The Dedalus Book of Medieval Literature E-Book

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

an alternative view of the Middle Ages showing its depraved underbelly

Das E-Book The Dedalus Book of Medieval Literature wird angeboten von Dedalus und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

For Jon and Maire West

THE EDITOR/TRANSLATOR

Brian Murdoch is Professor of German at the University of Stirling and a former Visiting Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he delivered the Waynflete Lectures in 1994. Primarily a specialist in medieval and renaissance literature (German, Latin, Celtic), he has also written on the literature of the world wars, and has translated classical and medieval Latin as well as medieval and modern German texts. He collaborated with his son, Adrian Murdoch, in translating material for Geoffrey Farrington’s Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

The Editor/Translator

Preface

Introduction: Fallen Man

Prologue: Original Sins

Gregory the Great on Genesis (Latin)

Adam and Eve (German)

Unoriginal sins, from confessional handbooks (Latin and German)

The Roman Empire Goes and Comes

The Ruin (Anglo-Saxon)

Attila, from Waltharius (Latin)

Fredegonda the Concubine, from Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks (Latin)

Charlemagne, from Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne- (Latin)

The Ruling Classes

Charlemagne’s Grandchildren, from Nithard’s Histories (Latin)

English Anarchy 1137, from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Anglo-Saxon)

Richard I, from various medieval chronicles (Latin)

Edward II, from various medieval chronicles (Latin)

Pedro the Cruel, from Froissart’s Chronicles (French)

Gilles de Rais, from the trial documents (Latin)

Society

Wernher, Helmbrecht (German)

The Archpoet, from the Confession (Latin)

Cecco Agniolieri, Two Sonnets (Italian)

The Destruction of the World, from Jacob Ruf’s Adam and Eve (Swiss)

Sex

The Snow-Baby (Latin)

Marie de France, King Equitan (French)

Giovanni Boccaccio, from the Decameron (Italian)

The Monk and the Wee Goose (German)

I Have a Gentil Cok (English)

Dafydd ap Gwilym, Metrical Verses on the Subject ofhis Prick (Welsh)

Manners

Gluttony, from the Worcester Sermon II (English)

A Drinking Song, from the Carmina Burana (Latin)

Table Manners, from The Book of Polite Behaviour- (English)

How the Good Wife Taught her Daughter (English)

Modern Fashions, from Brant’s Ship of Fools- (German)

Cornish Behaviour, from Andrew Boorde’s Introduction to the First Boke of Knowledge (English)

Religion

Black Magic, from The Corrector (Latin)

Rutebeuf, Theophilus (French)

A Black Mass, from The Life of St Meriasek (Cornish)

A Drinker’s Mass (Latin)

Thomas Murner, from The Guild of Fools (German)

Thomas Murner, from The Great Lutheran Fool (German)

Epilogue: Laments for A Misspent Youth

Priapeia (German)

Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy, Poem (Gaelic)

The Lady of Beare, Grown Old (Irish)

A Note on Sources

Copyright

PREFACE

Anthologies are always a matter of luck, and there ought to be a formula of apology for not having included somebody’s favourite. But the selection depends, like it or not, on the taste, knowledge and competence of the anthologist/translator. Indeed, for a number of reasons I have had to leave out various interesting figures altogether: Vlad the Impaler, for example, and Torquemada, and any number of dubious medieval popes (with, in the case of the Borgias at least, many of their relatives). On the other hand, I have also had to omit the Anglo-Saxon queen Aelfthryth, interesting not only on the grounds of her impossible name, nor because she was the mother of Ethelred the Unready (neither of which she could really help), but for her connivance at the murder of her stepson Edward the Martyr at Corfe Castle in 878.

A couple of general points do need to be made, however. The first is that the Middle Ages were well aware of how fallen mankind is anyway, and decay can be political, physical or moral. The second is that very familiar material has been left out: Chaucer and most of Boccaccio are absent. Against that, it is hoped that some of the less well-known pieces included will be of interest, such as the German poem of Helmbrecht, about a young man who leaves his farm to join a robber baron. A lack of background knowledge and linguistic competence has led to the absence of Iberian or Slav materials. Beyond that, the anthology tries to cover as broad a field as possible within an interpretation of ‘medieval’ that runs from the fall of Rome to the Reformation. A lot of the material is in verse, it is true, but this reflects the state of affairs in medieval writing, especially writing for entertainment.

The extract from Waltharius is from my own full translation: Walthari (Glasgow, 1989), and I am grateful to Mark Ward, my fellow-editor of the series Scottish Papers in GermanicStudies, for permission to reprint.

Brian Murdoch Stirling, September 1994

INTRODUCTION: FALLEN MAN

When the Vikings sacked Northumbria at the end of the eighth century, one famous northerner, Alcuin, who had left York for a high-level administrative post in Charlemagne’s European Community some years earlier, was not particularly surprised. God was clearly punishing the people of Northumbria for their decadence, and more specifically for their propensity to thieving and fornication. Alcuin wrote to the King of Northumbria and told him so. The monks of Lindisfarne, too, had obviously brought it on themselves; they had not been spending enough time on spiritual reading, but had been enjoying heroic tales instead, and if the tales as such were hardly decadent, reading them was, especially when one should really be reading more improving works (and it would be more than churlish to add: ‘like Alcuin’s biblical commentaries’). ‘What,’ asked Alcuin sniffily, ‘has some Germanic hero got to do with Christ?’ It wasn’t a particularly original remark. Several centuries earlier, St Jerome had asked roughly the same thing about the reading of Vergil instead of the Bible, and a few centuries in the other direction, Martin Luther would ask it again. More pragmatically, Luther provided some thoroughly militaristic hymns as a counter to the popular songs that were so very – well, popular. We, on the other hand, might be more inclined to ask a slightly different question to that posed by Alcuin: when were the Middle Ages? They are called the Middle Ages, of course, on account of their coming at the beginning, but beyond that no-one is ever sure, and to be on the safe side, we have to adopt some kind of formula like ‘from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Reformation,’ which covers well over a thousand years, giving plenty of time for whole empires to rise from nothing and descend again into decadence, usually, though not always passing through a stage of civilisation on the way.

The Middle Ages are, however, in the popular mind at least, still centuries either of piety and courtesy, or of superstitious but vigorous thuggery. The first view calls up hair-shirts and monasteries on the one hand, and genteel interpersonal behaviour in a fantasy world on the other, with ladies out of reach on pedestals, and knights with their anachronistic plate-armour and their well-controlled libidos quite untarnished, either pining in love, or out scouring the countryside for the Holy Grail. The second view is rather simpler: back in the mists of medieval ignorance (it runs) warriors or groups of warriors (usually Germanic) took great delight in killing things, either dragons, monsters, or (most often) each other, but always for the sake of gold or power or just ordinary fame, because after the event, the survivors would all go to the mead-hall, drink a great deal, and sing heroic songs about killing things. The Middle Ages, then, is a time of thugs or wimps, but neither, on the face of it, seem to have much to do with actual decadence, with the degeneration of a society (or parts of it) into softened luxury and a studied concentration on sexual and physical delights, or with the kind of abuse of power and position which can in its turn lead to the complete collapse of that society. Popular views of the Middle Ages (Sir Walter Scott, Wagner and Hollywood all have a great deal to answer for) do contain a few elements of truth, but they do not take into account that falling into sin is always a possibility, always the other side of the coin of civilisation. The Middle Ages were more acutely aware of this than many another period.

Medieval Christianity was preoccupied with Adam and Eve, and it was generally reckoned that the first fall predisposed mankind to a state of permanent sinfulness. Medieval theologians, in fact, presupposed a fall prior to that of Adam and Eve, that of Lucifer and his associates, the rebel angels who came to populate hell. In medieval drama, much is made of devils, who parody Christian ritual, mock the Lord’s Prayer, and say things (as a devil expostulates in a late medieval Swiss play) like ‘Botz hosenlatz und nestelglimpff,’ a fine-sounding phrase which avoids a direct blasphemy on the name of God, and means something like ‘Odds codpieces and dangly bits.’ It is a nice irony that medieval plays often had small boys (a major repository for and surely the best evidence we have for the existence of original sin) playing the many demons that provided light relief. Nevertheless, for the Middle Ages Adam and Eve were our very real progenitors (Noah took apes onto the Ark, but not as revered ancestors), and their fall has a lasting effect on us all. Admittedly, the presentation of it had to be adapted sometimes to put the blame more firmly on Eve, but all their descendants were deemed to bear the traces of that first disobedience. At the same time, the medieval Christian was told to keep the story of Adam and Eve firmly in mind as a warning not to do what they predisposed him to do anyway. Just as the devil tempted Eve, so too he could tempt anyone. In fact, every bit of the Bible could be used as a warning, and because decadence set in almost at once (murderous Cain, bigamous Lamech, the presumptuous builders of Babel, the wicked generation drowned in the flood), the lapses of the patriarchs are often used to warn against moral decay. Here is St Jerome again, in a letter about Noah’s drunkenness. Though it was probably designed for the wider audience of posterity, it is ostensibly addressed to a girl who was fifteen at the time and who would become his secretary later. Noah’s experiment with strong drink, it will be recalled, led to his involuntarily exposing himself. ‘After Noah’s drunkenness came the uncovering of his thighs,’ says Jerome. ‘Lust joins indulgence. First the belly swells, then other organs.’ One supposes that the recipient of the letter knew what he was on about.

In general terms we can distinguish between moral, religious and physical (or perhaps architectural) decay, as well as social-political decadence. The first (and most universal) of these categories speaks for itself, and medieval writers responded to over-indulgence, wild behaviour and sexual excess in various ways, ranging from homiletic thundering through mild (or mildly hypocritical) regret, down to a gleeful hedonism that was not always ironic, though it certainly could be. Sermons warn in great detail about sins, and so do confessional handbooks, many of which demand the confession of sins that one might not even have thought of without consulting the handbook in the first place. St Jerome’s words of warning to the young lady had their echoes in textbooks of behaviour, either designed for the clergy or nuns, or just as etiquette-books aimed in particular at youth, in whom the force of original sin was indeed felt to be particularly vigorous. Excesses of drinking and of gambling loom large as poetic themes, though the regret expressed in these works is often regret at not having enough cash to indulge in the activities. Just as frequently, we get a defiant jollity in writings about wine and song, and it is very often there, too, in literature about the third element of the triad, women, who are sometimes treated far more equally than one might expect. Marie de France’s adulterers in King Equitan both get their come-uppance, but both ladies and gentlemen are equally pro-active in the sexual sphere in medieval narratives. The simple choreography of some of the tales – Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale is probably the neatest example – implies actual delight in the less than moral. That story involves a medieval bedroom (and medieval nights were darker than ours, without background light of any description) containing three beds. One contains a miller and his wife, with a cradle at the end. The next contains the nubile daughter, the third two male students. During the night, student A hops into bed with nubile daughter. Student B is disgruntled, so waits until the miller’s wife goes out to relieve herself, and moves the cradle to the end of his bed, to which the miller’s wife then returns. Eventually student A leaves the daughter, avoids the bed with the cradle, assumes that the now solo miller is actually student B, and tells him what he has been doing. All hell then breaks loose. There are plenty of tales like this in other languages (some requiring a fairish suspension of disbelief) but the delight is always there. Not, of course, that honest rumpy-pumpy is especially wicked. The Church thought it was, though, and there can be an edge, even with the most innocently comic description of well-choreographed sex.

Alternative attitudes to religion abound in the Middle Ages, even though the whole period is often seen as the age of piety. In some ways, of course, it was an age of saints, but for all that, excessive piety probably always leads to the opposite, and certainly the monastic orders went through a regular cycle of decadence and toughening-up throughout the Middle Ages. Most of the new monastic orders came about because their ascetic founders thought that monasticism thus far had become too lax. The same principle, writ large, also underlies the Reformation, at the end of the period, when accusations of decadence fly in all directions. Nor was it long before the Reformers started accusing each other of laxity and splitting up, and within the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent had sorted out some of their own problems, new orders continued to arise.

Even asceticism can go too far, though, and the Middle Ages knew that, too. There is a Latin poem about a holy man who desperately wanted to be a saint, and had to be locked outside and told to live off ‘the food of the angels’ before he realised that he was going a bit too far, and did actually need a meal. More humble priests are a common target in literature, too, though this has something to do with the fact that they were simply more familiar to the Middle Ages than to us. At the beginning of the present century, G. G. Coulton, a notable medieval historian who nevertheless spent perhaps rather too much of his time attacking exaggerated notions of universal piety (and going for the throat of Hilaire Belloc in particular) drew attention in an entertaining paper called ‘The Monastic Legend’ to the case of William de Bittendene, of St James’ Priory near Exeter, who was noted in the fourteenth century as being ‘oftentimes convicted of embezzlement and fornication.’ He would have been punished had the bishop been able to catch him, but he couldn’t, and William crops up again, still Prior, and apparently still dissolute, a year or so later, this time in trouble for not paying taxes. Coulton also cites the case of another Prior, ‘found in gross misconduct at eleven o’clock on a Friday in Lent.’ When Bishop Alcock wound up the nunnery of St Radegund in Cambridge at the end of the fifteenth century, to turn it into Jesus College, he noted that there were only a couple of nuns left, and one of those had a somewhat dubious reputation; later still, the activities of some of the more notorious Popes (who were still patrons of the arts, we must not forget) are well documented. These things have to be relativised, of course. But whatever the actual extent of clerical misdeeds really was (and let us be fair: perusal of some Sunday tabloids might well distort one’s views somewhat on the twentieth-century English vicar), satirical stories involving oversexed priests make good reading. The same strain of what looks like gleeful irreligiousness is visible in the somewhat surprising fact that most of the liturgy was the target of parody in the Middle Ages. Actually, most of things learned at school were subject to parody; a medieval ‘erotic grammar’ makes a great deal of the copulative, but the religious parodies are striking. There is a Latin ‘monetary Gospel’ written, prophetically enough, in Germany, while boozy imitations of the Psalms, and of the whole Mass, are also known. Mock sermons include a rude parody of a homily on Adam and Eve which, in a way, proves the point about original sin by stressing their delight in original sex. It is honestly dirty, and not remotely pornographic, and when the world population was exactly two, surely most sex was original. And none of these things are really irreligious, just irreverent. The parodies are simply the literary equivalents of the grinning and sometimes vulgar gargoyles on the cathedral roof. They don’t detract from the sweep of the whole thing, but they do serve a useful deflecting function, and they are often funny in themselves. Their downstairs equivalents, equally jolly but not usually as vulgar, are the carvings you find on bench-ends in the older cathedrals. Writings on morals and religion in the Middle Ages vary, of course, and the reaction to man’s intrinsically fallen state can either be thundering disapproval, awful warnings, stories of nick-of-time rescues (with the implication that you, the audience, might not be so lucky), right down to a giggling awareness that everyone – even the supposed moral guardians – enjoys a little excess now and again. When it has all gone, and the would-be profligate is unfortunately past it, however, nostalgia and anger remain in about equal measure, and there is a poignant expression of this in the number of poems (not just medieval ones) which reminisce on the personal level about sex and drinking (well, mostly sex) no longer being what they used to be.

Empires do not last, and the Roman empire, which had been characterised by fine stone buildings, declined pretty visibly, and those who came after watched this and commented on it, again sometimes with nostalgia, although much of what the Romans built was helped on its way; the magnificent basilica of Constantine in Trier, in Germany, has been knocked down and rebuilt with a positively monotonous regularity by different Germanic tribes since the Romans put it up, possibly because it is too large for any passing attacker to miss. Sadly, Allied bombers got it last, but it is up again. Societies can crumble all too easily as well, however, usually in the wake of weak leadership, or perhaps with a leadership that isn’t able to cope with the size of the organisation. Medieval society (if such a generalisation is possible) could be precarious. A very conservative German poet – a commoner called Konrad of Würzburg – wrote in the thirteenth century a little story designed to show that chivalry and honest knightly bravery are Good Things, even if they were, in his day, in somewhat short supply. In his tale, the eponymous Henry of Kempten leaps out of a bath, grabs a sword, and, though naked, saves the life of the Holy Roman Emperor, from whom he had become estranged. All well and good, but the underlying political sense of the story is in the reason why he was estranged. He had been attending a ceremonial and civilised feast in the Emperor’s presence with all the other knights (or more accurately: with all the other tough, independent, bloody-minded noblemen). One of his pages absent-mindedly eats a piece of bread before grace, the Emperor’s chamberlain clouts the lad and draws blood, Henry of Kempten knocks the chamberlain down and kills him, and when the Emperor demands punishment for Henry, the latter grabs the Emperor by the beard, points a sword (why was he armed at a formal feast?) at his throat and demands safe passage away from the court. It is true that there is a story-book reconciliation after Henry has saved the Emperor, but what Konrad of Würzburg is really saying is: ‘look, the feudal system is all very fine, but it would not take very much at all to bring the whole lot down about our ears.’ And he was right. The Holy Roman Empire collapsed into social chaos and a welter of private armies not long after.

Getting a strong leader was a matter of luck, and usually temporary. In England Henry II sorted out the mess left by Stephen (so we can forgive Henry’s private indiscretions, perhaps, with Rosamund de Clifford), but his successor, Richard, is questionable, and so on. In medieval writings we often encounter a kind of desperate conservatism as a response to potential anarchy. One of the rhetorical set-pieces that the Middle Ages liked, and which is another sign of their awareness of man’s fallen state, was summed up with the Latin tag-name laudatio temporis actii, ‘praise of the good old days.’ Whether they ever were good is as much a matter of debate as how brave the new world has become. Even with a strong leader we are likely to be faced with another celebrated historical truism: that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Roman world produced its share of examples, and so did the Middle Ages, men and women alike, in spite of the way that ‘great figures of the Middle Ages’ – like Charlemagne, for example – have always been presented.

In their writings, medieval historians, clerics, satirists and especially poets show us over and over again that man is by nature corruptible, at least, although it was never a matter of despair. If you were wicked, you would get your just deserts eventually. Our own views of the Middle Ages may vary. Do we see the period as the Victorian genre painters did, with the lady in the long white frock and eccentric headgear, on a perfectly genuine pedestal, presenting a chaplet to a knight in improbably shining armour? Or do we revise our Boy’s Bookof Heroes view of Richard Lionheart to see him as a greedy, self-centred, politically incompetent thug with unclear sexual habits? It would be impossible to pigeon-hole, to categorise the whole period anyway, even if we could decide when the Middle Ages actually were. Nevertheless, although books on the Middle Ages tend to show, as evidence of the onward march of civilisation, photographs of massive Gothic cathedrals, they are not often in close-up. If they were, you would be able to see the gargoyles better.

One such cathedral has a gargoyle of a demon, grinning at you over his shoulder, whilst displaying his bare bottom, from which the rainwater falls from a great height. It’s a salutary comment on fallen humanity.

PROLOGUE: ORIGINAL SINS

The Middle Ages had in front of them the ultimate – or to be more accurate, the very first – example of a sin, that of Adam, who was at the same time the genetic reason for everyone’s predisposition to sinfulness. He was also a ghastly warning to his descendants. The fall of Adam and Eve was entirely real to the times: Darwin, Freud, and for that matter Milton, are all a good way off. However, it was left for Adam’s progeny to sort out the nice distinctions between original sin, original sinfulness, the original sin, and (just occasionally) an original sin. Here are two approaches, one desperately serious, and another that starts off in a familiar manner, but degenerates somewhat, rather proving the point about predisposition to sin. The first is a brief but very much quoted interpretation of the fall of man by Gregory I, Pope, principal pastoral theologian of the Middle Ages, and eventually a saint. He lived from about 540 to 604, and reputedly arranged for the conversion of England with a joke about Angles and angels.

Gregory the Great

Moral Lessons from the Book of Job IV, 27

There are four stages by which sin is perpetrated in the heart, and four in which it is actually put into practice. In the heart, these stages are: suggestion, delight, consent, and brazening-it-out. In practice, the suggestion comes from the Old Enemy, delight from the flesh, consent from the spirit, and brazen self-justification from a general over-confidence in the self … Now, the serpent made the persuasive suggestion, Eve delighted in it, Adam consented, and when he was called upon to confess his guilt, he brazenly denied it. And, I do assure you, all this happens with mankind every day, the very same things experienced by our first natural parents. The serpent did the persuading, just as now the Old Enemy secretly makes evil suggestions to mankind. Eve delighted in it, just as the sensual flesh gives way to pleasure when it hears the old serpent’s words. Adam consented to what the woman put to him, just as, once the flesh has been seized with delight, the weak spirit then bends towards it. And when he was required by God to confess his guilt, Adam would not do so, just as the spirit, turned from the true path by sin, becomes – to its own ruin! – hardened by brazen audacity.

A German Adam-and-Eve Parody

This anonymous German poem is the very first piece in a large collective manuscript from the early fifteenth century, now in Karlsruhe. One wonders whether the compiler of the collection had read past the first dozen lines, which are disarmingly orthodox-looking. Anyway, fully (and completely spuriously) supported by Biblical quotations, Adam develops preoccupations here which have absolutely nothing to do with scrumping, and the medieval German word kunterlin (translated here as ‘pussy’) genuinely does mean (also) ‘a little furry animal.’ The ending is nicely ambiguous.

Adam and Eve

IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED HEAVEN AND EARTH

Dearly beloved, for today

the text on which I want to say

a few words, really does begin

the Scriptures (although in Latin).

Now you, each woman and each man,

should say ‘Our Fathers’ when you can,

and an ‘Ave Maria’ too,

so that, through God’s great mercy, you

may all experience as well

the things that I’ve a mind to tell.

In the beginning, then, God’s hand

made air, fire, water and the land –

the ‘elements’ we call these four,

from which, now and for evermore

all things are created – at least

that’s what we’re all told by the priests.

And God created after this

the angels in their heavenly bliss,

of which one was an angel fair

who bore the name of Lucifer.

He coveted the holy crown,

and afterwards he was cast down

because of his great sin of pride,

to hell’s abyss, there to reside.

After that fall, God straight away

made man upon the earth to stay;

He wanted humankind for sure

to live on earth for evermore.

Now when God had created man,

the name He gave him was ‘Adam,’

a name that God Himself thought fit.

He took a rib and fashioned it

into a woman, and when done

He said: ‘You two shall be as one,

and shall increase upon the earth,

and all your kin shall show their worth.

What joined together is by me,

shall never put asunder be.’

The next thing God wanted to do

was breathe His life into the two.

Adam stood up, began to move,

and God put in him thoughts of love,

made him behave as if, that time,

Adam was thirty, in his prime,

and he behaved accordingly.

I’m telling all this honestly!

These were his words, I do believe,

when first he laid his eyes on Eve:

‘My bones and flesh the Lord did take

so that He could a woman make.’

Then Adam added something new

(which instinct prompted him to do).

He pointed with his finger where

the short and brown and curly hair

is seen above a woman’s thighs.

On this he set adoring eyes –

the little pussy pleased him so.

He said with passion: ‘Eve, I know,

because of this sweet little place,

man will part from his parents’ grace,

and to his wife will wish to cleave,

because of pussy, and not leave.

It’s in the Book – I shan’t deceive!

THEREFORE SHALL A MAN LEAVE HIS FATHER AND HIS MOTHER, AND SHALL CLEAVE UNTO HIS WIFE ETC.

We read that Adam only sinned

the once, and only in one thing –

he took the apple, and he bit,

and very much regretted it,

and undertook a great penance

to clear his disobedience.

But nowhere will you find at all

that sex was ever culpable,

nor was it ever deemed a vice

to cause the loss of Paradise –

such nonsense never could be thought!

How could mankind enjoy as sport

something seen as a mortal sin?

Now, evidence may be found in

the letters of St Paul, a saint

of holiness beyond complaint.

He was a teacher, widely read,

so we must mark his words. He said

that loving isn’t sin at all,

He says, the holy man St. Paul,

in an epistle, in Latin

(the language I shall cite it in):

MELIUS EST NUBERE QUAM URI

‘It’s best to wed and get a bit,

than be on fire for lack of it!’

The commentaries add this gloss:

‘Girls, if in thoughts of sex you’re lost

so you can’t serve God properly,

nor concentrate wholeheartedly,

then always give in to the man

who occupies your thoughts. You can,

by doing so, remove all stress,

and pray again, your mind at rest.

Whatever you desire of God

it shall be granted by His word.

Now, young women, take notice all:

first, make yourselves look beautiful

then go and find yourselves a man

and take the best advice I can

give you. And if the monks should say

that you should rather turn away,

then to their strictures pay no heed,

to follow them there is no need.

They have one thought, and only one:

that you should service them alone!

But listen if your monk should say:

he’s not sinned who with women lay.

Of course there is no doubt of it

that you can’t sin a little bit

if you leave women totally.

But still he’s wrong as wrong can be

if he says it’s a mortal sin

(I mean it!) to enjoy women.

I’ll tell you something else as well.

Men won’t be heading straight for hell

if they should bed a woman for

the usual night-time sports and more.

I say all this and know it’s true

because that’s in the Bible, too.

You’ll find it in Isaiah IV

that seven women battled for

a single man – it’s so, I swear,

without a lie, it tells us there.

Now the sermon is at an end

and for your souls I you commend

that you get on your knees and pray

and one act of contrition say.’

‘I’ve been a naughty girl, alas,

and I have been very remiss,

not giving men all that they ask.

To remedy that is my task.