Sainte Nicholaes bring us wel thare.
‘Bare’ here means shrine, literally, but Godric is thinking also of the name of the ‘burgh’, the city of Bari to which the relics of the saint had been lately brought.
Religious lyric poetry is not separate from other kinds, and it frequently imitates the forms and language of worldly songs. The Luve Ron of the Friar Minor Thomas de Hales is one of the earliest poems of a type something between the song and the moral poem—a lyric rather far away from the music of a song, more like the lyrics of modern poets, meant to be read rather than sung, yet keeping the lyrical stave. One passage in it is on the favourite theme of the ‘snows of yester year’—
Where is Paris and Heleyne
That were so bright and fair of blee!
This is earlier in date than the famous collection in the Harleian MS., which is everything best worth remembering in the old lyrical poetry—
Betwene Mersche and Averil
When spray beginneth to springe.
The lyrical contents of this book (there are other things besides the songs—a copy of King Horn, e.g.)—the songs of this Harleian MS.—are classified as religious, amatory and satirical; but a better division is simply into songs of love and songs of scorn. The division is as old and as constant as anything in the world, and the distinction between ‘courtly’ and ‘popular’ does not affect it. In the older court poetry of Iceland, as in the later of Provence and Germany, the lyric of scorn and the lyric of praise were equally recognized. The name ‘Wormtongue’ given to an Icelandic poet for his attacking poems would do very well for many of the Provençals—for Sordello, particularly, whose best-known poem is his lyrical satire on the Kings of Christendom. It depends, of course, on fashion how the lyrical attack shall be developed. In England it could not be as subtle as in the countries of Bertran de Born or Walter von der Vogelweide, where the poet was a friend and enemy of some among the greatest of the earth. The political songs in the Harleian manuscript are anonymous, and express the heart of the people. The earliest in date and the best known is the song of Lewes—a blast of laughter from the partisans of Simon de Montfort following up the pursuit of their defeated adversaries—thoroughly happy and contemptuous, and not cruel. It is addressed to ‘Richard of Almain’, Richard the king’s brother, who was looked on as the bad counsellor of his nephew Edward—
Sir Simon de Montfort hath swore by his chin,