[1641] Quoted from the ballad by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (“The Murder of Caerlaverock”) in McDowall, W., Chronicles of Lincluden, p. 28.
[1642] Constans, Chrestomathie de l’Ancien Français (1890), pp. 178-9.
[1643] Malory, Morte Darthur, ed. Strachey (Globe ed., 1893), pp. 481-5.
[1645] See Le Livre du Dit de Poissy, ll. 220-698, passim, in Oeuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan, ed. Maurice Roy (Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr. 1891), t. II, pp. 160-80. With this may be compared another, but much slighter “courtly” description of a nunnery, contained in the roman d’aventure, L’Escoufle, written at the close of the twelfth century. At the beginning of the poem the author describes the service of the mass in the Abbey of Montivilliers (see below, p. [637]), on the occasion of the departure of the Count of Montivilliers on a crusade; the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Lisieux took part in the service and a large concourse of lords and ladies was present. The author describes the singing of the service,
Li couvens avoit ja la messe
Commencie et l’abbesse
Commanda a ij damoiseles
Des mix cantans et des plus beles
Les cuer a tenir, por mix plaire
Et por la feste grignor faire.
He describes the rich offerings made at the altar by the Count and the rest of the congregation; and the stately visit of farewell paid by them afterwards to the nuns in the chapter house, when the Count asked for their prayers and in return gave them an annual rent of 20 or 30 silver marks. L’Escoufle, ed. H. Michelant and P. Meyer (Soc. des Anc. Textes Fr. 1894), pp. 7-9, passim. The other notable twelfth century description of a nunnery (in Raoul de Cambrai) is very different. See above. pp. [433-5].
[1646] Chaucer, Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, ed. Skeat. ll. 118-64.
[1647] See Dugdale, Mon. I, pp. 442-5.
[1648] ‘Pudding’ was a sausage.