Sunge that songge that the wo wrozt,
“Why stond we, why go we nozt.”
To see this curious and woful sight, the emperor travels from Rome, and orders his carpenters and other artificers to inclose them in a building; but this could not be done, for what was set up one day fell down on the next, and no covering could be made to protect the sinners till the time of mercy that Christ had appointed arrived; when, at the expiration of the twelvemonth, and in the very same hour in which the priest had pronounced his curse upon them, they were separated, and “in the twynklyng of an eye” ran into the church and fell down in a swoon on the pavement, where they lay three days before they were restored. On their recovery they tell the priest that he will not long survive:
For to thy long home sone shalt thou wende,
All they ryse that yche tyde,
But Ave she lay dede besyde.
Her father dies soon afterwards. The emperor causes Ave’s arm to be put into a vessel and suspended in the church as an example to the spectators. The rest of the party, although separated, travelled about, but always dancing; and as they had been inseparable before, they were now not permitted to remain together. Four of them went hopping to Rome, their clothes undergoing no change, and their hair and nails not continuing to grow:
Bruning the Bysshope of Seynt Tolous,
Wrote thys tale so merveylous;
Setthe was hys name of more renoun,
Men called him the Pope Leon;
Thys at the courte of Rome they wyte,
And yn the kronykeles hyt ys write;
Yn many stedys[23] beyounde the see,
More than ys yn thys cuntre:
Tharfor men seye an weyl ys trowed,
The nere the cherche the further fro God.
So fare men here by thys tale,
Some holde it but a trotevale,[24]
Yn other stedys hyt ys ful dere,
And for grete merveyle they wyl hyt here.
In the French copies the story is said to have been taken from the itinerary of St. Clement. The name of the girl who lost her arm is Marcent, and her brother’s John.[25]
Previously to entering upon the immediate subject of this Essay, it may be permitted to observe, that a sort of Death’s dance was not unknown to the ancients. It was the revelry of departed souls in Elysium, as may be collected from the end of the fourth ode of Anacreon. Among the Romans this practice is exemplified in the following lines of Tibullus.
Sed me, quod facilis tenero sum semper Amori,
Ipsa Venus campos ducit in Elysios.
Hic choreæ cantusque vigent ...[26]
And Virgil has likewise alluded to it:
Pars pedibus plaudunt choreas et carmina dicunt.[27]