leasant to live without more company; one must
feel "elinglich." But in "Cokaygne" there is no cause to be "elinglich";
all is meat and drink there; all is day, there is no night:

Al is dai, nis ther no nighte,
Ther nis baret (quarrel) nother strif....
Ther nis man no womman wroth,
Ther nis serpent, wolf no fox;

no storm, no rain, no wind, no flea, no fly; there is no Enoch nor any
Elias to be sure; but there are women with nothing pedantic about them,
who are as loving as they are lovable.

Nothing less Saxon than such poems, with their semi-impiety, which would
be absolute impiety if the author seriously meant what he said. It is
the impiety of Aucassin, who refuses (before it is offered him) to enter
Paradise: "In Paradise what have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter,
but only to have Nicolete, my sweet lady that I love so well.... But
into Hell would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks, and
goodly knights that fall in harness and great wars, and stout
men-at-arms, and all men noble.... With those would I gladly go, let me
but have with me Nicolete, my sweetest lady."[371] We must not take
Aucassin at his word; there was ever froth on French wine.

Other English poems scoff at chivalrous manners, which are ridiculed in
verse, in paintings, and sculptures[372]; or at the elegancies of the
bad parson who puts in his bag a comb and "a shewer" (mirror).[373]
Other poems are adaptations of the "Roman de Renart."[374] The new
spirit has penetrated so well into English minds that the adaptation is
sometimes worthy of the original.

A vox gon out of the wode go,
Afingret (hungered) so that him wes wo;
He nes (ne was) nevere in none wise
Afingret erour (before) half so swithe.
He ne hoeld nouther wey ne strete,
For him wes loth men to mete;
Him were levere meten one hen,
Than half an oundred wimmen.

But not a hen does he come across; they are suspicious, and roost out of
reach. At last, half dead, he desires to drink, and sees a well with two
pails on the chain; he descends in one of the pails, and finds it
impossible to scramble out: he weeps for rage. The wolf, as a matter of
course, comes that way, and they begin to talk. Though wanting very much
to go, hungrier than ever, and determined to make the wolf take his
place, Renard would not have been Renard had he played off this trick on
his gossip plainly and without a word. He adds many words, all s