Car en vn liure ai troué
Qe Vitas Patrum est apelé;
Thus seyth seynt Anselme, that hit wrote
To thys clerkys that weyl hit wote
with
Ceo nus ad Seint Ancelme dit
Qe en la fey fut clerk parfit.
Yet there are variations in the English much more marked than in the last example. "Cum l'estorie nus ad cunté" has become "Yn the byble men mow hyt se"; while for
En ve liure qe est apelez
La sume des vertuz & des pechiez
the translator has substituted
Thys same tale tellyth seynt Bede
Yn hys gestys that men rede.[140]
This attempt to give the origin of a tale or of a precept more accurately than it is given in the French or the Latin leads sometimes to strange confusion, more especially when a reference to the Scriptures is involved. It was admitted that the Bible was unusually difficult of comprehension and that, if the simple were to understand it, it must be annotated in various ways. Nicholas Love says that there have been written "for lewd men and women ... devout meditations of Christ's life more plain in certain parts than is expressed in the gospels of the four evangelists."[141] With so much addition of commentary and legend, it was often hard to tell what was and what was not in Holy Scripture, and consequently while a narrative like The Birth of Jesus cites correctly enough the gospels for certain days, of which it gives a free rendering,[142] there are cases of amazing attributions, like that at the end of the legend of Ypotis:
Seynt Jon the Evangelist
Ede on eorthe with Jhesu Crist,
This tale he wrot in latin
In holi bok in parchemin.[143]