The same volume contains some rather clever parodies on the old English alliterative romances, composed in a similar style of consecutive nonsense. It is a class of parody which we trace to a rather early period, which the French term a coq-à-l’âne, and which became fashionable in England in the seventeenth century in the form of songs entitled “Tom-a-Bedlams.” M. Jubinal has printed two such poems in French, perhaps of the thirteenth century,[57] and others are found scattered through the old manuscripts. There is generally so much coarseness in them that it is not easy to select a portion for translation, and in fact their point consists in going on through the length of a poem of this kind without imparting a single clear idea. Thus, in the second of those published by Jubinal, we are told how, “The shadow of an egg carried the new year upon the bottom of a pot; two old new combs made a ball to run the trot; when it came to paying the scot, I, who never move myself, cried out, without saying a word, ‘Take the feather of an ox, and clothe a wise fool with it.’”—
Li ombres d’un oef
Portoit l’an reneuf
Sur la fonz d’un pot;
Deus viez pinges neuf
Firent un estuef
Pour courre le trot;
Quant vint au paier l’escot,
Je, qui onques ne me muef,
M’escriai, si ne dis mot:—