P. [47]. Saynte Thomas of Acres.
"A the Austen fryers
They count us for lyers:
And at Saynt Thomas of Akers
They carpe us lyke crakers."
—Skelton's Colin Clout (Works, ed. Dyce, i. 357).
This tale is imitated in Hobson's Conceits.
P. [60]. Of the gentylman, that promysed the scoler of Oxforde a sarcenet typet—Sarcenet, at the period to which this story refers, was a material which only certain persons were allowed to wear. See Nicolas' note to a passage in the Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 220. This jest is transplanted by Johnson, with very little alteration, into the Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson, 1607.
P. [78]. Therefore I pray thee, teche me my Pater noster, and by my truthe, I shall therfore teche thee a songe of Robyn Hode that shall be worth xx of it!
The following passage from a poem, which has been sometimes ascribed to Skelton, is a curious illustration of this paragraph:—
Thus these sysmatickes,
And lowsy lunatickes,
With spurres and prickes
Call true men heretickes.
They finger their fidles,
And cry in quinibles,
Away these bibles,
For they be but ridles!
And give them Robyn Whode,
To red howe he stode
In mery grene wode,
When he gathered good,
Before Noyes ffloodd!
The Image of Ipocrysy, Part iii.
P. [84]. Of the wyfe that bad, &c.
Of swearing between a wyfe and her husband.
"Cis, by this candle in my sleep I thought
One told me of thy body thou wert nought.
Good husband, he that told you ly'd, she said,
And swearing, laid her hand upon the bread.
Then eat the bread, quoth he, that I may deem
That fancie false, that true to me did seem.
Nay, sir, said she, the matter well to handle,
Since you swore first, you first shall eat the candle."
Wits Interpreter, the English Parnassus, By John Cotgrave, 1662, p. 286.