Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 Part 41

La partie est mal faite Elle est faite sans moy.

J'ay un amy en France Qui n'est pas loin de moy, Je le tiens par le doigt.

La nuit quand je me couche Se met aupres de moy, M'apprend ma patenostre, Et aussi mon _ave_, Et encore autre chose Que je vous celeray.

De peur que ne l'oublie Je le recorderay![1749]

The pa.s.sage of years never diminished the popularity of these gay little songs; age could not wither them, and when nineteenth century scholars began to collect the folk songs sung in the provinces of France, they found many _chansons de nonnes_ still upon the lips of the people. In Poitou there is a round whose subject is still the old distaste of the girl for the convent:

Dans Paris l'on a fait faire Deux ou trois pet.i.ts couvents.

Mon pere ainsi que ma mere Veulent me mettre dedans, (Point de couvent, je ne veux, ma mere, C'est un amant qu'il me faut vraiment.)

She begs her parents to wait another year; perhaps at the end of a year she will find a lover; and she will take him quickly enough:

Il vaut mieux conduire a vepres Son mari et ses enfants, Que d'etre dedans ces cloetres A faire les yeux dolents; A jeuner tout le careme, Les quatre-temps et l'avent; Et coucher dessus la dure Tout le restant de son temps.

Serais-je plus heureuse Dans les bras de mon amant?

Il me conterait ses peines, Ses peines et ses tourments.

Je lui conterais les miennes, Ainsi pa.s.serait le temps[1750].

Another round from the same district sings the plaint of a girl whose younger sister has married before her; "lads are as fickle as a leaf upon the wind, girls are as true as silver and gold; but my younger sister is being married. I am dying of jealousy, for they are sending me into a convent":

Car moi, qui suis l'ainee On me met au couvent.

Si ce malheur arrive J'mettrai feu dedans!

(Vous qui menez la ronde, Menez-le rondement.)[1751]

Many folk-songs take the form of a dialogue between a mother and daughter, sometimes (as in two of the rounds quoted above) preserved only in the refrain. An old song taken down at Fontenay-le-Marmion contains a charmingly frivolous conversation. "Mother," says the daughter of fifteen, "I want a lover." "No, no, no, my child, none of that," says her mother, "you shall go to town to a convent and learn to read." "But tell me, mother, is it gay in a convent?":

"Dites-moi, ma mere, ah! dites-moi donc, Dedans ce couvent, comme s'y comporte-t-on?

Porte-t-on des fontanges et des beaux habits, Va-t-on a la danse, prend-on ses plaisis?"

"Non, non, non, ma fille, point de tout cela; Une robe noire et elle vous servira, Une robe noire et un voile blanc; Te voila, ma fille, a l'etat du couvent."

"No, mother, to a convent I will not go; never will I leave the lad I love"; as she speaks her lover enters. "Fair one, will you keep your promise?" "I will keep all the promises I ever made to you, in my youth I will keep them; it is only my mother who does not wish it--but all the same, do not trouble yourself, for it shall be so. My father is very gentle when he sees me cry; I shall speak to him of love and I shall soon make him see that without any more delay I must have a lover"[1752]. In another of these dialogues the seventeen-year-old girl begs her mother to find her a husband. "You bold wicked girl," says the mother:

Effrontee, helas! que vous etes!

Si je prends le manche a balai, Au couvent de la soeur Babet Je te mets pour la vie entiere, Et a grands coups de martinet On apaisera votre caquet!

But "Mother," says the girl, "When you were my age, weren't you just the same? When love stole away your strength and your courage, didn't you love your sweetheart so well that they wanted to put you into a convent? don't you remember, mother, that you once told me that it was high time my dear father came forward, for you had more than one gallant?" The horrified mother interrupts her, "I see very well that you have a lover":

Mariez-vous, n'en parlons plus Je vais vous compter mille ecus![1753]

Another group of songs (in narrative form and more _ba.n.a.l_ than the rounds and dialogues) deals with the escape from the convent. Among folk-songs collected in Velay and Forez there is one in which the girl is shut in a nunnery, whence her lover rescues her by the device of dressing himself as a gardener and getting employment in the abbess's garden[1754]; and another in which a soldier returns from the Flemish wars to find his mistress in a convent and takes her away with him in spite of the remonstrances of the abbess[1755]. In a version from Low Normandy (which probably goes back to the seventeenth century) the lover invokes the help of a chimney sweep, who goes to sweep the convent chimneys and pretends to be seized with a stomach-ache, so that the abbess hurries away for a medicine bottle and enables him to pa.s.s the young man's letter to his mistress; on a second visit the sweep carries the girl out in his sack, under the very nose of the reverend mother[1756]. An Italian version is less artificial:

In this city there is a little maid, a little maid in love. They wish to chastise her until she loves no more. Says her father to her mother: "In what manner shall we chastise her? Let us array her in grey linen and put her into a nunnery." In her chamber the fair maiden stood listening. "Ah, woe is me, for they would make me a nun!"

Weeping she wrote a letter and when she had sealed it well, she gave it to her serving man, and bade him bear it to her lover. The gentle gallant read the letter and began to weep and sigh: "I had but one little love and now they would make her a nun!" He goes to the stable where his horses are and saddles the one he prizes most. "Arise, black steed, for thou art the strongest and fairest of all; for one short hour thou must fly like a swallow down by the sea." The gentle gallant mounts his horse and spurs forward at a gallop. He arrives just as his fair one is entering the nunnery. "Hearken to me, mother abbess, I have one little word to say." As he spake the word to the maiden, he slipped the ring on her finger. "Is there in this city no priest or no friar who will marry a maiden without her banns being called?"

"Goodbye to you, Father, goodbye to you, Mother, goodbye to you all my kinsfolk. They thought to make me a nun, but with joy I am become a bride"[1757].

Another very ribald Italian folk-song of the fourteenth or fifteenth century is specially interesting because it is founded upon Boccaccio's famous tale of the Abbess and the breeches. It is somewhat different from the usual nun-song; less plaintive and more indecent, as befits its origin in a _conte gras_; it is a _fabliau_ rather than a song, but it is worth quoting:

Kyrie, kyrie, pregne son le monache!

lo andai in un monastiero, a non mentir ma dir el vero, ov' eran done secrate: diezi n' eran tute inpiate, senza [dir de] la badesa, che la tiritera spesa faceva con un prete.

Kyrie, etc.

Or udirete bel sermona: ciascuna in chiesa andone, lasciando il dileto che si posava in sul leto; per rifare la danza ciascuno aspetta l' amanza che die retonare.

Kyrie, etc.

Quando matutin sonava in chiesa nesuna andava, [poi] ch' eran acopiate qual con prete e qual con frate: con lui stava in oracione e ciascuno era garzone che le serviva bene.

Kyrie, etc.

Sendo in chiesia tute andate, e tute erano impregnate, qual dal prete e qual dal frate, l' una e l' altra guata; ciascuna cred' esser velata lo capo di benda usata; avrino in capo brache.

Kyrie, etc.

E l' una a l' altra guatando si vengon maravigliando; credean che fore celato, alor fu manifestato questo eale convenente: a la badessa incontenente ch' ognun G.o.desse or dice.

Kyrie, etc.

Or ne va, balata mia, va a quel monastiero, che vi si G.o.de in fede mia e questo facto e vero; ciascuna non li par vero, e quale [e] la fanziulla ciascuna si trastulla col cul cantano kyrie.

Kyrie, etc.[1758]

One characteristic form of the nun-theme has already been referred to in the text: the dialogue between the clerk and the nun, in which one prays the other for love and is refused. A terse version in which the nun is temptress exists in Latin and evidently enjoyed a certain popularity:

_Nonna._ Te mihi meque tibi genus, aetas et decor aequa[n]t: Cur non ergo sumus sic in amore pares?

_Clericus._ Non hac ueste places aliis nec uestis ametur: Quae nigra sunt, fugio, candida semper amo.

_N._ Si sim ueste nigra, niueam tamen aspice carnem: Quae nigra sunt, fugias, candida crura petas.

_C._ Nupsisti Christo, quem non offendere fas est: Hoc uelum sponsam te notat esse Dei.

_N._ Deponam uelum, deponam cetera quaeque: Ibit et ad lectum nuda puella tuum.

_C._ Si uelo careas, tamen altera non potes esse: Vestibus ablatis non mea culpa minor.

_N._ Culpa quidem, sed culpa leuis tamen ipsa fatetur Hoc fore peccatum, sed ueniale tamen.

_C._ Uxorem uiolare uiri graue crimen habetur, Sed grauius sponsam te uiolare Dei.

_N._ c.u.m non sit r.e.c.t.u.m uicini frangere lectum Plus reor esse reum zelotypare Deum[1759].

In the Cambridge Ma.n.u.script there is a famous dialogue, half-Latin and half-German, in which a clerk prays a nun to love him in springtime, while the birds sing in the trees, but she replies: "What care I for the nightingale? I am Christ's maid and his betrothed." Almost the whole of the dialogue, in spite of the nun's irreproachable att.i.tude, has been deleted with black ink by the monks of St Augustine's, Canterbury, who were accustomed thus to censor matter which they considered unedifying; but modern scholars have been at infinite pains to reconstruct it[1760].

It is rare to find in popular songs the idea of the convent as a refuge for maidens crossed in love; but some pretty poems have this theme. In a sixteenth century song a girl prefers a convent, if she cannot have the man she loves best, but she wishes her lover could be with her there:

Puis que l'on ne m'at donne A celuy que j'aymois tant, avant la fin de l'annee quoy que facent mes parens, je me rendray capucine capucine en un couvent.

Si mon amis vient les feste a la grille regardant, je luy feray de la teste la reverence humblement come pauvre capucine; je n'oserois aultrement.

S'il se pouvait par fortune se couler secretement dedans ma chambre sur la brune, je lui dirois mon tourment que la pauvre capucine pour luy souffre en ce couvent.

Mon dieu, s'il se pouvoit faire que nous deux ensemblement fussions dans ung monastere pour y pa.s.ser nostre temps, capucin et capucine nous vindrions tous deux content.

L'on me vera attissee d'ung beau voille de lin blanc; mais je seray bien coiffee dans le coeur tout aultrement, puis que l'on m'a capucine mise dedans ce couvent.

N'est ce pas une grand raige quand au gre de ses parens il faut prendre en mariaige ceulx qu'on n'ayme nullement?

j'ameroy mieulx capucine estre mise en ce couvent[1761].

Somewhat similar is the song (first printed in 1640) of the fifteen year-old girl married to a husband of sixty:

M'irai-je rendre nonette Dans quelque joly couvent, Priant le dieu d'amourette Qu'il me donne allegement Ou que j'aye en mariage Celuy la que j'aime tant?[1762]

A round, with the refrain