Ego nunquam potui scribere jejunus;
Me jejunum vincere posset puer unus;
Sitim et jejunium odi tanquam funus.[51]
Another of the more popular of these goliardic poems was the advice of Golias against marriage, a gross satire upon the female sex. Contrary to what we might perhaps expect from their being written in Latin, many of these metrical satires are directed against the vices of the laity, as well as against those of the clergy.
In 1844 the celebrated German scholar, Jacob Grimm, published in the “Transactions of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin” a selection of goliardic verses from manuscripts in Germany, which had evidently been written by Germans, and some of them containing allusions to German affairs in the thirteenth century.[52] They present the same form of verse and the same style of satire as those found in England, but the name of Golias is exchanged for archipoeta, the archpoet. Some of the stanzas of the “Confession of Golias” are found in a poem in which the archpoet addresses a petition to the archchancellor for assistance in his distress, and confesses his partiality for wine. A copy of the Confession itself is also found in this German collection, under the title of the “Poet’s Confession.”
The Royal Library at Munich contains a very important manuscript of this goliardic Latin poetry, written in the thirteenth century. It belonged originally to one of the great Benedictine abbeys in Bavaria, where it appears to have been very carefully preserved, but still with an apparent consciousness that it was not exactly a book for a religious brotherhood, which led the monks to omit it in the catalogue of their library, no doubt as a book the possession of which was not to be proclaimed publicly. When written, it was evidently intended to be a careful selection of the poetry of this class then current. One part of it consists of poetry of a more serious character, such as hymns, moral poems, and especially satirical pieces. In this class there are more than one piece which are also found in the manuscripts written in England. A very large portion of the collection consists of love songs, which, although evidently treasured by the Benedictine monks, are sometimes licentious in character. A third class consists of drinking and gambling songs (potatoria et lusoria). The general character of this poetry is more playful, more ingenious and intricate in its metrical structure, in fact, more lyric than that of the poetry we have been describing; yet it came, in all probability, from the same class of poets—the clerical jougleurs. The touches of sentiment, the descriptions of female beauty, the admiration of nature, are sometimes expressed with remarkable grace. Thus, the green wood sweetly enlivened by the joyous voices of its feathered inhabitants, the shade of its branches, the thorns covered with flowers, which, says the poet, are emblematical of love, which pricks like a thorn and then soothes like a flower, are tastefully described in the following lines:—
Cantu nemus avium
Lascivia canentium
Suave delinitur,
Fronde redimitur,