Ho, comrades mine!What is your pleasure?What business fineOr mirthful measure?Lo, Venus toward our crew advancing,A choir of Dryads round her dancing!Good fellows you!The time is jolly!Earth springs anew,Bans melancholy;Bid long farewell to winter weather!Let lads and maids be blithe together.Dame Venus spurnsHer brother Ocean;To Bacchus turns;No colder potionDeserves her godhead's approbation;On sober souls she pours damnation.Let then this band,Imbued with learning,By Venus stand,Her wages earning!Laymen we spurn from our alliance,Like brutes to art deaf, dumb to science.Two gods aloneWe serve and mate with;One law we own,Nor hold debate with:Who lives the goodly student fashionMust love and win love back with passion!
Ho, comrades mine!What is your pleasure?What business fineOr mirthful measure?Lo, Venus toward our crew advancing,A choir of Dryads round her dancing!
Good fellows you!The time is jolly!Earth springs anew,Bans melancholy;Bid long farewell to winter weather!Let lads and maids be blithe together.
Dame Venus spurnsHer brother Ocean;To Bacchus turns;No colder potionDeserves her godhead's approbation;On sober souls she pours damnation.
Let then this band,Imbued with learning,By Venus stand,Her wages earning!Laymen we spurn from our alliance,Like brutes to art deaf, dumb to science.
Two gods aloneWe serve and mate with;One law we own,Nor hold debate with:Who lives the goodly student fashionMust love and win love back with passion!
Among drinking-songs of the best period in this literature may be reckoned two disputations between water and wine. In the one, Thetis defends herself against Lyaeus, and the poet assists in vision at their contest. The scene is appropriately laid in the third sphere, the pleasant heaven of Venus. The other, which on the whole appears to me preferable, and which I have therefore chosen for translation, begins and ends with the sound axiom that waterand wine ought never to be mixed. It is manifest that the poet reserves the honour of the day for wine, though his arguments are fair to both sides. The final point, which breaks the case of water down and determines her utter confusion, is curious, since it shows that people in the Middle Ages were fully alive to the perils of sewage-contaminated wells.
Laying truth bare, stripped of fable,Briefly as I may be able,With good reasons manifold,I will tell why man should neverCopulate, but rather sever,Things that strife and hatred hold.When one cup in fell confusionWine with water blends, the fusion,Call it by what name you will,Is no blessing, nor deservethAny praise, but rather servethFor the emblem of all ill.Wine perceives the water present,And with pain exclaims, "What peasantDared to mingle thee with me?Rise, go forth, get out, and leave me!In the same place, here to grieve me,Thou hast no just claim to be."Vile and shameless in thy going,Into cracks thou still art flowing,That in foul holes thou mayst lie;O'er the earth thou ought'st to wander,On the earth thy liquor squander,And at length in anguish die."How canst thou adorn a table?No one sings or tells a fableIn thy presence dull and drear;But the guest who erst was jolly,Laughing, joking, bent on folly,Silent sits when thou art near."Should one drink of thee to fulness,Sound before, he takes an illness;All his bowels thou dost stir;Booms the belly, wind ariseth,Which, enclosed and pent, surprisethWith a thousand sighs the ear."When the stomach's so inflated,Blasts are then ejaculatedFrom both draughts with divers sound;And that organ thus affected,All the air is soon infectedBy the poison breathed around."Water thus wine's home-thrust warded:"All thy life is foul and sordid,Sunk in misery, steeped in vice;Those who drink thee lose their morals,Waste their time in sloth and quarrels,Rolling down sin's precipice."Thou dost teach man's tongue to stutter;He goes reeling in the gutterWho hath deigned to kiss thy lips;Hears men speak without discerning,Sees a hundred tapers burningWhen there are but two poor dips."He who feels for thee soul's hungerIs a murderer or whoremonger,Davus Geta Birria;Such are they whom thou dost nourish;With thy fame and name they flourishIn the tavern's disarray."Thou by reason of thy badnessArt confined in prison sadness,Cramped and small thy dwellings are:I am great the whole world over,Spread myself abroad and coverEvery part of earth afar."Drink I yield to palates burning;They who for soul's health are yearning,Need the aid that I have given;Since all pilgrims, at their praying,Far or near, I am conveyingTo the palaces of heaven."Wine replied: "What thou hast vauntedProves thee full of fraud; for grantedThat thou earnest ships o'er sea,Yet thou then dost swell and riot;Till they wreck thou hast no quiet;Thus they are deceived through thee."He whose strength is insufficientThee to slake with heat efficient,Sunk in mortal peril lies:Trusting thee the poor wretch waneth,And through thee at length attainethTo the joys of Paradise."I'm a god, as that true poetNaso testifies; men owe itUnto me that they are sage;When they do not drink, professorsLose their wits and lack assessorsRound about the lecture-stage."'Tis impossible to severTruth from falsehood if you neverLearn to drink my juices neat.Thanks to me, dumb speak, deaf listen,Blind folk see, the senses glisten,And the lame man finds his feet."Eld through me to youth returneth,While thine influence o'erturnethAll a young man's lustihead;By my force the world is ladenWith new births, but boy or maidenThrough thy help was never bred."Water saith: "A god thou! Just menBy thy craft become unjust men,Bad, worse, worst, degenerous!Thanks to thee, their words half utteredThrough the drunken lips are stuttered,And thy sage is Didymus."I will speak the truth out wholly:Earth bears fruit by my gift solely,And the meadows bloom in May;When it rains not, herbs and grassesDry with drought, spring's beauty passes,Flowers and lilies fade away."Lo, thy crooked mother pining,On her boughs the grapes declining,Barren through the dearth of rain;Mark her tendrils lean and sterileO'er the parched earth at their perilBent in unavailing pain!"Famine through all lands prevaileth,Terror-struck the people waileth,When I choose to keep away;Christians kneel to Christ to gain me,Jews and Pagans to obtain meCeaseless vows and offerings pay."Wine saith: "To the deaf thou'rt singing,Those vain self-laudations flinging!Otherwhere thou hast been shown!Patent 'tis to all the racesHow impure and foul thy place is;We believe what we have known!"Thou of things the scum and rottenSewer, where ordures best forgottenAnd unmentioned still descend!Filth and garbage, stench and poison.Thou dost bear in fetid foison!Here I stop lest words offend."Water rose, the foe invaded,In her own defence upbraidedWine for his invective base:"Now at last we've drawn the curtain!Who, what god thou art is certainFrom thy oracle's disgrace."This thine impudent orationHurts not me; 'tis desecrationTo a god, and fouls his tongue!At the utmost at nine pacesCan I suffer filthy places,Fling far from me dirt and dung!"Wine saith: "This repudiationOf my well-weighed imputationDoth not clear thyself of crime!Many a man and oft who swallowedThine infected potion, followedAfter death in one day's time."Hearing this, in stupefactionWater stood; no words, no action,Now restrained her sobs of woe.Wine exclaims, "Why art thou dumb then?Without answer? Is it come thenTo thy complete overthrow?"I who heard the whole contentionNow declare my song's intention,And to all the world proclaim:They who mix these things shall everHenceforth be accursed, and neverIn Christ's kingdom portion claim.
Laying truth bare, stripped of fable,Briefly as I may be able,With good reasons manifold,I will tell why man should neverCopulate, but rather sever,Things that strife and hatred hold.
When one cup in fell confusionWine with water blends, the fusion,Call it by what name you will,Is no blessing, nor deservethAny praise, but rather servethFor the emblem of all ill.
Wine perceives the water present,And with pain exclaims, "What peasantDared to mingle thee with me?Rise, go forth, get out, and leave me!In the same place, here to grieve me,Thou hast no just claim to be.
"Vile and shameless in thy going,Into cracks thou still art flowing,That in foul holes thou mayst lie;O'er the earth thou ought'st to wander,On the earth thy liquor squander,And at length in anguish die.
"How canst thou adorn a table?No one sings or tells a fableIn thy presence dull and drear;But the guest who erst was jolly,Laughing, joking, bent on folly,Silent sits when thou art near.
"Should one drink of thee to fulness,Sound before, he takes an illness;All his bowels thou dost stir;Booms the belly, wind ariseth,Which, enclosed and pent, surprisethWith a thousand sighs the ear.
"When the stomach's so inflated,Blasts are then ejaculatedFrom both draughts with divers sound;And that organ thus affected,All the air is soon infectedBy the poison breathed around."
Water thus wine's home-thrust warded:"All thy life is foul and sordid,Sunk in misery, steeped in vice;Those who drink thee lose their morals,Waste their time in sloth and quarrels,Rolling down sin's precipice.
"Thou dost teach man's tongue to stutter;He goes reeling in the gutterWho hath deigned to kiss thy lips;Hears men speak without discerning,Sees a hundred tapers burningWhen there are but two poor dips.
"He who feels for thee soul's hungerIs a murderer or whoremonger,Davus Geta Birria;Such are they whom thou dost nourish;With thy fame and name they flourishIn the tavern's disarray.
"Thou by reason of thy badnessArt confined in prison sadness,Cramped and small thy dwellings are:I am great the whole world over,Spread myself abroad and coverEvery part of earth afar.
"Drink I yield to palates burning;They who for soul's health are yearning,Need the aid that I have given;Since all pilgrims, at their praying,Far or near, I am conveyingTo the palaces of heaven."
Wine replied: "What thou hast vauntedProves thee full of fraud; for grantedThat thou earnest ships o'er sea,Yet thou then dost swell and riot;Till they wreck thou hast no quiet;Thus they are deceived through thee.
"He whose strength is insufficientThee to slake with heat efficient,Sunk in mortal peril lies:Trusting thee the poor wretch waneth,And through thee at length attainethTo the joys of Paradise.
"I'm a god, as that true poetNaso testifies; men owe itUnto me that they are sage;When they do not drink, professorsLose their wits and lack assessorsRound about the lecture-stage.
"'Tis impossible to severTruth from falsehood if you neverLearn to drink my juices neat.Thanks to me, dumb speak, deaf listen,Blind folk see, the senses glisten,And the lame man finds his feet.
"Eld through me to youth returneth,While thine influence o'erturnethAll a young man's lustihead;By my force the world is ladenWith new births, but boy or maidenThrough thy help was never bred."
Water saith: "A god thou! Just menBy thy craft become unjust men,Bad, worse, worst, degenerous!Thanks to thee, their words half utteredThrough the drunken lips are stuttered,And thy sage is Didymus.
"I will speak the truth out wholly:Earth bears fruit by my gift solely,And the meadows bloom in May;When it rains not, herbs and grassesDry with drought, spring's beauty passes,Flowers and lilies fade away.
"Lo, thy crooked mother pining,On her boughs the grapes declining,Barren through the dearth of rain;Mark her tendrils lean and sterileO'er the parched earth at their perilBent in unavailing pain!
"Famine through all lands prevaileth,Terror-struck the people waileth,When I choose to keep away;Christians kneel to Christ to gain me,Jews and Pagans to obtain meCeaseless vows and offerings pay."
Wine saith: "To the deaf thou'rt singing,Those vain self-laudations flinging!Otherwhere thou hast been shown!Patent 'tis to all the racesHow impure and foul thy place is;We believe what we have known!
"Thou of things the scum and rottenSewer, where ordures best forgottenAnd unmentioned still descend!Filth and garbage, stench and poison.Thou dost bear in fetid foison!Here I stop lest words offend."
Water rose, the foe invaded,In her own defence upbraidedWine for his invective base:"Now at last we've drawn the curtain!Who, what god thou art is certainFrom thy oracle's disgrace.
"This thine impudent orationHurts not me; 'tis desecrationTo a god, and fouls his tongue!At the utmost at nine pacesCan I suffer filthy places,Fling far from me dirt and dung!"
Wine saith: "This repudiationOf my well-weighed imputationDoth not clear thyself of crime!Many a man and oft who swallowedThine infected potion, followedAfter death in one day's time."
Hearing this, in stupefactionWater stood; no words, no action,Now restrained her sobs of woe.Wine exclaims, "Why art thou dumb then?Without answer? Is it come thenTo thy complete overthrow?"
I who heard the whole contentionNow declare my song's intention,And to all the world proclaim:They who mix these things shall everHenceforth be accursed, and neverIn Christ's kingdom portion claim.
The same precept, "Keep wine and water apart," is conveyed at the close of a lyric distinguished in other respects for the brutal passion of its drunken fervour. I have not succeeded in catching the rollicking swing of the original verse; and I may observe that the last two stanzas seem to form a separate song, although their metre is the same as that of the first four.
Topers in and out of season!'Tis not thirst but better reasonBids you tope on steadily!—Pass the wine-cup, let it beFilled and filled for bout on boutNever sleep!Racy jest and song flash out!Spirits leap!Those who cannot drink their rations,Go, begone from these ovations!Here's no place for bashful boys;Like the plague, they spoil our joys.—Bashful eyes bring rustic cheerWhen we're drunk,And a blush betrays a drearWant of spunk.If there's here a fellow lurkingWho his proper share is shirking,Let the door to him be shown,From our crew we'll have him thrown;—He's more desolate than death,Mixed with us;Let him go and end his breath!Better thus!When your heart is set on drinking,Drink on without stay or thinking,Till you cannot stand up straight,Nor one word articulate!—But herewith I pledge to youThis fair health:May the glass no mischief do,Bring you wealth!Wed not you the god and goddess,For the god doth scorn the goddess;He whose name is Liber, heGlories in his liberty.All her virtue in the cupRuns to waste,And wine wedded yieldeth upStrength and taste.Since she is the queen of ocean,Goddess she may claim devotion;But she is no mate to kissHis superior holiness.Bacchus never deigned to beWatered, he!Liber never bore to beChristened, he!
Topers in and out of season!'Tis not thirst but better reasonBids you tope on steadily!—Pass the wine-cup, let it beFilled and filled for bout on boutNever sleep!Racy jest and song flash out!Spirits leap!
Those who cannot drink their rations,Go, begone from these ovations!Here's no place for bashful boys;Like the plague, they spoil our joys.—Bashful eyes bring rustic cheerWhen we're drunk,And a blush betrays a drearWant of spunk.
If there's here a fellow lurkingWho his proper share is shirking,Let the door to him be shown,From our crew we'll have him thrown;—He's more desolate than death,Mixed with us;Let him go and end his breath!Better thus!
When your heart is set on drinking,Drink on without stay or thinking,Till you cannot stand up straight,Nor one word articulate!—But herewith I pledge to youThis fair health:May the glass no mischief do,Bring you wealth!
Wed not you the god and goddess,For the god doth scorn the goddess;He whose name is Liber, heGlories in his liberty.All her virtue in the cupRuns to waste,And wine wedded yieldeth upStrength and taste.
Since she is the queen of ocean,Goddess she may claim devotion;But she is no mate to kissHis superior holiness.Bacchus never deigned to beWatered, he!Liber never bore to beChristened, he!
Closely allied to drinking-songs are some comic ditties which may have been sung at wine-parties. Of these I have thought it worth while to present a few specimens, though their medieval bluntness of humour does not render them particularly entertaining to a modern reader.
The first I have chosen isThe Lament of the Roast Swan. It must be remembered that this bird was esteemed a delicacy in the Middle Ages, and also that pepper was highly prized for its rarity. This gives a certain point to the allusion in the third stanza.
Time was my wings were my delight,Time was I made a lovely sight;'Twas when I was a swan snow-white.Woe's me! I vow,Black am I now,Burned up, back, beak, and brow!The baster turns me on the spit,The fire I've felt the force of it,The carver carves me bit by bit.I'd rather in the water floatUnder the bare heavens like a boat,Than have this pepper down my throat.Whiter I was than wool or snow,Fairer than any bird I know;Now am I blacker than a crow.Now in the gravy-dish I lie,I cannot swim, I cannot fly,Nothing but gnashing teeth I spy.Woe's me! I vow, &c.
Time was my wings were my delight,Time was I made a lovely sight;'Twas when I was a swan snow-white.Woe's me! I vow,Black am I now,Burned up, back, beak, and brow!
The baster turns me on the spit,The fire I've felt the force of it,The carver carves me bit by bit.I'd rather in the water floatUnder the bare heavens like a boat,Than have this pepper down my throat.
Whiter I was than wool or snow,Fairer than any bird I know;Now am I blacker than a crow.
Now in the gravy-dish I lie,I cannot swim, I cannot fly,Nothing but gnashing teeth I spy.Woe's me! I vow, &c.
The next isThe Last Will of the Dying Ass. There is not much to be said for the wit of this piece.
While a boor, as poets tell,Whacked his patient ass too well,On the ground half dead it fell.La sol fa,On the ground half dead it fell,La sol fa mi re ut.Then with gesture sad and low,Streaming eyes and words of woe,He at length addressed it so:"Had I known, my gentle ass,Thou from me so soon wouldst pass,I'd have swaddled thee, alas!"Made for thee a tunic meet,Shirt and undershirt complete,Breeches, drawers of linen sweet."Rise awhile, for pity's sake,That ere life your limbs forsakeYou your legacies may make!"Soon the ass stood up, and thus,With a weak voice dolorous,His last will proclaimed for us:"To the magistrates my head,Eyes to constables," he said,"Ears to judges, when I'm dead;"To old men my teeth shall fall,Lips to wanton wooers all,And my tongue to wives that brawl."Let my feet the bailiffs win,Nostrils the tobacco-men,And fat canons take my skin."Voice to singing boys I give,Throat to topers, may they live!**** to students amative."*** on shepherds I bestow,Thistles on divines, and lo!To the law my shade shall go."Elders have my tardy pace,Boys my rude and rustic grace,Monks my simple open face."He who saith this testamentWill not hold, let him be shent;He's an ass by all consent.La sol fa,He's an ass by all consent,La sol fa mi re ut.
While a boor, as poets tell,Whacked his patient ass too well,On the ground half dead it fell.La sol fa,On the ground half dead it fell,La sol fa mi re ut.
Then with gesture sad and low,Streaming eyes and words of woe,He at length addressed it so:"Had I known, my gentle ass,Thou from me so soon wouldst pass,I'd have swaddled thee, alas!
"Made for thee a tunic meet,Shirt and undershirt complete,Breeches, drawers of linen sweet.
"Rise awhile, for pity's sake,That ere life your limbs forsakeYou your legacies may make!"
Soon the ass stood up, and thus,With a weak voice dolorous,His last will proclaimed for us:
"To the magistrates my head,Eyes to constables," he said,"Ears to judges, when I'm dead;
"To old men my teeth shall fall,Lips to wanton wooers all,And my tongue to wives that brawl.
"Let my feet the bailiffs win,Nostrils the tobacco-men,And fat canons take my skin.
"Voice to singing boys I give,Throat to topers, may they live!**** to students amative.
"*** on shepherds I bestow,Thistles on divines, and lo!To the law my shade shall go.
"Elders have my tardy pace,Boys my rude and rustic grace,Monks my simple open face."
He who saith this testamentWill not hold, let him be shent;He's an ass by all consent.La sol fa,He's an ass by all consent,La sol fa mi re ut.
As a third specimen I select a little bit of mixed prose and verse from theCarmina Burana, which is curious from its allusion to the Land of Cockaigne. Goliardic literature, it may be parenthetically observed, has some strong pieces of prose comedy and satire. Of these, theMass of TopersandMass of Gamesters, theGospel according to Marks, and the description of a fat monk's daily life deserve quotation.[34]They are for the most part, however, too profane to bear translation.
FOOTNOTES:[34]Wright'sRel. Ant., ii.;Carm. Bur., pp. 248 and 22; Wright'sMapes, p. xl.
[34]Wright'sRel. Ant., ii.;Carm. Bur., pp. 248 and 22; Wright'sMapes, p. xl.
[34]Wright'sRel. Ant., ii.;Carm. Bur., pp. 248 and 22; Wright'sMapes, p. xl.
I am the Abbot of Cockaigne,And this is my counsel with topers;And in the sect of Decius (gamesters) this is my will;And whoso shall seek me in taverns before noon;After evensong shall he go forth naked,And thus, stripped of raiment, shall lament him:Wafna! wafna!O Fate most foul, what hast thou done?The joys of man beneath the sunThou hast stolen, every one!
I am the Abbot of Cockaigne,And this is my counsel with topers;And in the sect of Decius (gamesters) this is my will;And whoso shall seek me in taverns before noon;After evensong shall he go forth naked,And thus, stripped of raiment, shall lament him:Wafna! wafna!O Fate most foul, what hast thou done?The joys of man beneath the sunThou hast stolen, every one!
The transition from these trivial and slightly interesting comic songs to poems of a serious import, which played so important a part in Goliardic literature, must of necessity be abrupt. It forms no part of my present purpose to exhibit the Wandering Students in their capacity as satirists. That belongs more properly to a study of the earlier Reformation than to such an inquiry as I have undertaken in this treatise. Satires, especially medieval satires, are apt, besides, to lose their force and value in translation. I have therefore confined myself to five specimens, more or less closely connected with the subjects handled in this study.
The first has the interest of containing some ideas which Villon preserved in his ballad of the men of old time.
Hear, O thou earth, hear, thou encircling sea,Yea, all that live beneath the sun, hear yeHow of this world the bravery and the gloryAre but vain forms and shadows transitory,Even as all things 'neath Time's empire showBy their short durance and swift overthrow!Nothing avails the dignity of kings,Naught, naught avail the strength and stuff of things;The wisdom of the arts no succour brings;Genus and species help not at death's hour,No man was saved by gold in that dread stour;The substance of things fadeth as a flower,As ice 'neath sunshine melts into a shower.Where is Plato, where is Porphyrius?Where is Tullius, where is Virgilius?Where is Thales, where is Empedocles,Or illustrious Aristoteles?Where's Alexander, peerless of might?Where is Hector, Troy's stoutest knight?Where is King David, learning's light?Solomon where, that wisest wight?Where is Helen, and Paris rose-bright?They have fallen to the bottom, as a stone rolls:Who knows if rest be granted to their souls?But Thou, O God, of faithful men the Lord,To us Thy favour evermore affordWhen on the wicked judgment shall be poured!
Hear, O thou earth, hear, thou encircling sea,Yea, all that live beneath the sun, hear yeHow of this world the bravery and the gloryAre but vain forms and shadows transitory,Even as all things 'neath Time's empire showBy their short durance and swift overthrow!Nothing avails the dignity of kings,Naught, naught avail the strength and stuff of things;The wisdom of the arts no succour brings;Genus and species help not at death's hour,No man was saved by gold in that dread stour;The substance of things fadeth as a flower,As ice 'neath sunshine melts into a shower.Where is Plato, where is Porphyrius?Where is Tullius, where is Virgilius?Where is Thales, where is Empedocles,Or illustrious Aristoteles?Where's Alexander, peerless of might?Where is Hector, Troy's stoutest knight?Where is King David, learning's light?Solomon where, that wisest wight?Where is Helen, and Paris rose-bright?They have fallen to the bottom, as a stone rolls:Who knows if rest be granted to their souls?But Thou, O God, of faithful men the Lord,To us Thy favour evermore affordWhen on the wicked judgment shall be poured!
The second marks the passage from those feelings of youth and spring-time which have been copiously illustrated in Sections xiv.-xvii., to emotions befitting later manhood and life's autumn.
While life's April blossom blew,What I willed I then might do,Lust and law seemed comrades true.As I listed, unresisted,Hither, thither, could I play,And my wanton flesh obey.When life's autumn days decline,Thus to live, a libertine,Fancy-free as thoughts incline,Manhood's older age and colderNow forbids; removes, destroysAll those ways of wonted joys.Age with admonition wiseThus doth counsel and advise,While her voice within me cries:"For repenting and relentingThere is room; forgiveness fallsOn all contrite prodigals!"I will seek a better mind;Change, correct, and leave behindWhat I did with purpose blind:From vice sever, with endeavourYield my soul to serious things,Seek the joy that virtue brings.
While life's April blossom blew,What I willed I then might do,Lust and law seemed comrades true.As I listed, unresisted,Hither, thither, could I play,And my wanton flesh obey.
When life's autumn days decline,Thus to live, a libertine,Fancy-free as thoughts incline,Manhood's older age and colderNow forbids; removes, destroysAll those ways of wonted joys.
Age with admonition wiseThus doth counsel and advise,While her voice within me cries:"For repenting and relentingThere is room; forgiveness fallsOn all contrite prodigals!"
I will seek a better mind;Change, correct, and leave behindWhat I did with purpose blind:From vice sever, with endeavourYield my soul to serious things,Seek the joy that virtue brings.
The third would find a more appropriate place in a hymn-book than in a collection ofCarmina Vagorum. It is, however, written in a lyrical style so closely allied to the secular songs of theCarmina Burana(where it occurs) that I have thought it well to quote its grimly medieval condemnation of human life.
This vile worldIn madness hurledOffers but false shadows;Joys that waneAnd waste like vainLilies of the meadows.Worldly wealth,Youth, strength, and health,Cramp the soul's endeavour;Drive it downIn hell to drown,Hell that burns for ever.What we see,And what let be,While on earth we tarry,We shall castLike leaves at lastWhich the sere oaks carry.Carnal life,Man's law of strife,Hath but brief existence;Passes, fades,Like wavering shadesWithout real subsistence.Therefore bind,Tread down and grindFleshly lusts that blight us;So heaven's bliss'Mid saints that kissShall for aye delight us.
This vile worldIn madness hurledOffers but false shadows;Joys that waneAnd waste like vainLilies of the meadows.
Worldly wealth,Youth, strength, and health,Cramp the soul's endeavour;Drive it downIn hell to drown,Hell that burns for ever.
What we see,And what let be,While on earth we tarry,We shall castLike leaves at lastWhich the sere oaks carry.
Carnal life,Man's law of strife,Hath but brief existence;Passes, fades,Like wavering shadesWithout real subsistence.
Therefore bind,Tread down and grindFleshly lusts that blight us;So heaven's bliss'Mid saints that kissShall for aye delight us.
The fourth, in like manner, would have but little to do with a Commersbuch, were it not for the fact that the most widely famous modern student-song of Germany has borrowed two passages from its serious and tragic rhythm. Close inspection ofGaudeamus Igiturshows that the metrical structure of that song is based on the principle of quoting one of its long lines and rhyming to it.
"De contemptu mundi:" this is the theme I've taken:Time it is from sleep to rise, from death's torpor waken:Gather virtue's grain and leave tares of sin forsaken.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.Brief is life, and brevity briefly shall be ended:Death comes quick, fears no man, none hath his dart suspended:Death kills all, to no man's prayer hath he condescended.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.Where are they who in this world, ere we kept, were keeping?Come unto the churchyard, thou! see where they are sleeping!Dust and ashes are they, worms in their flesh are creeping.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.Into life each man is born with great teen and trouble:All through life he drags along; toil on toil is double:When life's done, the pangs of death take him, break the bubble.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.If from sin thou hast been turned, born a new man wholly,Changed thy life to better things, childlike, simple, holy;Thus into God's realm shalt thou enter with the lowly.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
"De contemptu mundi:" this is the theme I've taken:Time it is from sleep to rise, from death's torpor waken:Gather virtue's grain and leave tares of sin forsaken.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
Brief is life, and brevity briefly shall be ended:Death comes quick, fears no man, none hath his dart suspended:Death kills all, to no man's prayer hath he condescended.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
Where are they who in this world, ere we kept, were keeping?Come unto the churchyard, thou! see where they are sleeping!Dust and ashes are they, worms in their flesh are creeping.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
Into life each man is born with great teen and trouble:All through life he drags along; toil on toil is double:When life's done, the pangs of death take him, break the bubble.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
If from sin thou hast been turned, born a new man wholly,Changed thy life to better things, childlike, simple, holy;Thus into God's realm shalt thou enter with the lowly.Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
Having alluded toGaudeamus Igitur, I shall close my translations with a version of it into English. The dependence of this lyric upon the rhythm and substance of the poem onContempt for the World, which I have already indicated, is perhaps the reason why it is sung by German students after the funeral of a comrade. The Office for the Dead sounding in their ears, occasions the startlingigiturwith which it opens; and their mind reverts to solemn phrases in the midst of masculine determination to enjoy the present while it is yet theirs.
Let us live then and be gladWhile young life's before us!After youthful pastime had,After old age hard and sad,Earth will slumber o'er us.Where are they who in this world,Ere we kept, were keeping?Go ye to the gods above;Go to hell; inquire thereof:They are not; they're sleeping.Brief is life, and brevityBriefly shall be ended:Death comes like a whirlwind strong,Bears us with his blast along;None shall be defended.Live this university,Men that learning nourish;Live each member of the same,Long live all that bear its name;Let them ever flourish!Live the commonwealth also,And the men that guide it!Live our town in strength and health,Founders, patrons, by whose wealthWe are here provided!Live all girls! A health to you,Melting maids and beauteous!Live the wives and women too,Gentle, loving, tender, true,Good, industrious, duteous!Perish cares that pule and pine!Perish envious blamers!Die the Devil, thine and mine!Die the starch-necked Philistine!Scoffers and defamers!
Let us live then and be gladWhile young life's before us!After youthful pastime had,After old age hard and sad,Earth will slumber o'er us.
Where are they who in this world,Ere we kept, were keeping?Go ye to the gods above;Go to hell; inquire thereof:They are not; they're sleeping.
Brief is life, and brevityBriefly shall be ended:Death comes like a whirlwind strong,Bears us with his blast along;None shall be defended.
Live this university,Men that learning nourish;Live each member of the same,Long live all that bear its name;Let them ever flourish!
Live the commonwealth also,And the men that guide it!Live our town in strength and health,Founders, patrons, by whose wealthWe are here provided!
Live all girls! A health to you,Melting maids and beauteous!Live the wives and women too,Gentle, loving, tender, true,Good, industrious, duteous!
Perish cares that pule and pine!Perish envious blamers!Die the Devil, thine and mine!Die the starch-necked Philistine!Scoffers and defamers!
I have now fulfilled the purpose which I had in view when I began this study of theCarmina Vagorum, and have reproduced in English verse what seemed to me the most characteristic specimens of that literature, in so far as it may be considered precursory of the Renaissance.
In spite of novelty, in spite of historical interest, in spite of a certain literary charm, it is not an edifying product of medieval art with which I have been dealing. When I look back upon my own work, and formulate the impression left upon my mind by familiarity with the songs I have translated, the doubt occurs whether some apology be not required for having dragged these forth from antiquarian obscurity.
The truth is that there is very little that is elevated in the lyrics of the Goliardi. They are almost wholly destitute of domestic piety, of patriotism, of virtuous impulse, of heroic resolve. The greatness of an epoch which throbbed with the enthusiasms of the Crusades, which gave birth to a Francis and a Dominic, which witnessed the manly resistance offered by the Lombard burghs to the Teutonic Emperor, the formation of Northern France into a solid monarchy, and the victorious struggle of the Papacy against the Empire, finds but rare expression in this poetry. From theCarmina Buranawe cull one chant indeed on Saladin, one spirited lament for Richard Coeur de Lion; but their general tone is egotistic.
Even the satires, so remarkable for boldness, are directedagainst those ecclesiastical abuses which touched the interests of the clerkly classes—against simony, avarice, venality in the Roman Curia, against the ambition of prelates and the effort to make princely benefices hereditary, rather than against the real sins of the Church—her wilful solidification of popular superstitions for the purposes of self-aggrandisement, her cruel persecution of free thought, and her deflection from the spirit of her Founder.
With regard to women, abundant examples have been adduced to illustrate the sensual and unromantic spirit of these lettered lovers. A note of undisguised materialism sounds throughout the large majority of their erotic songs. Tenderness of feeling is rarely present. The passion is one-sided, recognised as ephemeral, without a vista on the sanctities of life in common with the beloved object. Notable exceptions to the general rule are the lyrics I have printed above on pp. 75-78. But it would have been easier to confirm the impression of licentiousness than to multiply specimens of delicate sentiment, had I chosen to ransack the whole stores of theCarmina Burana.
It is not necessary to censure their lack of so-called chivalrous woman-worship. That artificial mood of emotion, though glorified by the literary art of greatest poets, has something pitiably unreal, incurably morbid, in its mysticism. But, putting this aside, we are still bound to notice the absence of that far more human self-devotion of man to woman which forms a conspicuous element in the Arthurian romances. The love of Tristram for Iseult, of Lancelot for Guinevere, of Beaumains for his lady, is alien to the Goliardic conception of intersexual relations. Nowhere do we find a trace of Arthur's vow imposed upon his knights: "never to do outrage,... and alway to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour upon pain of death." This manly respect for women, which was, if not precisely the purest, yet certainly the most fruitful social impulse of the Middle Ages, receives no expression in theCarmina Vagorum.
The reason is not far to seek. The Clerici were a class debarred from domesticity, devoted in theory to celibacy, in practice incapable of marriage. They were not so much unsocial or anti-social as extra-social; and while they gave a loose rein to their appetites, they respected none of those ties, anticipated none of those home pleasures, which consecrate the animal desires in everyday existence as we know it. One of their most popular poems is a brutal monastic diatribe on matrimony, fouler in its stupid abuse of women, more unmanly in its sordid imputations, than any satire which emanated from the corruption of Imperial Rome.[35]The cynicism of this exhortation against marriage forms a proper supplement to the other kind of cynicism which emerges in the lyrics of triumphant seducers and light lovers.
But why then have I taken the trouble to translatethese songs, and to present them in such profusion to a modern audience? It is because, after making all allowances for their want of great or noble feeling, due to the peculiar medium from which they sprang, they are in many ways realistically beautiful and in a strict sense true to vulgar human nature. They are the spontaneous expression of careless, wanton, unreflective youth. And all this they were, too, in an age which we are apt to regard as incapable of these very qualities.
The defects I have been at pains to indicate render the Goliardic poems remarkable as documents for the right understanding of the brilliant Renaissance epoch which was destined to close the Middle Ages. To the best of them we may with certainty assign the seventy-five years between 1150 and 1225. In that period, so fruitful of great efforts and of great results in the fields of politics and thought and literature, efforts and results foredoomed to partial frustration and to perverse misapplication—in that potent space of time, so varied in its intellectual and social manifestations, so pregnant with good and evil, so rapid in mutations, so indeterminate between advance and retrogression—this Goliardic poetry stands alone. It occupies a position of unique and isolated, if limited, interest; because it was no outcome of feudalism or ecclesiasticism; because it has no tincture of chivalrous or mystic piety; because it implies no metaphysical determination; because it is pagan in the sense of being natural; because it is devoid of allegory, and, finally, because it is emphatically humanistic.
In these respects it detaches itself from the artistic and literary phenomena of the century which gave it birth. In these respects it anticipates the real eventual Renaissance.
There are, indeed, points of contact between the Students' Songs and other products of the Middle Ages. Scholastic quibblings upon words; reiterated commonplaces about spring; the brutal contempt for villeins; the frequent employment of hymn-rhythms and preoccupation with liturgical phrases—these show that the Wandering Scholars were creatures of their age. But the qualities which this lyrical literature shares with that of the court, the temple, or the schools are mainly superficial; whereas the vital inspiration, the specific flavour, which render it noteworthy, are distinct and self-evolved. It is a premature, an unconscious effort made by a limited class to achieveper saltumwhat was slowly and laboriously wrought out by whole nations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Too precocious, too complete within too narrow limits, it was doomed to sterility. Not the least singular fact about it is that though theCarmina Vagorumcontinued to be appreciated, they were neither imitated nor developed to any definite extent after the period which I have indicated. They fell still-born upon the unreceptive soil of European culture at that epoch. Yet they foreshadowed the mental and moral attitude which Europe was destined to assume when Italy through humanism gave its tone to the Renaissance.
The Renaissance, in Italy as elsewhere, had far moreserious aims and enthusiasms in the direction of science, refined self-culture, discoveries, analysis of man and nature, than have always been ascribed to it. The men of that epoch did more hard work for the world, conferred more sterling benefits on their posterity, than those who study it chiefly from the point of view of art are ready to admit. But the mental atmosphere in which those heroes lived and wrought was one of carelessness with regard to moral duties and religious aspirations, of exuberant delight in pleasure as an object of existence. The glorification of the body and the senses, the repudiation of an ascetic tyranny which had long in theory imposed impossible abstentions on the carnal man, was a marked feature in their conception of the world; and connected with this was a return in no merely superficial spirit to the antique paganism of Greece and Rome.
These characteristics of the Renaissance we find already outlined with surprising definiteness, and at the same time with an almost childlike naïveté, a careless, mirth-provoking nonchalance, in theCarmina Vagorum. They remind us of the Italian lyrics which Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano wrote for the Florentine populace; and though in form and artistic intention they differ from the Latin verse of that period, their view of life is not dissimilar to that of a Pontano or a Beccadelli.
Some folk may regard the things I have presented to their view as ugly or insignificant, because they lack the higher qualities of sentiment; others may over-value them for precisely the same reason. They seem to me noteworthy as the first unmistakable sign of a change in modern Europe which was inevitable and predestined, as the first literary effort to restore the moral attitude of antiquity which had been displaced by medieval Christianity. I also feel the special relation which they bear to English poetry of the Etizabethan age—a relation that has facilitated their conversion into our language.
That Wandering Students of the twelfth century should have transcended the limitations of their age; that they should have absorbed so many elements of life into their scheme of natural enjoyment as the artists and scholars of the fifteenth; that they should have theorised their appetites and impulses with Valla, have produced masterpieces of poetry to rival Ariosto's, or criticisms of society in the style of Rabelais, was not to be expected. What their lyrics prove by anticipation is the sincerity of the so-called paganism of the Renaissance. When we read them, we perceive that that quality was substantially independent of the classical revival; though the influences of antique literature were eagerly seized upon as useful means for strengthening and giving tone to an already potent revolt of nature against hypocritical and palsy-stricken forms of spiritual despotism.