CHAPTER XIX.
Jest-books considered as Historical and Literary Material—The Twofold Point Illustrated—Localisation of Stories.
HAVING now dealt at reasonable length with those points of view which have reference to the sophistication and affiliation of Jests, let us proceed to regard this highly fruitful topic from one or two other aspects; and firstly I propose to invite attention to the valuable material which the writer on old English manners and institutions may find here ready to his hand. There is barely a custom or an idea prevalent among our forefathers which the vast body of printed Ana, and especially the Shakespear Jest-Books, 1864, do not afford the means of illustrating and facilities for more clearly comprehending. The stories embraced within the entire range of jocular literature are so multifarious in their origin and drift, while they so largely partake of a popular character, that they richly reimburse our examination of them, even when, as so frequently happens, their literary and artistic claims are slender to excess.
In the Hundred Merry Tales, 1526, there is the story of the lad who took his shoes to be mended, whence comes the information to us that the charge for this kind of work was at that period threepence. Then, in another item of the series, which in its totality is decidedly unconventional, we perceive how young fellows just emerging from boyhood wore the hair on the upper lip as well as the beard. The story Of the Courtier and the Carter aptly serves to throw light on a point which does not appear to be sufficiently understood—the application of the terms cart and carter to ordinary vehicles for the conveyance of travellers of all degrees,—so much so that the rough, old-fashioned lawyer, desirous of an audience with Queen Elizabeth, while she was on a journey, cried out to her coachman, “Stop thy cart, good fellow, stop thy cart!” and the ancient French hunting chariots were merely an evolution from the primitive agricultural model.
It is difficult to resist the temptation to smile at the whimsical suggestion of the curate “who preached the articles of the Creed,” that such as were not satisfied about them from his communication had better go to Coventry and see them on the stage at the Corpus Christi play. What a vivid glimpse rises before us of the feeling and costume of three or four centuries ago, when we read the account given in another of the Tales, “of the man that desired to be set on the pillory,” in order that, while he was there, his confederates in the crowd might pick the honest folks’ pockets and empty the butchers’ aprons, as they gaped at the spectacle!
The expedients for swindling which formerly throve, enter not a little into these miscellanies; and the drollery of the incidents of a fraud naturally outlive the temporary elements. The narrative of a sharper, who is, by the way, described as “a merry man,” and who distributed bills announcing the performance of a play, belongs to the earlier years of Elizabeth; but it was a trick repeated, doubtless, more than once. The particular story is laid somewhere about 1567, and it establishes several curious details respecting the theatrical exhibitions of that date. The scene was Northumberland Place, in the city of London, and the proceedings were to commence at two in the afternoon. Two men were stationed at the gate with a box to take the money—a penny or a halfpenny at least—and as soon as the fellow conceived that there was no likelihood of collecting more, he sent the two box-keepers in to “keep the room,” mounted a horse which waited for him at an adjoining inn, and rode off to Barnet.
This episode is additionally curious and interesting, because it anticipates by almost forty years a precisely similar adventure placed on record by Chamberlain the letter-writer as having occurred within his knowledge in 1602. In both cases the actors were advertised to be amateurs, which, as the piece was to be presented on a scaffold in the market-place, was a novel attraction and a happy stroke.
The epigram of Sir Thomas More on one who took the fly out of a glass of water, and replaced it when he had done drinking, has been made the basis for a jest; but was itself founded on the common superstition that such an act was lucky.
The current pronunciation of an early West of England name underlies the pleasantry that Master You having wedded Mistress You, he was ever afterwards known as Master W. The old Devonshire Yeos were probably called Yous by their provincial neighbours.
There is an abundance of historical sayings with a facetious vein or tag; and some of them are highly interesting little traits and sidelights. During the Wars of the Roses, an unfortunate man met in succession with two parties, of whom one was for Edward IV. and the other for Henry VI. To the inquiry of the first he replied that he was Henry’s man, wherefore they beat him; and to the second that he was Edward’s, which brought him the same luck. So the next time, to be quite safe, he declared himself to be the Devil’s man; and when they said, “Then the Devil go with thee!” “Amen!” quoth he: “he is the best master I’ve served to-day.”
There are two survivals about a priest just at the epoch of the Reformation; they are evidently little touches from life. This learned clerk is made to preach a sermon on Charity, and in it to avouch that no man can get to heaven without charity, except only the King’s Grace, God save him! Then, when the royal visitors came down to his parts to make their report, he was interrogated as to what he did and how he passed his time. “I occupy myself in reading the New Testament,” says he. “That is very well,” say the Commissioners; “but prythee, Sir, who made the New Testament?” “That did King Henry the Eighth,” replies the priest, “Lord have mercy on his soul!”
There is a strong air of verisimilitude in the salutation of Richard III., as he was collecting his forces in Thicket’s field, by the Northern man: “Diccon, Diccon, by the mis, I’se blith that thaust king”; and there are in the same tract (Merry Tales and Quick Answers) a couple of characteristic scraps, the only remaining footprints, as it were, of the Canon of Hereford, whose deficiency in intelligence and scholarship they celebrate.
Gossip and satire concerning the priesthood seem, from a very remote period, to have been received with relish and tolerance; but tales exposing the rapacity, ignorance and licentiousness of the cloth were circulated from political motives with even greater eagerness and immunity just prior to that grand climax which abrogated the papal supremacy in England for ever.
It is necessary, and not difficult, to distinguish between narrated incidents, which veritably belong to a specific vicinity, and such fictitious variants as are merely localised for the nonce. Of the latter the jest-books, which contributed so largely to the activity of the press from the accession of the Stuarts to their restoration, are rich in examples, as I have already pointed out. Pasquil’s Jests is one of the worst offenders in this way. “How a merchant lost his purse between Waltham and London” is nothing more than a new-birth of the account in Merry Tales and Quick Answers, where Ware is the place specified; and “How mad Coomes of Stapforth, when his wife was drowned, sought her against the stream,” reproduces No. 55 of the same older miscellany, which is itself copied and varied from a Latin fabliau. Manchester, Hertfordshire, Kingston, Lincolnshire, and other neighbourhoods are fixed as the theatres of adventures in these books, without the slightest eye to topographical fitness. The anterior publications had perhaps set the fashion to some extent, and notably so the Gothamite Tales; but the resuscitation of used matter with some superficial investiture of novelty became a sort of necessity, when the popular demand for these wares increased out of proportion to the supply.
In certain of the collections, on the contrary, and most especially and largely in the two Tudor ones so often quoted, we meet with little dramatic scenes, laid here or there, with a fair accompaniment of probability in support of the attribution. I shall take the course of referring those who may care to follow this part of the argument to the Hundred Merry Tales,—
No. 29. Of the Welshman, who said that he could get but a little mail.
No. 33. Of the priest, who said Our Lady was not so curious a woman.
No. 40. Of Master Skelton, who brought the Bishop of Norwich two pheasants.
No. 71. Of the priest that would say two gospels for a groat.
No. 87. Of Master Whittington’s dream.
And to Merry Tales and Quick Answers,—
No. 54. Of Master Vavasor and Turpin his man.
No. 94. Of the Cheshire man called Evelyn.
No. 132. Of him that sold two loads of hay.
No. 134. How the image of the Devil was lost and sought.
I think that all the articles which I have just indicated manifest a realism of portraiture and complexion which should commend and endear them to the studiers and lovers of the old English life; in the edition of the Hundred Merry Tales which the Royal Library at Göttingen owns, and which I have lately reprinted in facsimile, there is a further item falling within the same category—the highly amusing and doubtless veracious tale of the Maltman of Colebrook, which may be appropriately bracketed with the one “of him that sold two loads of hay.”
Both are, in fact, relations of actual events thrown into a readable shape with a modicum of colouring.
