Chapter I: Part 1

THE DUTCH LIBRARY.

Vol. I. LANCELOT OF DENMARK
Vol. II. ESMOREIT
Vol. III. MARY OF NIMMEGEN

THE DUTCH LIBRARY

III

A MARVELOUS HISTORY
OF MARY OF NIMMEGEN

PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

A
MARVELOUS HISTORY OF
MARY OF NIMMEGEN

WHO FOR MORE THAN SEVEN YEAR
LIVED AND HAD ADO WITH THE DEVIL

Translated from the Middle Dutch by
HARRY MORGAN AYRES
Associate Professor in Columbia University

With an introduction by
ADRIAAN J. BARNOUW
Queen Wilhelmina Professor in Columbia University

Of this series fifty copies have been printed
on real Dutch hand-made paper, in 8vo size

_INTRODUCTION_

_The miracle play of Mary of Nimmegen is one of the gems of Dutch mediaeval literature. Its heroine is a reincarnation of Beatrice, the runaway nun from a Brabant convent who, after wandering seven years with her paramour, and living other seven as a public woman, returned, a repentant sinner, to the convent to find that she had never been missed. For all those fourteen years the Mother of God had served, in her person, as sacristan, because Beatrice had never let a day go by without praying an Ave Maria._

_The love idyll of this early legend has been turned into a grotesque caricature by the author of our miracle play. The handsome youth whose seductions proved stronger than the nun’s monastic vows is changed into “an ill-favored devil of a man”, as he is described by one of the tipplers in the Antwerp tavern. Leering Moonen’s one eye is a mirror that distorts the smile of love into a grimace. His promise to satisfy the girl’s craving for pleasure and finery is the substitute magic whereby he works his charm upon her, and even that would have failed of its effect without the aid of Mary’s fit of despair. Despondency is the devil’s abettor. To us moderns, accustomed to the searching analysis of mental reactions, the girl’s easy surrender to both the fit and the fiend is not sufficiently accounted for. But the author of “Mary of Nimmegen” did not attempt to unravel the involutions of the mind. His aim was to glorify the ways of God’s mother to man, and the actions of man required no further exposition than sufficed to exemplify her divine mercy in its fullness. For that purpose the relation between cause and effect could be expressed in the simplest of terms, such as give force to the proverbial wisdom of those early days. Wanhope is the devil’s snare. That homely truth, a reflection of the mediaeval doctrine that wanhope was one of the sins against the Holy Ghost, is illustrated by Mary’s reckless invocation of “either God or all the fiends of Hell”, and Moonen appears on the scene at once in accordance with the Dutch adage which says that when you speak of the devil you tread on his tail. English sense of decorum, which shuns the mention of the unspeakable one, pretends to hear the flutter of wings when it speaks of an angel of heaven. Dutch love of realism, in scorning to barter the tangible tail under foot for the invisible wings over head, is truer to the experience of life, for weak humanity has always been more easily susceptible to the suggestive power of evil than of good._

_Mary of Nimmegen finds it so. Her “God or the Devil, ’tis all one to me”, is a vain pretence at impartial allegiance. Who stands at the parting of the ways to Heaven and Hell, waiting for God to call or for the Devil to snatch her, has already passed beyond the point of retrievement. The response to the divine summons will require a moral effort which the snatcher will spare her. The way of least resistance is the way to Hell._

_Mary is never in doubt as to the real nature of her one-eyed companion. “Ye be the devil out of hell!”, is her reply to Moonen’s introduction of himself, and in her first lament over the sinful life she is leading she admits to her own soul that_

“_Though he saith little, I may not him mistake:_
_He is a fiend or but little more._”

_The innocent maiden who lived a blameless life in her uncle’s home has, by one night’s experience, become a hardened sinner. It is difficult for a modern reader to believe in Mary’s sudden wickedness. But we must remember that the mediaeval playwright did not mean to show his audience the consecutive stages of her degradation. The action on the stage is an epitome of that mental process, condensing temptation and surrender into one simple scene, the intervening phases of mental struggle and agony being left to the imagination of the audience. The language, which is more conservative than the stage, has retained that simple allegory which modern drama has discarded: we still speak of “a fallen girl”, although we demand from the modern playwright that he show us how she slid into sin._

_While the inner life is thus translated into the simplest of allegories, life’s visible pageant is mirrored in all its variety. Its realistic portrayal is the chief beauty of this drama. In the romantic playlets of “Esmoreit” and of “Lanseloot” a faint reflection is seen of courtly manners imported from France. In “Mary of Nimmegen” the everyday life of Netherlands burghers is astir on the stage. We get a glimpse of the simple household of a village priest, who, not unknown to his niece, dabbles in necromancy, we are introduced into the low life of Antwerp and hear the drawer’s call to the tapster repeating an order, “A first, ho, a first! Draw of the best and fill to the brim!”, we watch with the good people of Nimmegen the performance of a mystery on a pageant-wain in the market-place, and see women take a passionate part in the political factions of the day._

_This participation of women in politics was evidently characteristic of the Netherlands. Their meddling with affairs of state suggested to an English dramatist of a later period a vivid scene between an English gentlewoman and a group of Dutch Pankhursts. They counsel her to follow their example_:

“_You are wellcom, Lady_
_And your comming over hether is most happy;_
_For here you may behold the generall freedom_
_We live and traffique in, the ioy of woemen._
_No emperious Spanish eye governes our actions,_
_Nor Italian jealouzie locks up our meetings:_
_We are ourselves our owne disposers, masters;_
_And those that you call husbands are our Servants._
...

_Do you think there’s any thing_
_Our husbands labour for, and not for our ends?_
_Are we shut out of Counsailes, privacies,_
_And onely lymitted our household business?_
_No, certaine, Lady, we pertake with all,_
_Or our good men pertake no rest._”

_The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt (1619)._

_Women in the Netherlands were evidently emancipated before their sisters elsewhere. The Italian Quirini, Venetian envoy to the Court at Brussels, in the early sixteenth century, was amazed at the freedom the women of Antwerp enjoyed. “The ladies”, he wrote in 1506, “wear bright costumes and spend all their leisure, when the work is done, in dancing, singing, and playing musical instruments, giving themselves entirely over to pleasure. They keep house, in addition, and manage all domestic affairs, without their husbands’ control.” And when Albrecht Dürer visited Antwerp, with his wife and maid, in the autumn of 1520, he found it difficult to bring his own ideas of decorum into line with the equality which there prevailed between the sexes. At the banquet given in his honor by the Guild of St. Luke, the artists’ wives were all present, and Dürer could not do otherwise than bring his women companions to the feast. But at his inn in the Woolstreet where he could live in German fashion, he let his wife and maid have their meals in the kitchen, and took his own in the parlor with mine host._

_The Antwerp that Dürer knew can not have been much different from that where Moonen and Mary lived for seven years. For hardly more than a generation had passed, in 1520, since the author conceived his play. The wicked aunt’s fealty to Duke Adolf of Guelders is a motif extraneous to the plot, as poetic justice demands that her suicide be an atonement for her cruelty to young Mary, but it reconciles the historian to its preposterous intrusion by affording him a clue to the date of composition of the drama. The old Duke Aernout was imprisoned by his son in the year 1465, and in 1471 occurred his release, which stirred the virago’s wrath to such a pitch that “she cut her throat out of pure spite”. At the time of Mary and Moonen’s return to Nimmegen three years had gone by since her death, and Mary, after her pilgrimage to Rome, is said in the Epilogue to have survived the miracle of the rings for “about two years.” The play does not tell us how many years her penance lasted, but supposing that it was short and that the author wrote soon after Mary’s death, the date of composition can hardly have been much earlier than 1480. It matters little whether the poet dramatized historical events or an invented story. The records of the town of Nimmegen contain no reference to a performance of the wain-pageant of Maskeroon, nor has a trace been found of Mary’s grave, with the three rings suspended over it, in the convent for converted sinners at Maastricht. But even if she were a fictitious character, the author, while inserting these chronological data into the play, imagined the incidents of his female rake’s progress as actual occurrences in a recent past, which justifies the historian’s use of these data in trying to fix the date of composition._

_If the poet were also the writer of the prose sections, it would be wrong to ignore the statement that Mary’s uncle, after their visit to the Pope, lived yet, according to the earliest version, for twenty-four years in his village near Nimmegen. The author recording events of a quarter of a century ago would, in that case, have written, at the earliest, in the year 1498. But there is good ground to believe that the poet was not responsible for the interpolated prose, which is not essential to the play on the stage. Some Dutch critics hold the prose to be part of the drama as originally written, and intended to be spoken by a stage manager who supplied in his narrative the missing links between the scenes. But the fact is that only in a few instances does the prose serve that purpose, and in those isolated cases the imagination of the audience could be relied upon to help itself. By far the greater part of the prose narrative either repeats the drift of the preceding dialogue or anticipates the incidents of later scenes. The first meeting between Mary and her aunt is introduced by a short account in prose from which we gather that the aunt “held of the side of the young Duke, and after did destroy herself whenas she learned that the old Duke was made quit of prison”. If this was destined to be addressed to the audience from the stage, not the past, but the present, tense would have been in order. But apart from this grammatical unfitness for a speaker’s role, these words are dramatically unfit as they forestall the surprise of the audience at the aunt’s scornful reception of her niece. That the author can not be guilty of thus crudely spoiling his own creation is sufficiently evident from many instances of his insight into the exigencies of dramatic technique. By premonition and foreboding he will give the audience an inkling of imminent calamity, but to blurt out the full truth before the truth is seen in action is not his manner. When Mary has departed from her uncle, the good priest becomes aware of a heaviness that he can not explain_:

“_Scarce had the maiden from me gone,_
_It came o’er my spirits, how I can not tell._
_I fear with her or me ’twill not go well._”

_The audience get an intimation that something awful is impending, but they are kept in suspense as to what it will be and who will be the victim, whether Mary or her uncle. In that we observe the subtle touch of the artist who wrote the dialogue. He can not have been the same man who inserted the superfluous and meddlesome prose._

_How, then, must we account for its intrusion if the prose did not originally form part of the play? The manner in which the drama has been preserved accounts for it. “Mary of Nimmegen” has not come down to us in manuscript form. The earliest known version is a printed chapbook from the press of Willem Vorsterman of Antwerp, who was admitted as a member of St. Luke’s Guild in 1512, and remained at work in that city until 1543. The volume is not dated but probably came from the press in 1518 or 1519. Printed plays were a novelty at that early date. Vorsterman may have felt that to publish a drama in book form needed some justification. The word that was intended to be spoken could not be made to serve the reader’s purpose without a compromise between the dramatic and the epic. For the book is the story-teller’s domain, and the dialogue was not felt to be a story until the narrator’s “quoth he” subordinated every speech to his control. That seems to be the purpose of the inserted prose sections. They were not written, in the first instance, to elucidate situations left indistinct by the dramatist, but to lend to the drama the semblance of a narrative and thereby justify its appearance in print. Willem Vorsterman was careful not to offer his book to the public as a play: “A very marvelous story of Mary of Nimmegen who for more than seven years lived and had ado with the devil”, is his description of the contents of the volume on its title-page. And the three subsequent editions, that of 1608 by Herman van Borculo, of Utrecht, that of 1615 by Pauwels Stroobant, of Antwerp, and a reprint of the latter probably published in Holland, though falsely bearing the imprint of Stroobant on the title-page, all persist in calling the book a “story”, be it a “very marvelous” according to Vorsterman, or a “beautiful and very marvelous and true” according to Van Borculo and Stroobant. The printers knew too well that the play’s dramatic qualities would not secure its ready sale. The moral tale it embodied, not its literary form, was its chief attraction, and as a “story” it made its appeal to the reading public._

_This popular estimate of the drama as literature accounts for the manner in which an English translator of “Mary of Nimmegen” felt free to handle the original. “Here begynneth a lyttell story that was of a trwethe done in the lande of Gelders of a mayde that was named Mary of Nemmegen that was the dyuels paramoure by the space of vij yere longe”, runs the title of this rendering, and its “Amen” is followed by the statement, “Thus endeth this lyttell treatyse Imprynted at Anwarpe by me John Duisbrowghe dwellynge besyde the camer porte.” The story in dialogue as printed by Vorsterman became a “treatyse” in the English version as printed, in probably the same year, by his fellow citizen Jan van Doesborch. Vorsterman left the dialogue of the playwright intact from no scrupulous respect for an author’s work of art. It suited his convenience to print it as it was written, his own prose, or that of the scribbler he employed, being sufficient to justify his labeling the book a “story”. But the translator, who had to re-word the entire dialogue in any case, had no reasons of convenience to make him spare the poet’s creation. He made a fairly literal rendering of the interpolated prose and turned the dramatic dialogue into a clumsily phrased narrative, of which the following extract may serve as a sample_:

“_When they were come to Nemmegyn it fortuned on the same that
it was the dilycacyon of a chyrche, and when they were within
the Towne than sayde Emmekyn to Satan let us goo see howe my
aunte dothe, than sayde Satan ye nede nat go to hyr for she is
dead more than a yere a goo, than sayd Emmekyn is it trewth,
than sayd Satan ye, than sayd Emmekyn to the dyuell what do
all yender folks that be yender gathered than sayde the dyuell
the play a play that is wont every yere to be played, than
sayde Emmekyn good love let us goo here it for I have harde my
vnckyll say often tymes that a play were better than a sermant
to some folke._”

_The Englishman who perpetrated this murder of a good book was not more guilty in intention than Willem Vorsterman, only the result of his labor, due to the different task he undertook, makes him seem the greater sinner of the two._

_Although extraneous to the play as it was acted, the prose is not altogether a negligible accretion. For its writer evidently drew on his recollections of the play as he had seen it staged for his description of some of the incidents. The quarrel between the aunt and her gossips, enacted by their shouting and cursing and pulling of each other’s hair; the row stirred up by Moonen among the crowd that listened to Mary’s recital of a “goodly ballat”, one among the folk being stabbed to death, whereupon “he who did this had his head smote off”; the manslaughter committed by one of Mary’s potmates at the Golden Tree; the uncle locking the rings round Mary’s neck and hands; these are apparently bits of pantomime as essentially part of the play as is the written context. And because of its value as the only testimony we possess of an eye-witness of the drama’s production on the mediaeval stage, the prose has been retained by the present translator, his book being a faithful reproduction in English of the earliest version of the play as printed by Willem Vorsterman._

_Of the author of our little drama nothing is known. He was, doubtless, not a native of the good town of Nimmegen. For it appears from verse 652 that he imagined Mary’s uncle to live at Venlo, and a citizen of Nimmegen would have known that the distance between these two places was not a three hours’ walk but four times as long. The poet was evidently more familiar with the city of Antwerp, and his picture of the drinking scene in the tavern of the Golden Tree is vivid enough to be a first-hand impression. He was a poet of no mean talent, and not unconscious, it seems, of his own excellence in the noble art of rhetoric. The pride of the poets of the Renaissance is forestalled in his praise of poesy, of which he made Mary his mouthpiece_:

“_Rhetoric is not to be learned by skill._
_’Tis an art that cometh of itself solely._
_The other arts, if a man giveth himself thereto wholly,_
_These be to be learned and eke taught._
_But rhetoric is to be praised beyond aught._
_’Tis a gift of the Holy Ghost’s bestowing._”

_The goodly ballat lamenting in its refrain that “through folly falls poesy to decay” seems itself to bear the marks of folly’s blight. It was a concession to the taste of the day, which held the accumulation of rhymes, the use of grandiloquent gallicisms, and the elaborate structure of stanzas—all skilfully reproduced in Mr. Ayres’ rendering—to be the elements of poetry. That was the kind of versification admired and cultivated in the so-called Chambers of Rhetoric, a kind of mediaeval theatre guilds where the local poets and poetasters imbibed the love of poetry with their beer. But our author, who believed in “Poeta nascitur, non fit”, proved by his own achievement that neither can the born poet be unmade by the temporary vagaries of poetic fashion. Where he wrote the language that his mother had taught him, instead of the bombast admired among the brethren of his craft, it yielded true poetry, vibrant with emotion in the lyrical parts, and full of plastic force in its realistic passages. Intricate rhyme schemes are employed to emphasize the lyrical note, but the verse runs on so smoothly through the reverberation of sounds, and the language remains so simple and direct, that the artificial effort does not obtrude itself upon our notice. Sometimes the dialogue assumes the form of a rondeau, and in the scene between uncle and aunt this device is applied with consummate skill, the uncle’s sad lament “Alas, my sister, ye deceive me”, which is its “leitmotif”, becoming intensified at its second and third repetition by its contrast with the aunt’s replies, which proceed from mockery at her clodpate brother John to heartless slander of the lost girl. The poet’s device of varying the rhyme scheme of the dialogue according to the mood of the speakers has been carefully reproduced by the translator, so that the reader can form his own opinion of its effectiveness._

_Apart from its poetical qualities the play of “Mary of Nimmegen” deserves to be read—and enacted, to be sure—because it is a fine specimen of mediaeval drama. Recent productions in Holland have shown that the play does not miss its effect upon a twentieth-century audience. The author selected a plot which yielded to modern literature two of its noblest dramatic compositions. For the heroine of the Dutch poet is a female prototype of Faust and of Tannhäuser. To have been the first to discover its fitness for the stage is a title of distinction for our playwright, and we regret our ignorance that can not link his name, as it deserves, with those greater names of Marlowe, Goethe and Wagner. His drama also affords an early instance of the effective introduction of the play within the play. It served a double purpose in this case. For not only did the show of “Maskeroon” cause Mary to repent her sinful life, but it was, at the same time, an “oratio pro domo” of the poet, as it fitly impressed the audience with the ethical value of his art. “Better than many a preaching,” was the village priest’s verdict. And we, of the twentieth century, can agree with him, though we do not share the poet’s Mariolatry. For Heaven’s joy over a repentant sinner must ever find its echo in the poetry of this world which is a gift of Heaven to its chosen. And of those chosen was our nameless author. The play of “Maskeroon” has long ceased to impress repentant Maries, but “Mary of Nimmegen” herself has attained immortality, thanks to her maker’s gift, which was of the Holy Ghost’s bestowing._

_PROLOGUE_

In the days that Duke Arent of Guelders was done in prison at Grave by his son Duke Adolf and his knavish fellows there dwelt three mile from Nimmegen a devout priest hight Sir Gysbrecht, and with him dwelt a fair young maid hight Mary, his sister’s daughter, whose mother was dead. And this aforesaid maid kept her uncle’s house serving him in all needful with honesty and diligence.

¶ How Sir Gysbrecht hath sent his niece Mary to Nimmegen.

It chanced that this Sir Gysbrecht would send his niece Mary to Nimmegen there to buy what so they needed, saying to her thus:

Mary!

MARY

What would ye, my good eme?

UNCLE

Hark, child, give heed as doth beseem.
Get ye to Nimmegen with all speed
To fetch straight our provisions; we have need
Of candles, of oil in the lamp to set;
Salt, vinegar, and onions eke must ye get,
And store of sulphur matches, as ye say truly.
Here be eight stivers, go hen and buy
In Nimmegen what so we lack, as ye well may.
It is by good hap the week’s market day,
So shall ye the better find what ye desire.

MARY

Good eme, to do even as ye require
Ye know me ready; I will go my gait.

UNCLE

This even to win home again if it be too late,
For the days be now full short the while,
And ’tis hither to Nimmegen two great mile,
And now ten o’ the clock, or well more,
Heark, child, and if ye may not give o’er
Ere by broad day, as it seemeth you,
Ye may win home as ye would fain do,
Bide there the night, I would be the more at ease,
And go sleep at thine aunt’s, my sister, if it please;
She will not deny you for a night but one.
I had liefer that, than ye should over stile and stone
Come homewards darkling and alone all wholly;
For the road is of stout knaves none too free.
And ye be a maid, but young and fair thereto,
And like to be accosted.

MARY

Eme, as it pleaseth you,
I will nought other do than as ye tell.

UNCLE

Greet me your aunt, my sister, and farewell.
Buy what we lack by weight and measure true.

MARY

I will, good eme; adieu.

UNCLE

Dear niece, adieu.
God’s grace be ever thy company.—
Lord God, why doth my heart so heavy lie?
Is it that the land so sorely is distraught?
Or that my niece may in some snare be caught?
Stay, whence this heaviness? ’Tis strange to think upon.
Scarce had the maiden from me gone
It came o’er my spirits, how I cannot tell.
I fear with her or me ’twill not go well.
Would I had kept her with me at home.
’Tis madness at their will to let roam
Young maids or women through the countryside.
The knavery of this world is deep and wide.

¶ How Mary was shamefully bespoken of her aunt.

Thus is Mary departed from her uncle and come unto Nimmegen, where she did buy all that was needful for her or her uncle. And on the selfsame day that she was come to Nimmegen her aunt had fallen out with four or five of her gossips concerning the Duke Adolf who had done into prison the old Duke his father. So that she was the rather mad or a raging she-devil than a Christian wight; for she held of the side of the young Duke, and after did destroy herself whenas she learned that the old Duke was made quit of prison by the hand of the chastelain of Grave, as ye will hereafter learn. Mary, seeing that it grew to evening when she had done all those things for the which she had come to Nimmegen, said unto herself thus:

Now have I all such as we wanted,
By weight and measure no whit scanted,
Bought and duly therefor paid.
But meseems I have here so long delayed
That yonder is the night risen well nigh.
There is a dial, whereon I may espie
The hour of the day. ’Tis already betwixt four and five.
Here I must get me a lodging, as I would thrive.
There remains yet an hour more of day,
And in three hours I scarcely may
Win home to mine eme’s. Nay, to stay here were best.
Mine aunt dwelleth hard by, as I have guessed.
I will go pray her that she make me a bed,
An on the morrow, so soon as I be awak’ned,
I will haste me home to my task once more.
I see mine aunt standing before her door.
In seemly wise I will her greet.—
Aunt, may Christ make all your sorrow sweet,
And all them you love keep both fair and well.

AUNT

Fy, welcome, devil, how do ye in hell?
Well, mistress, what would ye hereabout?

MARY

Mine eme sent me at noon, without a doubt,
For candles, mustard, vinegar and verjuice
And for such other as at home we have use;
And ere I could run from one thing to another in hie
And search out each and all and then buy,
It is grown so late; and little may it misease you
That as for tonight ye make me a bed, an it please you.
I would e’en now get me home, but in the night
There be those who lie in wait for maids to do them despite,
Ay, and dishonor, so that they have shame of it;
And for that I am afraid.

AUNT

Out upon it, chit!
God a mercy! Make ye so much pother about a maidenhead?
Fy, dear niece, ye ken well how ye were bred
This long time, though ye pretend to such dismay.
Nor with your household matters since noonday
Ye have not been busy, as to my thinking.

MARY

In good sooth, aunt, I have.

AUNT

Yea, or sitting a-drinking
In some snug corner with “fill the can, fill.”
Fy, niece, in the country Dickon or Will
Know well how to go with the lasses amids the rye,
And when at even their sports they ply,
Hath not Gill won a pretty forfeit from Jack?
Fy, niece, ere now ye have got a green gown to your back.
At home, I doubt not, many brisk lads there be.

MARY

Why say ye so, aunt?

AUNT

Ay, mistress hypocrisy!
Though the truth on’t cannot be told, I’ll be bound,
Ye have tripped it lightly many a round
Where the piper got not five groats for his noise.
Let ’em go to it never so with the boys,
’Tis all virgin, ay, till girdles be let out.

MARY

That I should be so shent and shamed, without
All guilt, is more than heart can bear.

AUNT

And I have spoke with them too who would swear
They saw you and your own eme in such guise
That it cannot be told of in no seemly wise.
All our kin ye bring to scandal and shame.
Tush, vile progeny, ye be too much to blame,
Out of my sight! Ye do mine eyes no good!

MARY

Lord God, what woe is mine in mood!
How doth the blood forsake my body utterly.
So vile reproach, such words of ignomy,
To hear and suffer, all unmerited!
Now, aunt, tell me if ye will make me a bed
For this one night?

AUNT

Ye were me liefer lie,
As deep as this roof-tree is high,
In the Meuse as bait for all its fish.
Be gone, ere you repent your wish.
I tremble like a leaf for teen.

MARY

Ye do me wrong, aunt.

AUNT

Stay, this cursed quean
With vexing me will not be done or quit.
Would ye have those fine braids tousled a bit?—
Yea, she rouses the maggot in my head.
I could bring the devil himself to bed
And bind him to the pillow like a doting wight.
I be grown so awry with spite,
I know not if I stand on head or feet.
To them withall that I today meet
I shall make answer, wherefor wrathful I am,
Even the same answer as the devil giveth his dam.

MARY

Ah, wretch! now be ye fallen on sorry days.
I stand here as one in a maze,
And of myself I know not the what or the how;
Meseems, I should have run frantic from the town erenow,
Mindful nor of knaves nor of thieves.
Under the trees I will make me a bed of leaves.
I reck not whom I meet, be it fremd or kin,
Though the devil came in his own proper skin.
To ask no questions thinketh me best.
Under this hedge I will sit me down to rest,
Yielding myself, for ill or well,
To god or all the fiends of hell.

¶ How Mary took leave of her aunt and departed out of Nimmegen.

Thus is the young maiden, Mary, departed from her aunt and piteously weeping in sore distress hath betaken her out of the town Nimmegen in the dark of evening, until she is come to a great thick hedge, beneath the which she sat her down in sorrowful mood, weeping and wailing, and oft commending herself to the devil, and to herself sorrowfully saying:

Weeping and wailing and mine hands wringing,
Calling myself maledight,
Be all my solace and none other thing,
By cause mine aunt hath done me despite.
Is it wrong that I should be in spite
That causeless she blamëd me at erst?
Nay! Such anger doth on me alight
And waxeth in my heart aright,
That I sit here in wrathful plight
And ever hold myself accurst.

Help, what temptations on me throng!
Shall I yet do some violence?
Ah, youth, canst thou bear up so long?
Can reason offer no defence?
How should I stomach such offence
All guiltless? Whosoe’er he be,
None living hath patience.
Wanhope doth drive me from my sense.
Help me lament mine innocence,
God or the Devil, ’tis all one to me.

¶ The Devil, who always spreadeth his nets and snares wherein to catch souls ripe unto damnation, on hearing these words said with himself as follows:

Ah! I’m the richer by one more soul!
Ye see me disguised and, on the whole,
Quite the sort of gentleman God approves,
And, except for my one eye, just as behoves;
The other perchance was cast out by a spell.
It’s not in our power, we devils of hell,
To incarnate ourselves, as ye are aware,
Without some little defect here or there,
Be it in the head or the hands or the feet.
Now as I may I will make my voice sweet,
And speak with such modest and winsome cheer
As to do none offense to my sweet lemman here.
With the women ’tis doucely at first that gets on.
Fair child, why sit ye here sorrow-begone?
Hath some one misdone you, sans reason or right,
As a good honest fellow would gladly requite?
The picture of innocence, child, ye resemble,
Wherefore I would comfort you.

MARY

Help, God, how I tremble!
How stands it with me? I know not aright
Since first this good man came on my sight.
Help, how all faintly throbbeth my heart!

THE DEVIL

Fair child, fear ye no grief nor smart.
I will do you neither harm nor let,
But I make avouch if your course ye will set
By my avise, and go with me by all means,
I will make you ere long a queen among queens.
...

MARY

... Friend,
I sit now all at my wits’ end,
This my machine so wrought to hurt
By shameful words, the which without desert
I needs must bear: slut, harlot, whore,
That to the Fiend I’d liefly give me o’er
As to God, for I be half from my wit.

THE DEVIL

By Lucifer, ’tis purchase, all of it!
She hath drunk up her wrath at one
And sits in wanhope like a stone.
Hope bids me shed no tears today:
I shall not fail.—Fair child, I pray
That we in friendship may agree.

MARY

Who are ye, friend?

THE DEVIL

A master of much subtlety,
Who never comes short in aught he essays.

MARY

It skills not with whom I go my ways,
As well with the worst as with the best.

THE DEVIL

If to mewards your love were dress’d
I would teach you in all their parts
Music, rhetoric, all the seven arts,
Logic, grammar, geometry,
Arithmetic and alchemy,
All the which be worthy of heed;
No woman on earth in learning shall speed
As ye shall do.

MARY

Ye should have potent gramerye.
Who may ye be?

THE DEVIL

Why, what care ye?
To ask me that ’twere wiser not.
In truth, I am not the best of my lot.
But none could love you as well as I.

MARY

How hight ye, friend?

THE DEVIL

Moonen with the single eye,
Whom all good fellows know right well.

MARY

Ye be the devil out of hell!

THE DEVIL

At least your humble servant and true friend.

MARY

Strange, but ye do not me offend.
Though Lucifer self were come from hell,
I stand in case to greet him well.
I be wholly quit of fear.

THE DEVIL

So this is the short and long, my dear:
If you will do after my rate,
All that your fancy may dictate
I’ll teach you, as at erst I told.
Of goods, of jewels, or of gold
Ye shall never more have need.

MARY

’Tis well said; but by your rede,
Ere we be given each to each,
The seven arts ye shall me teach,
For in such learning I would speed.
Ye will me teach them?

THE DEVIL

Faith, in deed.
All seemly lore I will impart.

MARY

Nigromancy is a merry art.
Mine eme therein hath a pretty wit.
He hath a book and wonders works with it,
Nor never fails, he is so sly.
He can through the needle’s eye
Send the devil a-creeping willy-nilly.
That trick I fain would learn.

THE DEVIL

Ah, silly,
My knowledge is wholly at your device.
But I never studied, to be precise,
Nigromancy in all its parts.
It is quite the hardest of all the arts,
And for a novice perilous as well.
Suppose there’s wanting in your spell
A word or letter wherewithal
Ye would make the spirit that ye call
Your wishes duly to obey,
The fiend would break your neck straightway.
My dear, be sure there’s mischief in it.

MARY

Well, in that case I’ll not begin it.
I would not meet death in such a kind.

THE DEVIL

Ha, ha! I’ve put that out of her mind,
What would she be wanting to learn such a thing?
An she did, it would not be long ere she’d bring
On all us poor spirits the worst of our fears,
At her own sweet will set all hell by the ears,
And force even me in some dreadful tight squeak.
I teach her nigromancy? Not this week!
It is something at all costs she must not consider of.—
Now hearken to what I shall teach you, my love.
If nigromancy ye will wholly let be.

MARY

What will ye teach me?

THE DEVIL

Ah, let us see.
I will make you master of every tongue,
So that far and wide your fame shall be rung.
In the knowledge of tongues much virtue abides,
And the seven liberal arts there besides.
Ye shall be exalted of all and each.

MARY

My sorrow wanes at your fair speech.
Do that, and wholly at your will
I hold me.

THE DEVIL

One little matter still;
But grant my prayer, and well will you betide.

MARY

What is your prayer?

THE DEVIL

To lay your name aside.
And give yourself another therefor.
Mary’s a name I never learned to care for.
Along of one Mary I and my fellows into such mischief fell
That ’tis a name we like but indifferent well.
Were ye called Lisbeth or Lina or Gretchen, my dear,
It would get you more, I’ll be sworn, in a year
Than ever ye had of kin or kith.

MARY

Alas, wherefore do ye take ill therewith?
’Tis ever the sweetest and noblest name
That the tongue of man can fashion or frame.
Why should ye thereagainst make war?
I may not change, for worlds and more,
A name which nought could make more sweet.

THE DEVIL

Tut, tut! It’s all about one’s feet
Again, but if she will thereto consent!—
Would we, my dear, to our content
Go wandering, ye must change that name,
Or here we part. Yet more I claim
Of you. A promise is a debt.

MARY

What must it be?

THE DEVIL

Not to forget,
Come weal, come woe, I cannot bear
To have you cross yourself.

MARY

I grant it well and fair.
On crossing I set but little store.
But my name I can ill brook to give o’er.
For Maria, whence I have it, is my hope and trust,
And when in sorrow I am thrust
I cry on her to intercede.
Daily thus I bid my bede
Even as a child I learned it of yore.
Praised be Mary evermore!
While I have life I will ne’er have done,
Though wild and wanton I may run,
With praising her, nor at all forget.

THE DEVIL

Well, since your will be wholly set
Upon this name, I will somewhat abate:
Of all the letters keep at any rate
The first and drop the other three;
That is the M, and Emma shall ye be,
As in your countryside be many a maid and dame.

MARY

Well, since I may not have my proper name
I were indeed to blame, if we parted for a letter;
Emma I am, since I may be no better:
But still I like it not.

THE DEVIL

Nay, come,
If ye have not everything beneath your thumb
Within the year, I have nought to say.
Haste we to Bolduc without a stay
And thenceward let us take no rest
Ere to Antwerp we have pressed;
There we shall a wonder show.
By that, the tongues ye shall wholly know
At your desire, I pledge me to ’t,
And the seven liberal arts, to boot.
Bastard and malmsey shall ye drink.
But be my friend and ye may not think
Of the marvels all ye shall do and see.—
But at last your soul belongs to me!

After these words Emma and Moonen have taken their way to Bolduc, where for some while they tarried, feasting merrily, and paying the shot of each and all who ate and drank in their company.

Now shall we stint a little of Emma and Moonen and tell of Sir Gysbrecht, her eme.

After that Mary, the which now hight Emma, had been for some while away, Sir Gysbrecht, her eme, much wondered at her tarrying, and said with himself thus:

O anxiety, which clamors within me strong,
How dost thou rend my heart and my wit molest.
For that my niece Mary doth bide so long
Who to Nimmegen market hath her dress’d,
Where if it grew dark, I told her, as for the best,
Or haply in any wise she were frighted,
She should at my sister’s seek her rest;
There ever I lodge when I am benighted.
Nor will my troubled heart be righted
Ere I know how she doth speed.
If mischief on her hath alighted,
I die without all hope or rede,
For the lass is all I have at need,
And ever from childhood hath been my care;
If foul befall her ’twere woe indeed.
These lasses lightly fall in despair.
Now to Nimmegen I repair
To get me tidings without fail.
Men oft must hear a sorry tale.

After these words is Sir Gysbrecht gone to his sister’s house, asking after Mary, the niece of them both, the which answered rudely that she wist nought of her. Whereat he was right sad, saying to her thus:

Alas, my sister, ye deceive me,
When ye say that of Mary ye nothing wot.

AUNT

Nay, good clodpate John, believe me.

UNCLE

Alas, my sister, ye deceive me.

AUNT

Nay, she is cloistered, I conceive me
Where such birds be spitted for a groat.

UNCLE

Alas, my sister, ye deceive me,
When ye say that of her ye nothing wot;
And thus with wrath yourself besot,
Though I bid you but tell in all gentleness
If ye have seen her.

AUNT

Natheless,
Say ye not her charge was mine.
She came, ’tis true, eight or ten days syne,
Saying, “Make me a bed, aunt, for to-night
I dare not go home, lest I be done despight
Of knaves who would lightly some mischief begin.”
I bade her take her once more to the inn
Where the livelong day she had sat drinking and skinking.

UNCLE

How! had she the livelong day been a-drinking?

AUNT

That you may well be thinking, and nothing loath.
And her cheeks were as red, I make an oath,
As a baby’s bottom that has been well thwack’d.
When I blamed her a little for her shameful fact,
She made as with good sharp sauce she could eat me straight.
Thus cursing and shouting she goes her gate,
And no more of my fine young lady I see.

UNCLE

Alas, what shall become of me?
O God in three, where hath she gone or far or near?

AUNT

Why, goodman dull, in the muddy wine or clear,
Where they resort as for such sport are meet.

UNCLE

Alas, my sister, ye gar me greet,
That ye make me such shameful mocks.

AUNT

Yea, had ye kept her locked up in a box,
So had your trouble not begun.
God’s son, goodman, what harm is done
If she follow her lust at large a bit?
It will not matter to her no whit
Nor fare the worse by a single straw.
She will not go halt for it.

UNCLE

This doth my spirit so adaw
I fear mine heart in four will cleave.
I must turn me about and with my sleeve
Wipe from mine eyes and cheeks a tear.

O mother of God, the which each year
In Aix I visit and adore,
Help me now as ye have done yore,
And ye in Maestricht, Saint Servace,
Devoutly have I set in place
Full many a candle, as ye wot:
I pray you now, forsake me not.

In time of need it is to one’s friends one must look;
I will now let search for her in every nook
If any of her may have heard.
Though I be stirred,
’Tis but small wonder that I grieve:
Of lief ’tis ill to take one’s leave.

After this Sir Gysbrecht departed him from his sister sad at heart because he gat no tidings of Mary his niece.

¶ How the wicked aunt thrust a dagger in her throat.

In the meanwhile the chastelain of Grave let the old duke Arent forth of the prison and led him to the town of Bolduc where he was right royally received by the lords of that same. Which hearing, the wicked aunt waxed so wrathful in her venomous heart that she well nigh burst for spite, saying:

Help me, liver, lights, and spleen,
Teeth and head, nought goes aright!
I shall smother or split with teen:
Like a spider I swell with spite;
From my wits I be thrust out quite
At the tidings that I hear.
The old thief, in the castle that was locked tight,
He is got from Grave scot-free and clear.
Now all my comfort is but drear,
And the young duke, whom I obeyed,
Will shortly have but sorry cheer.
Such woe is me that I am near
To yield me, body and soul as I was made,
And summon all devils to mine aid.

THE DEVIL

Ha, ha! there’s profit as in this case!
Her soul is mine if I have the space
Of half an hour on her to bestow.

AUNT

Is it not noyous?

THE DEVIL

Yea, and a shrewd blow
To them as were counted the young duke’s men.

AUNT

To say the truth on’t, what is he, then,
Who ever a finer fellow saw with eye?
Yea, though in hell I must everlastingly fry,
I could cut my throat out of pure spite,
So I were done with this business quite.
Adieu and farewell, valiant young peer.
But so ye be duke in after year
Is all I ask for my shortened life.
Thus in my throat I thrust the knife
And with a blow I end me quite.
Faction has damned full many a wight.

THE DEVIL

To Hell’s convocation, in unending dole,
I summon this soul to its final fruition.
The folly of men who in factions enroll
And for some princeling get damned to perdition!
They are ours! all ours, who in this condition
Persist stubborn-hearted despite of all ill.
Envious faction gives yearly addition
To Hell of its millions, lament it who will.

¶ How Emma and Moonen journeyed to Antwerp, where they wrought much evil.

When Emma and Moonen had for some while tarried at Bolduc they journeyed to Antwerp whither they be speedily come. And Moonen said unto Emma thus:

Now be we in Antwerp, as ye well would,
Here will we triumph and scatter our good.
Go we in to the “Tree” for a pint of romany.

EMMA

To the “Tree”, say ye?

MOONEN

Yes, faith, there shall ye see
All the spendthrifts that thrive by mischance;
And the wenches who know well all the old dance,
The which on ten and four hazard all at a throw.
Above sit the burghers, and the craft below,
With whom ’tis more blessed to take than to give.

EMMA

All that I would liefly behold, as I live.
Nought could be better, as to my thinking.

MOONEN

Yea, in the Gold Room we shall be drinking
Ere that we part what pleaseth you most.
Sit down, love. Yea, a first, mine host!
And if it grew musty in cask, we were evil paid.

THE DRAWER

What wine drink ye, good man?

MOONEN

A pint of grenade,
And for my wife a pint of ypocras,
And of romany a pint, the which nought doth surpass
To raise a man’s spirits when they be low.

THE DRAWER

Ay, that’s the truth. A first! ho! a first! ho!
Draw of the best and fill to the brim!

FIRST TIPPLER

See, Hans, yon is a wench that is trim.

SECOND TIPPLER

Ye say sooth, and but an ill-favored devil of a man!

FIRST TIPPLER

Let us sit by them and drink of our can.
If she be but his doxy and not his wife
We’ll filch her of him.

SECOND TIPPLER

Ay, he shall have a taste of the knife,
For he is but a foul, ill-favored lout,
But the wench is sweet flesh past all doubt.
Be she his doxy, I know where this night I shall lie.
Will aid me?

FIRST TIPPLER

In the throat, yea, that will I.
Foot to foot we will stand fast as we may.—
God a mercy, toper!

MOONEN

Pot-mates, come drink, I pray.

SECOND TIPPLER

Nay, toper, we drink of the same tun.
But may we sit you beside?

MOONEN

Yea, surely, that were well done.
Good fellowship is to me nothing loath.

FIRST TIPPLER

By your good leave, whence come ye both?

MOONEN

From Bolduc and beyond be we.

EMMA

Dear Moonen, were it not geometry
If perchance I could surely scan
How many drops of wine there be in a can?

MOONEN

Yea, love, and have ye the trick of that still?
I taught it you but yesterday.

EMMA

To forget it were ill.
Logic ye after taught me well and fair:
I hold it all fast in mind.

FIRST TIPPLER

Toper, what saith your wife there?
Can she soothly reckon to a jot
How many drops of wine be in this pot?
Of stranger thing I have never heard write.

MOONEN

She will do yet stranger in your sight.
Her like ye have never met withall;
The seven arts she hath mastered all;
Ars metric and geometry,
Logic, grammar, astronomy,
Music, and rhetoric, of ancientest repute.
With the stoutest clerk she dare dispute
In the schools of Paris or Louvain.

SECOND TIPPLER

Good toper, under your leave we were fain
See or hear some of her art.

FIRST TIPPLER

Yea, surely, and I pledge two stoups of wine for my part,
And, by cog’s ribs, if any scant her in her tale
We will shed our blood for you without fail,
In any mischief that may you befall.

MOONEN

That merry ballat, as ye may call,
Wherewith our last noonday in Highstreet ye amused,
Do ye tell o’er for these folk.

EMMA

I pray you hold me excused.
In rhetoric I be but a dull wight,
Allbe I would fain go to it with my might,
The circle of the seven arts to fulfill.
Rhetoric is not to be learned by skill;
’Tis an art that cometh of itself solely.
The other arts, if a man giveth himself thereto wholly,
These be to be learned and eke taught.
But rhetoric is to be praised beyond aught.
’Tis a gift of the Holy Ghost’s bestowing,
Though there be rude folk of such small knowing
That they reject it. ’Tis great dole
To them who love it.

SECOND TOPER

Ay, good soul,
Must we use so much argument?

FIRST TOPER

Say us somewhat, we were well content
With what ye can, and out of good will
I will eke say somewhat.

EMMA

Now, hold ye still,
For rhetoric asketh good understanding;
And after my best cunning I will sing.

O rhetoric, sweet theoric and comfortable,
I lament with dreariment that men thee hate;
Unto the heart that loves thine art ’tis lamentable.
Cry on them fy! who thee not cultivate
Or thy first finder’s fame abate!
Lewd and without shame are they.
Them I despise who do after this rate;
And to the wise ’tis grief to hear this say:
Through folly falls poesy to decay.