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Elf.Ed. Note: Click on the footnote number or “Notes” and it will take you down to that note, click on that footnote number and you will jump up to where you were in the text.

From Legends and Satires From Mediæval Literature, edited by Martha Hale Shackford; Ginn and Company; Boston; 1913; pp. 125-127.

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THE  SONG  OF  THE
UNIVERSITY  OF  PARIS¹

Much argument is heard of late,
The subject I’ll attempt to state,
A question for dispute, I fear,
That will hang on for many a year.
The student-folk of Paris town
(I speak of those in cap and gown,
Students of art, philosophy, —
In short, “the University,”
And not our old-time learned men)
Have stirred up trouble here again.
Nothing they’ll gain, it seems to me,
Except more bitter enmity,
Till there is no peace, day or night.
Does such a state of things seem right?


To give his son a chance to stay
In Paris, growing wise each day,
Is some old peasant’s one ambition.
To pay his bills and his tuition
The poor hard-working father slaves;
Sends him each farthing that he saves,
While he in misery will stay
On his scant plot of land to pray
That his hard toil may help to raise
His son to honor and to praise.

126
But once the son is safe in town
The story then reads upside down.
Forgetting all his pledges now,
The earnings of his father’s plow
He spends for weapons, not for books.
Dawdling through city streets, he looks
To find some pretty, loitering wench,
Or idle brawl by tavern bench;
Wanders at will and pries about,
Till money fails and gown wears out. —
Then he starts fresh on the old round;
Why sow good seed on barren ground?
Even in Lent when men should do
Something pleasing in God’s view,
Your students then elect to wear
For penitence, no shirts of hair,
But swaggering hauberks, as they sit
Drowning in drink their feeble wit;
While three or four of them excite
Four hundred students to a fight,
And close the University.
(Not such a great calamity!)


Yet, heavens, for one of serious mind
What life more pleasing can you find
Than earnest scholar’s life may be?
More pains than precious gems has he,
And while he’s struggling to grow wise,
Amusements he must sacrifice, —
Give up his feasting and his drinking,
And spend his time in sober thinking. 127
His life is just about as merry
As is a monk’s in a monastery.
Why send a boy away to school
There to become an arrant fool?
When he should be acquiring sense,
He wastes his time and all his pence,
And to his friends brings only shame,
While they suppose him winning fame.

Translated by Marion E. Markley.

FOOTNOTES

¹   See Notes.

NOTES


SATIRE

The most popular satire in the Middle Ages is found in the fabliaux, short tales which picture, with great zest, racy incidents in the lives of common people whose hidden sins or hypocrisies are suddenly exposed. The satire in these stories is exceedingly broad and attacks, by preference, women and the clergy, painting with vivid realism their immorality and intense selfishness. Readers will find information regarding these in “The English Fabliau,” by H. S. Canby, Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXI, 200-214. Formal satire, which points out abuses and vices by means of exposition, is illustrated In the poems following. Satire against women is most agreeably found in “The Romance of the Rose,” chaps. xlvi-lii (translated by F. S. Ellis, Temple Classics). In Romania, XV, 315, 339; XVI, 389; XXXVI, 1, will be found interesting matter relating to satires on women, in France.

THE SONG OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS

This is freely translated from the French poem of Rutebeuf, written in octosyllabic couplets, about the middle of the thirteenth century. Rutebeuf was a famous minstrel whose vivid wit gave him a distinguished place among mediæval writers. His works are full of autobiographical details; he pictured his unhappy domestic life, his poverty, all his failings, and his virtues with an engaging frankness. In allegory he was a master of the mannerisms of his day. In satire he was original and clever. The monastic orders aroused his fiercest resentment, and he made sharp epigrams at their expense, accusing them of committing the seven deadly sins and more. The dry incisiveness of his ridicule may have impressed Chaucer and also the author of “Piers Plowman,” although we have no proof of this. A very good study of Rutebeuf, has been published by L. Cledat, Paris, 1891. The description of the mediæval student gives a true picture of the day, but Chaucer’s description of the Clerk of Oxford should be read as complement. For details regarding student life of the Middle Ages, consult

RASHDALL, H. The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 3 vols. London, 1895.

HEWETT, W. T. University Life in the Middle Ages. Harper’s Magazine, 1987.

SYMONDS, J. A. Wine, Women and Song (translations of many student songs of the Middle Ages). Chatto and Windus, London, 1907.

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