merry in her looks;
Ever laughing for love, as she like would.

Everything bursts into life and blossom at her presence,

And the grass that was grey greened belive. forthwith.

But the finest passage is part of Life's answer to Death, who has been triumphing over her:

How didst thou joust at Jerusalem, with Jesu, my Lord,
Where thou deemedst his death in one day's time! judgedst.
There wast thou shamed and shent and stripped for aye! rebuked.
When thou saw the king come with the cross on his shoulder,
On the top of Calvary thou camest him against;
Like a traitor untrue, treason thou thought;
Thou laid upon my liege lord loathful hands,
Sithen beat him on his body, and buffeted him rightly, then.
Till the railing red blood ran from his sides; pouring down.

Sith rent him on the rood with full red wounds: then.
To all the woes that him wasted, I wot not few,
Then deemedst (him) to have been dead, and dressed for ever.
But, Death, how didst thou then, with all thy derffe words, fierce.
When thou pricked at his pap with the point of a spear,
And touched the tabernacle of his true heart,
Where my bower was bigged to abide for ever? built.
When the glory of his Godhead glinted in thy face,
Then wast thou feared of this fare in thy false heart; affair.
Then thou hied into hell-hole to hide thee belive; at once.
Thy falchion flew out of thy fist, so fast thou thee hied;
Thou durst not blush once back, for better or worse, look.
But drew thee down full in that deep hell,
And bade them bar bigly Belzebub his gates. greatly, strongly.
Then thou told them tidings, that teened them sore; grieved.
How that king came to kithen his strength, show.
And how she[21 - Life (?).—I think she should be he.] had beaten thee on thy bent,[22 - Field.]
and thy brand taken,