by the musical notation of a rota or rondel (a species of song not unlike the later canon), with explicit Latin directions as to how to sing it; and the words are a conscious poetical adaptation of the reverdie, or song of greeting to spring, well known in France. The music of this little song has received praise as cordial and deserved as that bestowed upon its fresh and natural words. With the opening of the fourteenth century the manuscript remains of medieval song in England become fuller. The famous Harleian Manuscript 2253 alone contains more than a hundred pieces in verse and prose, Latin, Anglo-French, and English, more than two score of them lyrics in English; and there are some six or seven other manuscripts the contents of which must date in writing well before 1400, though none contain so large a body as this. Such is the variety of these poems, the uncertainty of their precise time of writing, and the diversity of the dialects in which they are written, that enumeration rather than classification must suffice to set them before the reader. And yet certain broad lines by way of classification are not impossible of distinction. There are the songs of the minstrel, the poetry of the cloister, and the lyrics of the polite poets, although it is not always quite certain which is which; and, cleaving through this threefold distinction by reference to origin, there is division by way of theme into religious and secular poetry. The polite poet was late to emerge, and we may defer him and his work for the moment. The minstrelsy of the Middle Ages seems hardly more separable from the polite poetry of troubadour and trouvère than the songs of the wandering scholars are separable from the poetry of clerics on the one hand and that of the folk on the other. It may be suspected that when the polite art of poetry fell into professional hands, the English minstrel, whose line of inheritance is direct from the gleeman, rose somewhat in dignity, though he must have descended in more senses than one from his other ancestor, the knightly troubadour and trouvère. The mediæval minstrel, whatever his occasional success and repute, was often little more than a privileged vagabond, licensed to wander where he would, picking up a livelihood by his talents as a singer, actor, and general entertainer. Although disdained as an inferior, alike by the cleric and the man at arms, the minstrel was ever welcome in times of festival whether at court, in the castles of the nobility, at gatherings in the market town, or even at the hospitable tables of the religious houses. Indeed, we read of fortunes squandered by nobles on minstrels and of gifts to them of money and even of lands.1 We do not know to what extent the minstrel was responsible for the remnants of the medieval lyric that have come down to us. That he was responsible for much seems hardly questionable, for it was to his interest as an entertainer to keep a record of his craft. Without further reference to this matter of origins let us look at some of the varieties of these lyrics. On this whole topic see the admirable chapters of Chambers, The Medieval Stage, London, 1903, 1, pp. 11-86. The distinguishing elements of the folk-song have been briefly stated: "as to substance, repetition, interjection, and refrain; and, as to form, a verse accommodated to a dance, question and answer, and rustic interchange of satire." The same authority adds that although these features are not to be found combined in any one specimen of the medieval lyric, all are exemplified in the collections extant. The refrain is often meaningless, as Po, po, po, po, Love bran and so do mo; or distorted, as "Kyrieleyson," applied to verses far from religious or even respectable. It is often in French or Latin, as Veni coronaberis, in the case of a catch in praise of the ivy, referable back to heathen worship of that plant in strife with the holly as emblems of the fructifying principles. Most usually the refrain bears, however, a close relation to the subject in hand, as where each stanza of a carol ends with "Wolcum, Yole!" each stanza of a bacchanal with "But bring us in good ale!" or of a satirical song in mockery of the sad estate of the lover: Such tormentes to me I take, That when I slepe I may not wake. But these have, of course, nothing actually in common with the folk. In the following, however conscious this particular version, the improvisation of the initial phrase by the individual singer, the chorus and the very sway of the throng to and fro, are all well preserved: 1 F. M. Padelford, in The Cambridge History of English Literature, Cambridge, 1908, 11, 422. I have twelfe oxen that be faire and brown, Saweste not you mine oxen, you litill prety boy? I have twelfe oxen and they be faire and white, With hey! with how! with hey! Saweste not you mine oxen, you litill prety boy? Another form of verse, more or less ultimately referable to folk-song, is the verse amœbæan or question and reply. A romantic fragment of this begins: Maiden in the mor lay, in the mor lay sevenight full, Well was hire mete, wat was hir mete? The primerole ant the violet. The dialogue form was developed in later amorous verse to a degree of elaboration in poems such as "The Nutbrown Maid" or in Henryson's "Robene and Makyne," but this last at least has a very different origin. In the carol, which was brought over from France at least as early as the twelfth century, the minstrel trespassed on the province of the religious poet, while touching at the same time the popular festivities handed down with the modifications of compromise from pre-Christian times. It is no wonder, then, that the carols range from narratives of the Nativity and other related events of the life of Christ to naïve expressions of the joy, the feasting, and the good fellowship of Yule-tide and the customs that accompanied this most important festivity of the year. Several delightful songs declare the traditional strife between the holly and the ivy: Holly bereth beris, Beris rede enough; Daunce in every bough. Wel away, sory Ivy! What fowles hast thou, But the sory howlet That singeth "how how." Others relate to the ancient rite of bringing in the boar's head in procession and with song: The boris hede in hondes I bringe, With garlondes gay and birdes singinge, I pray you all, helpe me to singe Qui estis in convivio; while still others offer little more than jovial words of welcome: Lett no man cum into this hall, For now is the time of Christemas! Closely related to the more serious carols of the Christmas season are the spiritual lullabies in which the Child is represented in his mother's arms or lulled to sleep in his cradle by her song. At times a dialogue ensues between the two, the Child foretelling the sufferings that are to be his or uttering prophetic promises of the glory that is to come. A variety of this type is the complaint of Mary, which takes many forms, such as that of an address to Jesus, or to the cross, a dialogue between Mary and Jesus or Mary and the cross, or even a trialogue in which John |