– specimens of which still exist – in that language. Every nunnery possessed a school for girls. They were taught to read and to write their own language and Latin, perhaps also rhetoric and embroidery. As the pious Sisters were fond of putting on violet chemises, tunics, and vests of delicate tissue, embroidered with silver and gold, and scarlet shoes, there was probably not much mortification of the flesh in the nunneries of the later Saxon times.
This for the better class. We cannot suppose that the daughters of the craftsmen became scholars of the Nunnery. Theirs were the lower walks – to spin the linen and to make the bread and carry on the house-work.
Let us walk into the narrow streets and see something more closely of the townfolk. We will take the close net-work of streets south of Paul's and the Cheapside, where the lanes slope down to the river. North of Chepe there are broad open spaces never yet built upon; south, every inch of ground is valuable. The narrow winding lanes are lined with houses on either side; they are for the most part houses with wooden fronts and roofs of timber. Here and there is a stone house; here and there the great house of a noble, or of a City baron, or a great merchant, as greatness is counted. But as yet the trade of London goes not farther than Antwerp, or Sluys, or Bordeaux at the farthest. Some of the houses stand in gardens, but in this part, where the population is densest, most of the gardens have become courts; and in the courts where the poorest live, those who are the porters and carriers, and lightermen and watermen – the servants of the Port – the houses are huts, not much better than those whose ruins may still be seen on Dartmoor; of four uprights, with wattle and clay for walls, and a thatched roof, and a fire burning on the floor in the middle. At the corners of the streets are laystalls, where everything is flung to rot and putrefy; the streets are like our country lanes, narrow and muddy; public opinion is against shooting rubbish into the street, but it is done; the people walk gingerly among the heaps of offal and refuse. In the wooden houses, standing with shutters and doors wide open all the year round, sit the men at work, each in his own trade, working for his own master; every man belongs to his guild, which is as yet religious. Here is a church, the Church of St. George, Botolph Lane; the doors are open; the bells are ringing; the people are crowding in. Let us enter. It is a Mystery that they are going to play – nothing less than the Raising of Lazarus according to Holy Scripture. The church within is dark and gloomy, but there is light enough to see the platform, or low stage, under the nave covered with red cloth, which has been erected for the Play. The actors are young priests and choristers. All round the stage stand the people, the men in leather jerkins – they do not remove their caps – the women in woollen frocks, the children with eyes wide open. When the Play begins they all weep without restraint at the moving passages. In the first scene Lazarus lies on his bed, at the point of death – weak, faint, speechless. He is attended by his friends – four Jews, attired in realistic fashion, no mistake about their nationality – infidels, mécréants – and by his sisters twain, marvellously like two nuns of the period. They send a messenger to the new Great Physician and Worker of Miracles, who is reported to be preaching and healing not far off. But He delays; Lazarus dies. His sister goes to reproach the Physician with the delay, wailing and lamenting her brother's death. At length He comes. Lazarus is already buried. The tomb is on the stage, with the dead man inside. Jesus calls. Oh, miracle! we saw him die; we saw him buried. Lo! he rises and comes forth from the grave. To the people it is as if the Lord Jesus himself stood before them; they have seen Him with their own eyes; henceforth the name of the Lord recalls a familiar form; experienced persons of dull imagination say that this is not Jesus at all, but Stephen the Deacon – he with the heavenly voice and the golden locks. No, no; it is not Stephen they have seen, but Another. So, also, some will have it that the man who died and was buried, and rose again, and stood before them all in white cerements, was John of Hoggesdon, Chantry Priest. Not so; it was Lazarus – none other. Lazarus, now no doubt a blessed saint, with his two sisters, Martha and Mary. Why! it must have been Lazarus, because, after the miracle, he called upon the people to mark the wondrous works of the Lord, and sang the Magnificat so that the psalm echoed in the roof and rolled above the pillars. He sang that psalm out of pure gratitude; you could see the tears rolling down his cheeks; and in worship and adoration, Lazarus himself, he who had been dead and had come to life again.
The Mystery is over; the people have all gone away; the stage is removed, and the church is empty again. Two priests are left, and their talk is like a jarring note after sweet music. "Brother," says one, "were it not for such shows as these, if we did not present to the people the things which belong to religion in such a way that the dullest can understand, the Church would be in a parlous way. All folk cry out upon the profligacy of the monks, and their luxury, and the greed of the priests. What sayeth Walter Map, that good archdeacon?
"'Omnis a clericis fluit enormitas,
Cum Deo debeant mentes sollicitas,
Tractant negotia mercesque vetitas
Et rerum turpium vices indebitas.'"
"I hear," said the other, "that two Cistercians have lately become apostate to the Jews."
"Rather," replied the first, "they should have become Christians, so to separate themselves the better from that accursed body."
These are the distant rumblings of the gathering storm. But the Church will become much richer, much more powerful, the monks will become much more profligate, the priests will become far more greedy before things grow to be intolerable.
It is an evening in May. What means this procession? Here comes a sturdy rogue marching along valiantly, blowing pipe and beating tabor. After him, a rabble rout of lads and young men, wearing flowers in their caps, and bearing branches and singing lustily. This is what they sing, not quite in these words, but very nearly:
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med,
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu.
Awe bleteth after lamb,
Llouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, buck verteth,
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu, well singeth thu cuccu,
Ne swik thu navu nu;
Sing cuccu, cuccu, nu sing cuccu,
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu!
The workman jumps up and shouts as they go past; the priest and the friar laugh and shout; the girls, gathering together as is the maidens' way, laugh and clap their hands. The young men sing as they go and dance as they sing. Spring has come back again – sing cuckoo; the days of light and warmth – sing cuckoo; the time of feasting and of love – sing cuckoo. The proud abbot, with his following, draws rein to let them pass, and laughs to see them; he is, you see, a man first and a monk afterwards. In the gateway of his great house stands the Norman earl with his livery. He waits to let the London youth go by. The earl scorns the English youth no longer; he knows their lustihood. He can even understand their speech. He sends out largesse to the lads to be spent in the good wines of Gascony and of Spain; he joins in the singing; he waves his hand, a brotherly hand, as the floral greenery passes along; he sings with them at the top of his voice:
Sing cuccu – cuccu – nu sing cuccu;
Sing cuccu; sing cuccu, nu.
Presently the evening falls. It is light till past eight; the days are long. At nightfall, in summer, the people go to bed. In the great houses they assemble in the hall; in winter they would listen to music and the telling of stories, even the legends of King Arthur. Walter Map7 will collect them and arrange them, and the French romances, such as "Amis et Amils," "Aucassin et Nicolette," though these have not yet been written down. In summer they have music before they go to bed. We are in a city that has always been fond of music. The noise of crowd and pipe, tabor and cithern, is now silent in the streets. Rich men kept their own musicians.
Morley's
