To complete the pedigree of this scene we must turn to the old poem, the "Cursor Mundi," which, written in the fourteenth century, the time when the northern miracle-plays were taking decisive shape, appears to have served their writers as a stock-book. The following passage is own brother to that in the York miracle-play:--
A ship must thou needs dight,
Myself shall be the master-wright.
I shall thee tell how broad and long,
Of what measure and how strong.
When the timber is fastened well,
Wind the sides ever each and deal.
Bind it first with balk and band,
And wind it then too with good wand.
With pitch, look, it be not thin!
Plaster it well without and in!
The likeness we see is startling: so near to the other indeed as to suggest almost a common authorship.
As for the pastoral plays in the same towns, we find the shepherds and countrymen were just as well furnished with rough cuts from the life. The most real and frankly illustrative, and by no means the least idyllic of them is perhaps the Chester play of the three shepherds. It was not played by countrymen but by townsmen, like the other plays in the town cycles, being in this case the "Paynters and Glasiors" play. The first shepherd who opens it talks of the "bower" or cote he would build, his "sheep to shield," his "seemly wethers to save:"--
From comely Conway unto Clyde
Under tyldes[4] them to hide
A better shepherd on no side
No earthly man may have
For with walking weary I have methought
Beside thee such my sheep I sought
My long-tail'd tups are in my thought
Them to save and heal
In the Death of Abel, another Chester play, Cain comes in with a plough, and says:--
A tiller I am, and so will I be,
As my daddy hath taught it me
I will fulfil his lore
In the subsequent incident of the corn that Cain is to offer for his sacrifice, we hear the plain echo of the English farmer's voice in the corn-market mixing with the scriptural verse: "This standing corn that was eaten by beasts," will do:
God, thou gettest no better of me,
Be thou never so grim
So throughout the plays the folk-life of their day, their customs and customary speech, are for ever emerging from the biblical scene.