“minstrels’ song-books” as were probably MSS. like Sloane 2593 and Bodleian Eng. poet. e. 1 (Thomas Wright’s), suggests that poems of this kind were subject to the accidents of oral dissemination in much the same manner as popular ballads and songs. It was interesting to discover another version of this Dialogue, perhaps the first in print, in the fragmentary Christmas carolles, printed by Richard Kele, which was sold from the Britwell library at Sotheby’s, on March 31, 1924:
Gaudeamus synge we in hoc sacro tempore
Puer nobis natus est ex Maria uirgine.
Mary moder come and se
Thy sone is nayled on a tre, etc.
Indeed, a detritus from this Dialogue and those between the B.V. and her Child, as well as from variants of the “Lullay” poems, seems to linger in popular carols: e.g. in The Seven Virgins, a medley of familiar phrases survives:
“O peace, mother, O peace, mother,
Your weeping doth me grieve;
I must suffer this,” he said,
“For Adam and for Eve.”
***
“O mother, take you John Evangelist
All for to be your son,” etc.
This collection of ten lectures and essays by the late A. H. Bullen deserves a hearty welcome on two grounds, both for the readable accounts which it gives of a number of Elizabethan worthies and as a document belonging to and exemplifying an age of English scholarship which is passing, if not already past. When Bullen began his work on Elizabethan literature the great period of discovery was indeed over. In the drama, in the major kinds of poetry, there was little more to be brought to light, no great new planet would swim again into any watcher’s ken, nothing was likely seriously to disturb the views then held as to the degree of honour due to the poets and playwrights of the age, nor indeed was Bullen—though
