and he describes the class, "they who take solace and mirth when they sit together in fellowship," and deem it "wisdom for to witten" (to know)
The state of the land, and haf it written.
The Hermit of Hampole expressly wrote his theological poems for the people, for those who could understand only English.
At a period when we glean nothing from any literature of the people, we find that it had a positive existence; for two chronicles and a collection of tales and theological poems were furnished for them in their native idiom, by writers who unquestionably sought for celebrity. The people, too, had what in every age has been their peculiar property,--all the fragmentary wisdom of antiquity in those "Few words to the Wise," so daily useful, or so apt in the contingencies of human life; proverbs and Æsopian fables, delightedly transmitted from father to son. The memories of the people were stored with short narratives; for a startling tale was not easily forgotten. They had songs of trades, appropriated to the different avocations of labourers. These were a solace to the solitary task-worker, or threw a cheering impulse when many were employed together. Such HALL aptly describes as
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the payle.[5]
These songs are found among the people of every country; and these effusions were the true poetry of the heart, which kept alive their social feelings. The people had even the greater works brought down for them to a diminutive size; the lays of minstrelsy were usually fragments of the metrical chronicles, or a disjointed tale from some romance;[6] such as the popular Fabliaux, which form the amusing collection of Le Grand.
These proverbs and these fables, these songs and these tales, all these were a library without books, till the day arrived when the people had books of their own, open to their comprehension, and responding to their sympathies. That this traditional literature was handed down from generation to generation appears from the circumstance, that hardly had the printing-press been in use when a multitude of "the people's books" spread through Europe their rude instruction or their national humour. They were even rendered more attractive by the expressive woodcuts which palpably appealed to a sense which required no "cunning" to comprehend. Their piety and their terror were long excited by that variety of Satan and his devils, which were exhibited to their appalled imaginations--the the mouth of hell gaping wide, and the crowd of the damned driven in by the flaming pitchforks. "The Calendar of Shepherds," originally a translation from the French, was a popular handbook, and rich were its contents--a perpetual almanac, the saints' days, with the signs of the zodiac, a receptacle of domestic receipts, all the wisdom of proverbs, and all the mysteries of astrology, divinity, politics, and geography, mingled in verse and prose. It was the encyclopædia for the poor man, and even for some of his betters.