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Trohetsuisan and Chancer's Lak of Stedfastnesse 293
tions to whole verse pictures with realistic detail, possibly
for a more popular audience. Such a line as the macaronic
"Verecundia was drownytt at pe laste fluyde"37 would
need little elaboration. Indeed we have such an extension
in the English poem 'Truth is Unpopular' :38
In ladyis chaumberys comit he not,
per dar trewpe settyn non fat;
pow he wolde he may not
comyn among ):>e heye mene.
Dr Hildeman argues-" closely from the parallel cases of
later Swedish poems such as the seventeenth-century
Konstens ocb Dygdens [orak: (Contempt of Order and
Virtue) which has the same extended pictures. This
poem has a variant in sixteenth-century Danish and
appears to have contact, perhaps at a number of removes,
with a German poem known to be written by the German
mastersinger Hans Rosenpliit who lived about 1450.40
From this derivation and evidence of relationships for
other Swedish poems Hildeman deduces that Trohetsuisan
was also influenced by the German Spruch. poetry which
was composed in the poetic guilds. The detail in
argument here and the knowledge of cultural contact
between the Continent (Germany especially) and Sweden
makes this a very likely line of descent, although the
English example suggests that it is not a necessary one.
As we recall, the vernacular and Latin lyric flourished side
by side at this period-! and it is difficult to distinguish the
direction of influences. It does seem however that the
allegorical pictures of Trohetsvisan are a vernacular
feature. If it was derived from German Spruch. poetry
this merely means that Trohetsvisan is a modified form of
37 Religious Lyrics of the XVtlt Century, ed, Carleton Brown (1939), 269,
no. 176 I. 10.
•• Historical Poems of the XIVtlt and XVtli Centuries, ed, R. H. Robbins
(1959), 146, no. 59 ll, 5-8.
39 133-141. Other poems discussed are the macaronic verses of Sanningen,
Falskheten, Troonn, found in sixteenth-century manuscripts, but also in
German, and Sanningen och Lognen,
'0 For the date see]. G. Robertson, A History of German Literature (3rd ed,
revised by E. Purdie, W. 1. Lucas and M. C)'C. Walshe, 1959), 134.
• 1 See F. ]. Raby, op, cit., II 322 ft.