England's Antiphon Part 2

I shall now turn into modern verse a part of "The Canonical Hours,"

giving its represented foundation of the various acts of wors.h.i.+p in the Romish Church throughout the day, from early in the morning to the last service at night. After every fact concerning our Lord, follows an apostrophe to his mother, which I omit, being compelled to choose.

Father's wisdom lifted high, Lord of us aright-- G.o.d and man taken was, At matin-time by night.

The disciples that were his, Anon they him forsook; Sold to Jews and betrayed, To torture him took.

At the prime Jesus was led In presence of Pilate, Where witnesses, false and fell, Laughed at him for hate.

In the neck they him smote, Bound his hands of might; Spit upon that sweet face That heaven and earth did light.

"Crucify him! crucify!"

They cried at nine o'clock; A purple cloth they put on him-- To stare at him and mock.

They upon his sweet head Stuck a th.o.r.n.y crown; To Calvary his cross he bears.

Pitiful, from the town

Jesus was nailed on the cross At the noon-tide; Strong thieves they hanged up, One on either side.

In his pain, his strong thirst Quenched they with gall; So that G.o.d's holy Lamb From sin washed us all.

At the nones Jesus Christ Felt the hard death; He to his father "Eloi!" cried, Gan up yield his breath.

A soldier with a sharp spear Pierced his right side; The earth shook, the sun grew dim, The moment that he died.

He was taken off the cross At even-song's hour; The strength left and hid in G.o.d Of our Saviour.

Such death he underwent, Of life the medicine!

Alas! he was laid adown-- The crown of bliss in pine!

At complines, it was borne away To the burying, That n.o.ble corpse of Jesus Christ, Hope of life's coming.

Anointed richly it was, Fulfilled his holy book: I pray, Lord, thy pa.s.sion In my mind lock.

Childlike simplicity, realism, and tenderness will be evident in this, as in preceding poems, especially in the choice of adjectives. But indeed the combination of certain words had become conventional; as "The hard tree," "The nails great and strong," and such like.

I know I have spoiled the poem in half-translating it thus; but I have rendered it intelligible to all my readers, have not wandered from the original, and have retained a degree of antiqueness both in the tone and the expression.

CHAPTER II.

THE MIRACLE PLAYS AND OTHER POEMS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

The oldest form of regular dramatic representation in England was the Miracle Plays, improperly called Mysteries, after the French. To these plays the people of England, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, owed a very large portion of what religious knowledge they possessed, for the prayers were in an unknown tongue, the sermons were very few, and printing was uninvented. The plays themselves, introduced into the country by the Normans, were, in the foolish endeavour to make Normans of Anglo-Saxons, represented in Norman French[14] until the year 1338, when permission was obtained from the Pope to represent them in English.

The word _Miracle_, in their case, means anything recorded in Scripture.

The Miracle Plays had for their subjects the chief incidents of Old and New Testament history; not merely, however, of this history as accepted by the Reformed Church, but of that contained in the Apocryphal Gospels as well. An entire series of these _Miracles_ consisted of short dramatic representations of many single pa.s.sages of the sacred story. The whole would occupy about three days. It began with the Creation, and ended with the Judgment. That for which the city of Coventry was famous consists of forty-two subjects, with a long prologue. Composed by ecclesiastics, the plays would seem to have been first represented by them only, although afterwards it was not always considered right for the clergy to be concerned with them. The hypocritical Franciscan friar, in "Piers Ploughman's Creed," a poem of the close of the same century, claims as a virtue for his order--

At markets and miracles we meddleth us never.

They would seem likewise to have been first represented in churches and chapels, sometimes in churchyards. Later, when the actors chiefly belonged to city-guilds, they were generally represented in the streets and squares.

It must be borne in mind by any who would understand the influence of these plays upon the people, that much in them appearing to us grotesque, childish, absurd, and even irreverent, had no such appearance in the eyes of the spectators. A certain amount of the impression of absurdity is simply the consequence of antiquity; and even that which is rightly regarded as absurd in the present age, will not at least have produced the discomposing effects of absurdity upon the less developed beholders of that age; just as the quaint pictures with which their churches were decorated may make us smile, but were by them regarded with awe and reverence from their infancy.

It must be confessed that there is in them even occasional coa.r.s.eness; but that the devil for instance should always be represented as a baffled fool, and made to play the buffoon sometimes after a disgusting fas.h.i.+on, was to them only the treatment he deserved: it was their notion of "poetic justice;" while most of them were too childish to be shocked at the discord thus introduced, and many, we may well hope, too childlike to lose their reverence for the holy because of the proximity of the ridiculous.

There seems to me considerably more of poetic worth scattered through these plays than is generally recognized; and I am glad to be able to do a little to set forth the fact. I cannot doubt that my readers will be interested in such fragments as the scope and design of my book will allow me to offer. Had there been no such pa.s.sages, I might have regarded the plays as but remotely connected with my purpose, and mentioned them merely as a dramatic form of religious versification. I quote from the _Coventry Miracles_, better known than either of the other two sets in existence, the Chester Plays and those of Widkirk Abbey. The ma.n.u.script from which they have been edited by Mr. Halliwell, one of those students of our early literature to whom we are endlessly indebted for putting valuable things within our reach, is by no means so old as the plays themselves; it bears date 1468, a hundred and thirty years after they appeared in their English dress. Their language is considerably modernized, a process constantly going on where transcription is the means of transmission--not to mention that the actors would of course make many changes to the speech of their own time. I shall modernize it a little further, but only as far as change of spelling will go.

The first of the course is _The Creation_. G.o.d, and angels, and Lucifer appear. That G.o.d should here utter, I cannot say announce, the doctrine of the Trinity, may be defended on the ground that he does so in a soliloquy; but when we find afterwards that the same doctrine is one of the subjects upon which the boy Jesus converses with the doctors in the Temple, we cannot help remarking the strange anachronism. Two remarkable lines in the said soliloquy are these:

And all that ever shall have being It is closed in my mind.

The next scene is the _Fall of Man_, which is full of poetic feeling and expression both. I must content myself with a few pa.s.sages.

Here is part of Eve's lamentation, when she is conscious of the death that has laid hold upon her.

Alas that ever that speech was spoken That the false angel said unto me!

Alas! our Maker's bidding is broken, For I have touched his own dear tree.

Our fleshly eyes are all unlokyn, _unlocked._ Naked for sin ourself we see; That sorry apple that we have sokyn _sucked._ To death hath brought my spouse and me.

When the voice of G.o.d is heard, saying,

Adam, that with my hands I made, Where art thou now? what hast thou wrought?

Adam replies, in two lines, containing the whole truth of man's spiritual condition ever since:

Ah, Lord! for sin our flowers do fade: I hear thy voice, but I see thee nought.

The vision had vanished, but the voice remained; for they that hear shall live, and to the pure in heart one day the vision shall be restored, for "they shall see G.o.d." There is something wonderfully touching in the quaint simplicity of the following words of G.o.d to the woman:

Unwise woman, say me why That thou hast done this foul folly, And I made thee a great lady, In Paradise for to play?

As they leave the gates, the angel with the flaming sword ends his speech thus:

This bliss I spere from you right fast; _bar._ Herein come ye no more, Till a child of a maid be born, And upon the rood rent and torn, To save all that ye have forlorn, _lost._ Your wealth for to restore.

Eve laments bitterly, and at length offers her throat to her husband, praying him to strangle her:

Now stumble we on stalk and stone; My wit away from me is gone; Writhe on to my neck-bone With hardness of thine hand.

Adam replies--not over politely--

Wife, thy wit is not worth a rush;

and goes on to make what excuse for themselves he can in a very simple and touching manner:

Our hap was hard, our wit was nesche, _soft, weak,_ still in use in To Paradise when we were brought: [some provinces.

My weeping shall be long fresh; Short liking shall be long bought. _pleasure._

The scene ends with these words from Eve:

Alas, that ever we wrought this sin!

Our bodily sustenance for to win, Ye must delve and I shall spin, In care to lead our life.