P. [87]. Of the man that had the dome wyfe.
"A certain man, as fortune fel,
A woman tungles wedded to wive,
Whose frowning countenance perceivig by live
Til he might know what she ment he thought long,
And wished ful oft she had a tung.
The devil was redy, and appeered anon,
An aspin lefe he bid the man take,
And in her mouth should put but one,
A tung, said the devil, it shall her make;
Til he had doon his hed did ake;
Leaves he gathered, and took plentie,
And in her mouth put two or three.
Within a while the medicine wrought:
The man could tarry no longer time,
But wakened her, to the end he mought
The vertue knowe of the medicine;
The first woord she spake to him
She said: 'thou whoresonne knave and theef,
How durst thou waken me, with a mischeef!'
From that day forward she never ceased.
Her boistrous bable greeved him sore:
The devil he met, and him entreated
To make her tungles, as she was before;
'Not so,' said the devil, 'I will meddle no more.
A devil a woman to speak may constrain,
But all that in hel be, cannot let it again.'"
Schole-house of Women, 1542 (Utterson's Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, ii. 74).
P. [89]. Of the Proctour of Arches that had the lytel wyfe.
"One ask'd his Friend, why he, so proper a Man himself, marry'd so small a Wyfe? Why, said he, I thought you had known, that of all evils we should chuse the least."—Complete London Jester, ed. 1771, p. 65.
P. [92]. Of him that wolde gette, &c.
In the Scholehouse of Women, 1542, the same story is differently related:—
"A husband man, having good trust
His wife to him bad be agreeable,
Thought to attempt if she had be reformable,
Bad her take the pot, that sod over the fire,
And set it aboove upon the astire.
She answered him: 'I hold thee mad,
And I more fool, by Saint Martine;
Thy dinner is redy, as thou me bad,
And time it were that thou shouldst dine,
And thou wilt not, I will go to mine.'
'I bid thee (said he) vere up the pot.'
'A ha! (she said) I trow thou dote,'
Up she goeth for fear, at last,
No question mooved where it should stand
Upon his hed the pottage she cast,
And heeld the pot stil in her hand.
Said and swore, he might her trust,
She would with the pottage do what her lust."
As this story in the C. Mery Talys is defective in consequence of the mutilation of the only known copy, the foregoing extract becomes valuable, as it exhibits what was probably the sequel in the prose version, from which the author of the Scholehouse of Women was no doubt a borrower.
P. [101]. If a thousande soules may dance on a mannes nayle.—This is a different form of the common saying that a thousand angels can stand on the point of the needle. "One querying another, whether a thousand angels might stand on the point of a needle, another replied, 'That was a needles point.'"—Ward's Diary, ed. 1839, p. 94.
P. [106]. Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, ed. 1651, p. 191, has a story, which bears the mark of being the same as the one here entitled "Of the parson that stale the mylner's elys." The passage in Scot, which may help to supply the unfortunate lacuna in the C. Mery Talys, is as follows:—