Specimens of English literature from the 'Ploughmans crede' to the ...

X. THE NUT-BROWN MAID. 405X. THE NUT-BROWN MAID.The last reprint of Arnold's Chronicle was edited, with an introduction,by F. Douce. The editor compares the poem of the Nut-brownMaid with a Latin poem called ' Vulgaris Cantio,' translated byBebelius, poet laureate to the Emperor Maximilian I, from a Germanballad, and printed at Paris in 15 16. He supposes that the Englishpoem may also have been derived from the GeiTnan. He also likensparts of it to some poems by Tibullus, referring us in particular to thefourth book, containing the ode Ad ainicavi. I must confess that I donot quite see why the poem may not have been, after all, purely English,and not under much obligation either to the German or the Latin.In vol. ii. pp. 334-337, of the Percy Folio MSS., edited by Halesand Fumivall, there is a piece called A ' Jigge,' which is clearly a poorimitation of ' The Nut-brown Maid.' The word jigge or jig meantoriginally not only a dance but a ballad. In Mr. Hazlitt's EarlyPopular Poetry of England, vol. ii. p. 271, our ballad is handled so asto have a religious sense, and bears the title, ' The New Not-browneMayd upon the Passion of Christ.' In Cotgrave's French Dictionarwe find the word ' Brunette, a nut-browne girle/ to which he appendthe proverb, ' Fille brunette est de 7iatiire gaye et nette, A nut-brownegirle is neat and blith by nature.'Stanza i . Thepoem appears to have been written by a woman;hence the slightly sarcastic expression these vien.Among, i.e. at inten-als, sometimes. So in the old poem of TheOwl and the Nightingale, 1. 6, we find ' sum wile softe, and lud among'i. e. sometimes soft, and sometimes loud again.On women, we should now say, 'of women.'Neiier a dele, not a bit, in no degree.A news, a new lover. So Chaucer has a fair for a fair one ; Prologue,1. 165. Than, then.A bannisshed man ; observe that this forms the refrain of every otherstanza, alternating with the burden, love but him alone.2. I say not nay must be connected with the words immediately following; thus it means, ' I admit that it is often affirmed that woman'sfaith is decayed.*Sayde ; this word, like saythe and layde below, and many othersin this piece, is wrongly spelt, as it has no right to a final e.Contynew, remain constant.Recorde, let (her) bear witness.