To thee cherubim and seraphim crieth with vois withouten cessinge:
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Ostis:
Hevenes and erthe ben ful of mageste of thi glorie:
Thee the glorious compainie of apostles:
Thee the preisable noumbre of prophetes:
Thee preiseth the white ost of martires.
So began the English version of the Te Deum in a Primer written at the end of the fourteenth century (British Museum, Add. MS. 27, 592),[4] and if the beauty of some of these lines has caused us to give them a preference over other versions a little closer to our own, they serve none the less well to show whence it was that our Prayer Book obtained its magnificent rhythms. But who would know more of our old English Primers must be referred to the third volume of the late Mr. Maskell's 'Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae' (Clarendon Press, 1882). Here we are concerned with Horae, and that in their bibliographical and pictorial, rather than their liturgical aspect.
Each of the Hours, we are told, had its mystical reference to some event in the Lives of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord, and these references are explained in some of the Primers in some rude verses, which, with correction of some obvious misprints, and modernising the spelling, I proceed to quote:—
Ad Laudes:
How Mary, the mother and virgin,