close to the stave, it had a certain authority in English before
the French artists brought it to perfection.

Some of the Spell-verses in Old English, like that of
Garmund's God Thegn--verses which have survived almost
up to our own day in mutilated forms and child-rhymes,
show traces of it. And now the antiphonic songs of the Church
and the fashion of adding Latin and French tags to English
verse gave it new effect, as a natural expedient for heightening
the melodic colour. Indeed one has only to pick out some
of the most marked refrains of this time to recognise at once
their hold on the ear. In the volume of Songs and Carols,
edited for the Warton Club in 1868, by Thomas Wright, you
find three notable instances--

I.--

"Gay, gay, gay, gay,
Think on drydful domis day!"

II.--still more simple in effect: --

"Now go! guile, guile, guile;
Now go, guile, guile, go!"

and III., this borrowed rose-repetend: --

"Of a rose, a lovely rose,
Of a rose is al myn song."

The "Rose" motive is almost as ancient as love-song
itself. Another, of immemorial ancestry, is that of the Earth
Song, which in its Mid-English form Richard Rolle set or
adapted. It occurs, even in this form, with a hundred and
one slight variations. The following is from the Early English
Miscellanies, which were edited for the Warton Club by
J. O. Halliwell, in 1855--

"Earth upon Earth would be a king
How Earth shall to Earth, he thinkest nothing;
When Earth biddeth Earth his rent home bring
Then shall Earth fro' the Earth have a hard parting,
With Care;
For Earth upon Earth wots never where therefore to fare.

-49-