“Dame Chat her deare gossyp this needle had found;
Yet knew shee no more of this matter (alas)
Than knoeth Tom our Clarke what the Priest saith at masse.”
Is that reminiscence of old practice? Hardly that, for if the mass was then being said in English it would be quite pointless. Beyond that, the play is crammed with Catholic catchwords, all of them oaths. “Gog’s bread,” “Gog’s sydes,” “Gog’s malte”; numberless Our Ladys; “by gys” (by Jesus); finally this:
“There I will have you sweare by our dere Lady of Bullaine,
S. Dunstone, and S. Donnyke, with the three Kings of Kullaine,
That ye shall keepe it secret....”
These things point to a familiarity with Catholic usage, whichever way you take them, exceedingly interesting. The chief thing which they point out to me is that there was no religious sense in the peasantry at all. The names and symbols of worship were augmentives of conversation, but no more. They meant nothing, and implied nothing but use and wont. Catholicism expired and Calvinism did not thrive, for the same reason. Neither of them touched the heart of the peasantry, which remained what it had been throughout, innately pagan, follower (as I put it) of Saint Use, but of no other divinity. That is as far as one has been able to go. Certainly Gammer Gurton will take us no further.
Dullness, bestiality, grossness: these stare you in the face. Between the lines of them you may discern the squalor and the penury of village life in Merrie England. Take this:
Gammer: “Come hether, Cocke; what, Cocke I say.