Prœsul dedit mihi hoc pallium,
Majus habens in cælis præmium
Quam Martinus, qui dedit medium.
Nunc est opus ut vestra copia
Sublevetur vatis inopia;
Dent nobiles dona nobilia,—
Aurum, vestes, et his similia.
There has been some difference of opinion as to the country to which this poetry more especially belongs. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, evidently thought that Golias was an Englishman; and at a later date the goliardic poetry was almost all ascribed to Giraldus’s contemporary and friend, the celebrated humourist, Walter Mapes. This was, no doubt, an error. Jacob Grimm seemed inclined to claim them for Germany; but Grimm, on this occasion, certainly took a narrow view of the question. We shall probably be more correct in saying that they belonged in common to all the countries over which university learning extended; that in whatever country a particular poem of this class was composed, it became the property of the whole body of these scholastic jougleurs, and that it was thus carried from one land to another, receiving sometimes alterations or additions to adapt it to each. Several of these poems are found in manuscripts written in different countries with such alterations and additions, as, for instance, that in the well-known “Confession,” in the English copies of which we have, near the conclusion, the line—
Præsul Coventrensium, parce confitenti;
an appeal to the bishop of Coventry, which is changed, in a copy in a German manuscript, to