In the Library at Balliol College, Oxford, there is a
manuscript which, for want of a better name, I may call
a Commonplace Book of an English gentleman who
lived in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Its
contents display, beyond any other single volume which
I have met with, the mental furniture of an average-educated
man of the time. There are stories in prose
and verse, collections of proverbs, a dissertation on
Horticulture, a dissertation on Farriery, a treatise of
Confession, a Book of Education, a Book of Courtesy, a
Book of "the Whole Duty" of Man; mercantile entries,
discourses of arithmetic, recipes, prescriptions, marvels
of science or pseudo-science, conundrums, tables of the
assize of food; the laws respecting the sale of meat,
bread, beer, wine, and other necessaries; while above
and beyond all are a collection in various handwritten
of ballads, songs, hymns, and didactic poems of a religious
kind, some few of which have been met with elsewhere;
but of the greater number of them no other copy, I
believe, exists.
The owner and compiler was a certain Richard Hilles.
From the entries of the births and deaths of his children
on a fly-leaf, I gather that in 1518 he lived at a place
called Hillend, near King's Langley, in Hertfordshire.
The year following he had removed to London, where
he was apparently in business; and among his remarks
on the management of vines and fruit trees in his
"Discourse on Gardens," he mentions incidentally that he
had been in Greece and on the coast of Asia Minor. A
brief "Annual Register" is carried down as far as 1535,
in which year he perhaps died. One of his latest entries
is the execution of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas
More. Some other facts about him might perhaps be
collected; but his personal history could add little to
the interest of his book, which is its own sufficient
recommendation. It will be evident, from the description
which I have given, that as an antiquarian curiosity this
manuscript is one of the most remarkable of its kind
which survives.
The public, who are willing to pay for the production
of thousands of volumes annually, the value of which
is inappreciable from its littleness, may perhaps not be
unwilling to encourage, to the extent of the purchase of
a small edition, the preservation in print of a relic which,
even in the mere commonplace power of giving amusement,
exceeds the majority of circulating novels: while
readers whose appetites are more discriminating, and the
students of the past, to whom the productions of their
ancestors have a memorial value for themselves, may
find their taste gratified at least with some fragments of
genuine beauty equal to the best extant specimens of
early English poetry.
In the hope of contributing to such a result, I am
going to offer to the readers of Fraser a few
miscellaneous selections from different parts of the volume;
and as in the original they are thrown together without
order--the sacred side by side with the profane; the
devotional, the humorous, and the practical reposing in
placid juxtaposition--I shall not attempt to remedy a
disorder which is itself so characteristic a feature.
Let us commence, then, as a fitting grace before the
banquet, with a song on the Nativity. The spirit which
appears in many of the most beautiful pictures of
mediaeval art is here found taking the form of words:--
Can I not sing Ut Hoy,
When the Jolly shepherd made so much joy.
The shepherd upon a hill he sat,
He had on him his tabard and his hat;
His tar-box, his pipe, and his flat hat,
His name was called Jolly, Jolly Wat,
For he was a good herd's boy,
Ut Hoy,
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
The shepherd upon a hill was laid,
His dogge to his girdle was tied;
He had not slept but a little brayd
When Gloria in Excelsis to him was said.
Ut Hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
The shepherd upon a hill he stood,
Round about him his sheep they yode;
He put his hand under his hood,
He saw a star as red as blood,
Ut Hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
Now Farewell, Matt, and also Will,
For my love go ye all still
Unto I come again you till,
And evermore Will ring well thy bell;
Ut Hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
Now I must go where Christ was born;
Farewell! I come again to morn:
Dog keep will my sheep from the corn,
And warn well warrock when I blow my horn,
Ut Hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
When Wat to Bethlehem come was,
He swat: he had gone faster than a pace.
He found Jesu in a simple place,
Between an oxe and an asse;
Ut Hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
Jesu! I offer to thee here my pipe,
My skirt, my tar-box, and my scrip;
Home to my fellows now will I skippe,
And also look unto my shepe,
Ut Hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
Now Farewell, myne own Herdsman Watt;
Yea, for God, Lady, and even so I had;
Lull well Jesu in thy lappe,
And farewell, Joseph, with thy gown and cap;
Ut Hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
Now may I well both hop and sing,
For I have been at Christ's bearing;
Home to my fellows now will I fling,
Christ of Heaven to his bliss us bring.
Ut Hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
Hilles was perhaps himself a poet, or so I gather
from the phrase, "Quoth Richard Hilles," with which
more than one piece of great merit terminates. He
would scarcely have added his own name to the
composition of another person. Elizabeth, queen of Henry
VII., died in childbirth in February, 1502-3.
The following "Lamentation," if not written by Hilles
himself, was written in his life-time:--