My master asks where I've been.

'Milking ducks,' I tell him,

and he gives me pepper for it.

I only wish he was a hare, and my book a wild

cat,

and all his books dogs.

Would'nt I blow my horn!

Don't I wish he was dead!

to go to skole without a-vise
I had lever go xxti myle twyse!

what avaylith it me thowgh I say nay?

My master lokith as he were madde:
"wher hast thou be, thow sory ladde?"
"Milked dukkis, my moder badde:"
hit was no mervayle thow I were sadde.
what vaylith it me thowgh I say nay?

My master pepered my ars with well good spede:
hit was worse thañ ffynkll sede ;

he wold not leve till it did blede.
Myche sorow haue be for his dede!
what vaylith it me thowgh I say nay?

The Song of the School Boy at Christmas.

[Printed also in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 116, ‘From MS. Sloane, No. 1584, of the beginning of the sixteenth century, or latter part of the fifteenth, fol. 33ro., written in Lincolnshire or Nottinghamshire, perhaps, to judge by the mention of persons and places, in the neighbourhood of Grantham or Newark.' J. O. Halliwell.]

Ante ffinem termini Baculus portamus,
Caput hustiarii ffrangere debemus ;
Si preceptor nos petit quo debemus Ire,
Breuiter respondemus, "non est tibi scire."
O pro nobilis docter, Now we youe pray,
Vt velitis concedere to gyff hus leff to play.
Nunc proponimus Ire, without any ney,
Scolam dissolvere; I tell itt youe in fey,
Sicut istud festum, merth-is for to make,
Accipimus nostram diem, owr leve for to take.
Post natale festum, full sor shall we qwake,
Quum nos Revenimus, latens for to make.
Ergo nos Rogamus, hartly and holle,

Vt isto die possimus, to brek upe the scole.

Non minus hic peccat qui sensum condit in agro,
Quam qui doctrinam Claudet in ore suo.