"This be the wordes of cristninge
Bi thyse Englissche costes.
'Ich cristni the in the vader name,
And sone, and holy gostes
And more.'
Amen! wane hit his ised ther-toe
Confermeth thet ther to fore."

William of Shoreham is a pioneer and an early user of certain
forms; but he is hardly to be called a poet in the inspired
sense. We part from him and Robert of Brunne, however,
with a distinct feeling of something added to his resources
of the tongue and the congenial powers of verse. Lines like
the memorable invocation, calling a blessing on "alle por
men" in Robert's version of the Manuel des Pechiez, "Hand-
lyng Synne," take hold on the ear and show the change in
the line-melody then in progress--

"Blessed be alle pore men,
For God almygty loveth hem;
And wel ye hem that pore are here
They are wyth God bothe lefe and dere
And y shal fonde, by nygt and day,
To be pore, gyf that y may."

It is interesting to observe in the lyric verse henceforward
the struggle to maintain the English note, while the foreign
fashions are being adopted, the new tunes being learnt. The
writers themselves came to have a divided relationship to
their audience. In some, the folk-consciousness and the
sense of the common folk were strong. They said with Robert
de Brunne, "Blessed be alle pore men!" In others the literary
consciousness--the sense of a polite audience, and of fine
people who knew the Norman fashion, who were in their way
the cosmopolitans of that time--was paramount. It is easy
to distinguish the writing of the latter; not so easy to recog-
nise at once for what it was the verse, with its insouciant
folk-song air and its natural grace, of the men who wrote
with an ear for folk-rhyme and popular rhythm and yet
eagerly adopted all they could get from the foreign minstrelsy.
The result was the new-grafted English lyric of this period and
the delicious melody of Lhude sing, cuccu.

-47-