en,
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 testament
Will 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 the _Carmina 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,
the _Mass of Topers_ and _Mass of Gamesters_, the _Gospel 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:

[Footnote 34: Wright's _Rel. Ant._, ii.; _Carm. Bur._, pp. 248 and
22; Wright's _Mapes_, p. xl.]

THE ABBOT OF COCKAIGNE.

No. 55.

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 sun
Thou hast stolen, every one!

XXI.

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.

DEATH TAKES ALL.

No. 5