[336] By Thomas de Hales, "Incipit quidam cantus quem composuit frater Thomas de Hales." Thomas was a friend of Adam de Marisco and lived in the thirteenth century. "Old English Miscellany," ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1872, p. 94.
[337] The "Ancren Riwle," edited and translated by J. Morton, London, Camden Society, 1853, 4to, thirteenth century. Five MSS. have been preserved, four in English and one in Latin, abbreviated from the English (cf. Bramlette's article in "Anglia," vol. xv. p. 478). A MS. in French: "La Reule des femmes religieuses et recluses," disappeared in the fire of the Cottonian Library. The ladies for whom this book was written lived at Tarrant Kaines, in Dorset, where a convent for monks had been founded by Ralph de Kaines, son of one of the companions of the Conqueror. It is not impossible that the original text was the French one; French fragments subsist in the English version. The anonymous author had taken much trouble about this work. "God knows," he says, "it would be more agreeable to me to start on a journey to Rome than begin to do it again." A journey to Rome was not then a pleasure trip.
[338] P. 53, Morton's translation. The beginning of the quotation runs thus in the original: "Hwoso hevede iseid to Eve theo heo werp hire eien therone, A! wend te awei! thu worpest eien o thi death! Hwat heved heo ionswered? Me leove sire, ther havest wouh. Hwarof kalenges tu me? The eppel that ich loke on is forbode me to etene, and nout forto biholden."
[339] "Vix aliquam inclusarum hujus temporis solam invenies, ante cujus fenestram non anus garrula vel nugigerula mulier sedeat quæ eam fabulis occupet, rumoribus aut detractionibus pascat, illius vel illius monachi vel clerici, vel alterius cujuslibet ordinis viri formam, vultum, moresque describat. Illecebrosa quoque interserat, puellarum lasciviam, viduarum, quibus libet quidquid libet, libertatem, conjugum in viris fallendis explendisque voluptatibus astutiam depingat. Os interea in risus cachinnosque dissolvitur, et venenum cum suavitate bibitum per viscera membraque diffunditur." "De vita eremetica Liber," cap. iii., Reclusarun cum externis mulieribus confabulationes; in Migne's "Patrologia," vol. xxxii. col. 1451. See above, p. 153. Aelred wrote this treatise at the request of a sister of his, a sister "carne et spiritu."
De le franceis, ne del rimer
Ne me dait nuls hom blamer,
Kar en Engleterre fu né
E norri ordiné et alevé.
Furnivall, "Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne," &c., Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, p. 413.
[341] French text of the "Château" in Cooke, "Carmina Anglo-Normannica," 1852, Caxton Society; English versions in Horstmann and Furnivall, "The minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," Early English Text Society, 1892, pp. 355, 407; Weymouth: "Castell off Love ... an early English translation of an old French poem by Robert Grosseteste," Philological Society, 1864, 4to; Halliwell, "Castle of Love," Brixton Hill, 1849, 4to. See above, p. 205.
[342] The "Manuel des Pechiez," by William de Wadington, as well as the English metrical translation (a very free one) written in 1303 by Robert Mannyng, of Brunne, Lincolnshire (1260?-1340?), have been edited by Furnivall: "Handlyng Synne," London, Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, contains a number of exempla and curious stories. The same Mannyng wrote, after Peter de Langtoft, an Englishman who had written in French (see above, p. [122]), and after Wace, a metrical chronicle, from the time of Noah down to Edward I.: "The Story of England ... a.d. 1338," ed. Furnivall, Rolls, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo. He is possibly the author of a metrical meditation on the Last Supper imitated from his contemporary St. Bonaventure: "Meditacyuns on the Soper of our Lorde," ed. Cowper, E.E.T.S., 1875, 8vo.
[343] "The Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse of Conscience, in the Kentish Dialect, 1340 a.d., edited from the autograph MS.," by R. Morris, E.E.T.S. The "Ayenbite" is the work of Dan Michel, of Northgate, Kent, who belonged to "the bochouse of Saynt Austines of Canterberi." The work deals with the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, informs us that "the sothe noblesse comth of the gentyl herte ... ase to the bodye: alle we byeth children of one moder, thet is of erthe" (p. 87). Some of the chapters of Lorens's "Somme" were adapted by Chaucer in his Parson's tale.