Betwixt an ox and an ass
Jesu this King born He was.”
The lullaby to the babies in the same play is pretty too, and so is the shepherds’ song when the angels have announced to them the birth of Christ. Here are the words:
“As I out rode this enderes’ night,
Of three jolly shepherds I saw a sight,
And all about their fold a star shone bright;
They sang, Terli, ter low;
So merrily the shepherds their pipes can blow.”
But the best of all the plays is one that does not appear in either of the four sets known as the York, the Coventry, the Chester, and the Wakefield series. It was probably first written in Dutch, and afterwards translated into English. For we must remember that not only in England were these miracle plays acted; they were just as popular in France, in Germany, and in Holland, as in our own country. This particular play is called Everyman, and it is in many ways different from any of the pageants we have so far talked about.
In the first place, instead of being a Bible story, it is an allegory, something like the allegory of the Pilgrim’s Progress. Just as Christian, the “Pilgrim,” stands for any human being born into this world and passing through it on his way to another life, so Everyman means just what the word says. Every man or woman of us. Everyone, in fact; since every one of us is born into this world and, after journeying through life, has to pass out of it at the gate of death.