"Quant le cheval est emble
Dounke ferme fols l'estable
Ce dit li vilains."
The date of this poem is about the year 1300. How long the proverbs given therein date before its appearance—centuries possibly—we cannot say; but even if we took this poem as a point to start from, it is very interesting to reflect that this stolen horse and his unlocked stable have been for hundreds of years a warning to the heedless, and as well known to the men of Cressy and Agincourt as to those of this present day. However men, as Cavaliers or Roundheads, Lancastrians or Yorkists, priests or presbyters, differed from each other in much else, all agreed in this recognition of the folly of not taking better care of the steed they all knew so well.
We have an imitation of this old French poem in an English one that was almost contemporaneous, and, as in the preceding poem, each stanza is an amplification of the idea in the proverb that immediately follows, though in either case this gloss or development is not always very much to the point.
The first verse is dedicatory, invoking the Divine blessing:
"Mon that wol of wysdom heren
At wyse Hendyng he may lernen
That wes Marcolmes sone:
Gode thonkes out monie thewes
For te teche fele shrewes
For that wes ever is wone
Jhesu Crist al folke red
That for us all tholede ded
Upon the rode tre
Lene us all to ben wys
Ant to ende in his servys.
Amen, par charite.
God biginning maketh god endyng
Quoth Hendyng."
"Of fleysh lust cometh shame," and "if thou will fleysh overcome" the wisest course is flight from the temptation:
"Wel fytht that wel flyth
Quoth Hendyng."
If you would avoid the evils that follow hasty speech keep the tongue with all diligence in subjection, for though one's tongue has no bone in it itself it has been the cause of many a broken bone in the quarrels that it has fostered:
"Tonge breketh bon
Ant nad hire selve non
Quoth Hendyng."
"Al too dere," he warns us, "is botht that ware that we may wythoute care," gather at a terrible risk to ourselves. It is the grossest folly to find a momentary pleasure in any act that will bring misery in its train, for