A History of English Literature

An hendy hap ich have y-hent, lucky chance received

Ichot from hevene it is me sent, I know

From alle wommen my love is lent has gone

And light on Alysoun. alighted

The little bird has hire wil to sing inhyre lede. To love Alysoun, a local beauty, is
a hendy hap, a lucky chance; the singer’s love has gone From alle wommen to her. In
contrast, the domna (lady) of a Provençal lyric is unique and superior; her trouba-
dour has not previously loved alle wommen. The English poet claims later that he
will die unless Alysoun takes pity on him – but his refrain dances. French ways are
cheerfully domesticated.
Secular lyrics survive not in fine manuscripts but incidentally, as in preachers’
examples of frivolities to avoid – fugitive scraps, without music. Although the culti-
vation of stanzaic song implies art, the English lyric is often lively rather than
refined. Another Harley lyric ends:

Ich wolde Ich were a thrustelcok,

A bountyng other a laverokke;

Swete bryd,

Bitwen hire kirtel and hire smok

Ich wolde ben hid.

I would I were a thrush, a bunting or a lark – lucky bird! I would I were hidden between

her skirt and her shift.

The poet’s desire to be a pet bird, close to the beloved, is playful:bryd is ‘bird’ or
‘girl’.
The Harley manuscript, like the 13th-century Digby manuscript, is a miscellany
of French, Latin and English. Some secular lyrics survive in margins. A late scrap
reads:

Western wind, when will thou blow,

The small rain down can rain?

Christ, if my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again.

Lyrics such as this or ‘Maiden in the mor lay’ are anonymous and, compared with
those of a Bernart de Ventadorn, simple. The natural world is glimpsed in ‘Sumer is
icumen in / Lhude [loud] sing, cuccu!’ and ‘Mirie it is while sumer i-last [lasts] /
With fugheles [birds’] song / Oc [but] nu neghest [comes near] wintres blast /
With weder strong.’ These two survive with complex music – they are not folk songs.
Shepherds, housewives and labourers sang; but the lyrics were written by clerks.
More than one is entitled De clerico et puella (‘The Clerk and the Girl’); in others, a
knight dismounts to talk to a girl:

As I me rode this endre day was riding other

On mi playinge

Seigh I where a litel may saw maid

Bigan to singe:

‘The clot him clinge!’ may the earth cover him

The singer does not get far with this sharp-tongued shepherdess.
Hundreds of medieval lyrics remain in manuscripts which can be roughly dated,
but composition and authors are usually unknown. There are popular songs like

THE NEW WRITING 47