Blow northerne wynd,
Sent thou me my suetyng,
Blow, northerne wynd, blou, blou, blou![383]
says the English poet. Contact with the new-comers had modified the gravity of the Anglo-Saxons, but without sweeping it away wholly and for ever: the possibility of recurring sadness is felt even in the midst of the joy of "Merry England."
But the hour draws near when for the first time, and in spite of all doleful notes, the joy of "Merry England" will bloom forth freely. Edward III. is on the throne, Chaucer is just born, and soon the future Black Prince will win his spurs at Crécy.
FOOTNOTES:
[324] "Castel of Love," "made in the latter half of the XIIIth century," in Horstmann and Furnivall, "Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," E.E.T.S., 1892, Part I. p. 356, see below, p. 213. Grosseteste had said:
... Trestuz ne poent mie
Saver le langage en fin
D'Ebreu de griu ne de latin.
(Ibid. p. 355.)
[325] Among the collections of English sermons from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, see "An Old English Miscellany," ed. Morris, Early English Text Society, 1872, 8vo; pp. 26 ff., a translation in English prose of the thirteenth century of some of the sermons of Maurice de Sully; p. 187, "a lutel soth sermon" in verse, with good advice to lovers overfond of "Malekyn" or "Janekyn."—"Old English homilies and homiletic treatises ... of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries," ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., 1867-73, 2 vols. 8vo; prose and verse (specimens of music in the second series); several of those pieces are mere transcripts of Anglo Saxon works anterior to the Conquest; p. 159, the famous "Moral Ode," twelfth century, on the transitoriness of this life: "Ich em nu alder thene ich wes," &c., in rhymed verse (cf. "Old English Miscellany," p. 58, and "Anglia," i. p. 6).—"The Ormulum, with the notes and glossary of Dr. R. M. White," ed. R. Holt, Oxford, 1878, 2 vols. 8vo, an immense compilation in verse, of which a part only has been preserved, the work of Ormin, an Augustinian canon, thirteenth century; contains a paraphrase of the gospel of the day followed by an explanatory sermon; cf. Napier, "Notes on Ormulum" in "History of the Holy Rood Tree," E.E.T.S., 1894—"Hali Meidenhad ... an alliterative Homily of the XIIIth century," ed. Cockayne, E.E.T.S., 1866, in prose.—"English metrical Homilies," ed. J. Small, Edinburgh, 1862, 8vo, homilies interspersed with exempla, compiled ab. 1330.—"Religious pieces in prose and verse," ed. G. G. Perry, E.E.T.S., 1867; statement in a sermon by John Gaytrige, fourteenth century, that "oure ffadire the byschope" has prescribed to each member of his clergy "opynly, one ynglysche apone sonnondayes, preche and teche thaym that thay hase cure off" (p. 2).
[326] Sermon IV. on Sunday (imitated from the French) in Morris's "Old English Homilies," 1867. St. Paul, led by St. Michael, at the sight of so many sufferings, weeps, and God consents that on Sundays the condemned souls shall cease to suffer. This legend was one of the most popular in the Middle Ages; it was told in verse or prose in Greek, Latin, French, English, &c. See Ward, "Catalogue of MS. Romances," vol. ii. 1893, pp. 397 ff.: "Two versions of this vision existed in Greek in the fourth century." An English metrical version has been ed. by Horstmann and Furnivall, "Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.," E.E.T.S., 1892, p. 251.
[327] "Old English homilies and homiletic treatises ... of the XIIth and XIIIth Centuries," ed. with translation, by R. Morris, London, E.E.T.S., 1867, 8vo, vol. i. p. 39.