Or, palaeography is still difficult.
I returned from a trip to America (very hot, no leaves on any of the trees because of recent snow) to be confronted by stinking may blossoms, fields hemmed by cow parsley, linden leaves in their early stage of sliminess, and row upon row of alliums. And this was just on the trip from the airport. But although I love plants (a strange thing to write, like “I love air” or “water’s pretty ok”), D G Rossetti-style meditations on the pastoral scenes of late spring aren’t exactly my bag.
On a marginally-related note, while in the US, I attended a panel commemorating the palaeographer Malcolm Parkes, who died last May, in which my friend Chris was presenting a paper on something far too clever for me to understand. The various panellists’ papers all agreed on this: difficult disciplines, that seem initially to offer nothing to those outside their narrow field, can be fundamental in more areas than one could imagine. Palaeography is a difficult discipline, and yet allows non-specialists to reconstruct, as if forensically, the literary and intellectual climates of periods and places long ago, far away, and otherwise impenetrable. Palaeographers in general, and Parkes in particular, are both scholars and facilitators.
Anyway, Derek Pearsall, co-author of Landscapes and Seasons of the Medieval World (1973), was also speaking on the panel, again about something far too clever for me to understand, which got me thinking, naturally, about landscapes and seasons and palaeography and things that are difficult to understand, and Harley 2253, and this poem in particular, which uses flowers and lambs to disguise a morality tale which is genuinely patronising (unlike Derek Pearsall, who was a hoot), and no easier to stomach after transcribing:
The offending article.
(f.71v) In may hit murgeþ when hit dawes
In dounes wiþ þis dueres plawes
And lef is lyht on lynde
Blosmes bredeþ on þe bowes
Al þis wylde wyhtes wowes
So wel ych vnder fynde,
Ynot non so freoli flour
As ledies þat beþ bryht in bour
Wyþ loue who mihte hem bynde,
So worly wymmen are by west
One of hem ich herie best
From Irlond in to Inde.Wymmen were þe beste þing
Þat shup oure heȝe heuene kyng
Ȝef feole false nere,
Heo beoþ to rad vpon vpon huere red,
To loue þer me hem lastes bed
When heo shule fenge fere.
Lut in londe are to leue
Þah me hem trewe trouþe ȝeue,
For trecherie to ȝere
When trechour haþ is trouþe yplyht
Byswyken he haþ þat suete wyht
Þah he hire oþer swere.Wymmon war þe wiþ þe swyke
Þat feir ant freoly ys to fyke
Ys fare is o to founde
So wyde in world ys huere won
In uch a toune untrowe ys on,
From Leycestre to Lounde.
Of treuþe nis þe trechour noht,
Bote he habbe is wylle ywroht
At steuenyng vmbe stounde,
Ah feyre leuedis be on war
To late comeþ þe ȝeyn char
When loue ou haþ ybounde.(f.72r) Wymmen bueþ so feyr on hewe
Ne trow y none þat nere trewe
Ȝef trechour hem ne tahte,
Ah feyre þinges freoly bore
When me ou woweþ beþ war bifore
Whuch is worldes ahte
Al to late is send aȝeyn,
When þe ledy liht byleyn
Ant lyueþ by þat he lathe,
Ah wolde lylie leor in lyn
Yhere leuely lores min,
Wiþ selþe we weren sahte.
Ladies, we’ve been warned.
noon auctoritee 