Wrath of children son be over gon.
With an apple parties be made at one.
There is good reason for believing that schoolboys of the fourteenth century were much what they are in the nineteenth, and fully possessed of that love of robbing orchards, which seems peculiar to the race. Chaucer has something to say on this head, but Lydgate’s confessions are exceedingly pitiful:—
Ran into gardens, applys there I stol,
To gadre frutys sparyd kegg nor wall,
To plukke grapys in other mennys vynes,
Was more ready than for to seyne matynes,
Rediere chir stooney (cherry stones) for to tell,
Than gon to chirche or heere the sacry belle.
I must, however, add a few school pictures of a graver and sweeter character. Chaucer, who painted English society as he saw it with his own eyes, has not forgotten to describe the village school where “an hepe of children comen of Christen blood,” acquired as much learning as was suitable to their age and condition:—