Alas! what have I for thee,
Save only my pipe? |134|
Elles trewly nothinge,
Were I in the rockes or in,
I coulde make this pippe
That all this woode should ringe,
And quiver, as yt were.

_The Fourth Boye._

Nowe, childe, although thou be comon from God,
And be God thy selfe in thy manhoode,
Yet I knowe that in thy childehoode
Thou wylte for sweete meate loke,
To pull downe aples, peares, and plumes,
Oulde Joseph shall not nede to hurte his thombes,
Because thou hast not pleintie of crombes,
I geve thee heare my nutthocke."{15}

Let no one deem this irreverent; the spirit of this adoration of the
shepherds is intensely devout; they go away longing to tell all the world
the wonder they have seen; one will become a pilgrim; even the rough
Trowle exclaims that he will forsake the shepherd's craft and will betake
himself to an anchorite's hard by, in prayers to "wache and wake."

More famous than this Chester "Pastores" are the two shepherd plays in
the Towneley cycle.{16} The first begins with racy talk, leading to a
wrangle between two of the shepherds about some imaginary sheep; then a
third arrives and makes fun of them both; a feast follows, with much
homely detail; they go to sleep and are awakened by the angelic message;
after much debate over its meaning and over the foretellings of the
prophets--one of them, strangely enough, quotes a Latin passage from
Virgil--they go to Bethlehem and present to the Child a "lytyll spruse
cofer," a ball, and a gourd-bottle.

The second play surpasses in humour anything else in the mediaeval drama
of any country. We find the shepherds first complaining of the cold and
their hard lot; they are "al lappyd in sorow." They talk, almost like
modern Socialists, of the oppressions of the rich:--

"For the tylthe of our landys lyys falow as the floore,
As ye ken. |135|
We ar so hamyd,[54]
For-taxed and ramyd,[55]
We ar mayde hand-tamyd,
With thyse gentlery men.

Thus thay refe[56] us our rest, Our Lady theym wary![57]
These men that ar lord-fest,[58] they cause the ploghe tary."

To these shepherds joins himself Mak, a thieving neighbour. Going to
sleep, they make him lie between them, for they doubt his honesty. But
for all their precautions he manages to steal a sheep, and carries it
home to his wife. She thinks of an ingenious plan for concealing it from