r my love I am in sorrow sore;
I think of her I see so seldom any more,[23]--

rather a helpless moan, it must be confessed.

[23] Boeddeker's 'Old Poems from the Harleian MS. 2253,' with
notes, etc., in German; Berlin, 1878, page 179.

Better by far is the song of another _clericus_, with a lusty little
refrain as fresh as the wind it invokes, as certainly folk-song as
anything left to us:--

Blow, northern wind,
Send thou me my sweeting!
Blow, northern wind,
Blow, blow, blow!

The actual song, though overloaded with alliteration, has a good
movement. A stanza may be quoted:--

I know a maid in bower so bright
That handsome is for any sight,
Noble, gracious maid of might,
Precious to discover.

In all this wealth of women fair,
Maid of beauty to compare
With my sweeting found I ne'er
All the country over!

Old too is the lullaby used as a burden or refrain for a religious
poem printed by Thomas Wright in his 'Songs and Carols':--

Lullay, myn lykyng, my dere sone, myn swetyng,
Lullay, my dere herte, myn owyn dere derlyng.[24]

[24] See also Ritson, 'Ancient Songs and Ballads,' 3rd Ed.,
pages xlviii., 202 ff. The Percy folio MS. preserved a cradle
song, 'Balow, my Babe, ly Still and Sleepe,' which was
published as a broadside, and finally came to be known as
'Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.' These "balow" lullabies are
said by Mr. Ebbsworth to be imitations of a pretty poem first
published in 1593, and now printed by Mr. Bullen in his
'Songs from Elizabethan Romances,' page 92.

The same English manuscript which has kept the refrain 'Blow, Northern
Wind,' offers another song which may be given in modern translation
and entire. All these songs were written down about the year 1310, and
probably in Herefordshire. As with the _carmina burana_, the lays of
German "clerks," so these English lays represent something between
actual communal verse and the poetry of the individual artist; they
owe more to folk-song than to the traditions of literature and art.
Some of the expressions in this song are taken, if we may trust the
critical insight of Ten Brink, directly from the poetry of the people.

A maid as white as ivory bone,
A pearl in gold that golden shone,
A turtle-dove, a love whereon
My heart must cling:
Her blitheness nevermore be gone
While I can sing!

When she is gay,
In all t