The July eclogue again leads us into the realm of ecclesiastical politics.  It is a disputation between upland and lowland shepherds, the descendant therefore of Mantuan and Barclay, though the use of ‘high places’ as typifying prelatical pride appears to be original.  The confusion of things Christian and things pagan, of classical mythology with homely English scenery, nowhere reaches a more extravagant pitch than here.  Morrell, the advocate of the old religion, defends the hills with the ingeniously wrong-headed argument: 

    And wonned not the great God Pan
      Upon mount Olivet,
    Feeding the blessed flocke of Dan,
      Which dyd himselfe beget?

or else, gazing over the Kentish downs, he announces that

    Here han the holy Faunes recourse,
      And Sylvanes haunten rathe;
    Here has the salt Medway his source,
      Wherein the Nymphes doe bathe.

In the ‘August’ Spenser again handles a familiar theme with more or less attempt at novelty.  Willie and Peregot meeting on the green lay wagers in orthodox fashion, and, appointing Cuddie judge, begin their singing match.  The ‘roundel’ that follows, a song inserted in the midst of decasyllabic stanzas, is composed of alternate lines sung by the two competitors.  The verse is of the homeliest; indeed it is only a rollicking indifference to its own inanity that saves it from sheer puerility and gives it a careless and as it were impromptu charm of its own.  Even in an age of experiment it must have needed some self-confidence to write the dialect of the Calender; it must have required nothing less than assurance to put forth such verses as the following: 

    It fell upon a holy eve,
      Hey, ho, hollidaye! 
    When holy fathers wont to shrieve;
      Now gynneth this roundelay. 
    Sitting upon a hill so hye,
      Hey, ho, the high hyll! 
    The while my flocke did feede thereby;
      The while the shepheard selfe did spill. 
    I saw the bouncing Bellibone,
      Hey, ho, Bonibell! 
    Tripping over the dale alone,
      She can trippe it very well.

Many a reader of the anonymous quarto of 1579 must have joined in Cuddie’s exclamation: 

    Sicker, sike a roundel never heard I none!

Sidney, we know, was not altogether pleased with the homeliness of the verses dedicated to him; and there must have been not a few among Spenser’s academic friends to feel a certain incongruity between the polished tradition of the Theocritean singing match and the present poem.  Moreover, as if to force the incongruity upon the notice of the least sensitive of his readers, Spenser followed up the ballad with a poem which is not only practically free from obsolete or dialectal phrasing, but which is composed in the wearisomely pedantic sestina form.  This song is attributed to Colin, whose love for Rosalind is again mentioned.