‘The Nut-Brown Maid’, drinking songs, Robin Hood ballads, and mnemonics like
‘Thirty days hath September, / April, June and November’. There are a few political
poems, like those written at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt (1381): ‘When Adam
delved and Eve span / Who was then the gentleman?’ and ‘The ax was sharp, the
stock was hard / In the fourteenth year of King Richard’. But most lyrics are reli-
gious, including the two earliest lyrics: from the 12th century we have ‘Merie sungen
the muneches binnen Ely ...’ (‘Merrily sang the monks within Ely when King Canute
rowed thereby. The men rowed near the land, and we heard the monks sing’). The
other is the hymn of St Godric (d.1170):
Sainte Marie virgine
Moder Jesu Cristes Nazarene,
Onfo, schild, help thin Godrich,
Onfang, bring heghilich with the in Godes riche.
Holy virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, receive, protect, help thy servant
Godric; take, bring [him] highly with thee into God’s kingdom.
Rhyme is first found in Church hymns; this song is translated from Latin, and ends
in a pun on Godric’s name. We know from a full Latin Lifethat Godric, after many
adventures and pilgrimages, became a hermit at Finchale near Durham, dying at the
age of 105. Late religious lyrics are discussed below, with 15th-century literature.English prose
Another saint’s life of the early 13th century is that of St Katherine, which gives its
name to the Katherine Group of texts, written for nuns in Herefordshire. It includes
lives of St Margaret and St Juliana, and the Ancre ne Riwle,a Rule for Anchoresses.It
also exists in a later version known as the Ancre ne Wisse,or Anchoresses’ Guide.
These are the first substantial works in early Middle English prose.
The Riwle is addressed to three well-born sisters ‘of one father and one mother in
the blossom of your youth’, choosing to withdraw from the world to a life of prayer
and contemplation. It prescribes regular reading and meditation, directed to the
inner life and the love of Christ. The sisters should keep two maids, so as not to have
to shop or cook. Ladies with letters but no Latin were often the patrons and the read-
ers of devotional writing in English. The life they chose was the kind of life which
gave rise to 14th-century mystical writing.
The impulse to spiritual perfection was not confined to the religious: much devo-
tional writing is for the laity. The Fourth Lateran Council of the Church (1215)
decreed personal confession at least once a year. Confession and conscience abound
in Ricardian poetry (the poetry of the reign of Richard II). The Council also
re quired the preaching of a homily at Mass after the gospel. It was often in church
that unlettered people heard speech composed with art.nThe fourteenth century
Spiritual writing
Spiritual writing, seeking a discipline of the spirit to become closer to God, begins
in Middle English with Richard Rolle(c.1300–1349). Such writing had revived with48 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500