Ewe bleateth after lamb,
    Loweth after calf the cow;
    Bullock starteth, buck verteth,*
        Merry sing cuckoo.

    Cuckoo, cuckoo, well singeth thou cuckoo,
    Thou art never silent now. 
    Sing cuckoo, now, sing cuckoo,
        Sing cuckoo, sing cuckoo, now!”

Turns to the green fern or “vert.”  Vert is French for “green.”

Is that not pretty?  Can you not hear the cuckoo call, even though the lamps may be lit and the winter wind be shrill without?

But I think it is prettier still in its thirteenth-century English.  Perhaps you may be able to read it in that, so here it is:—­

    “Sumer is ycumen in,
    Lhude sing cuccu;
    Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
    And springth the wde nu,
        Sing cuccu!

    Awe bleteth after lomb,
    Lhouth after calve cu;
    Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth,
        Murie sing cuccu.

    Cuccu, cuccu, well singes thu cuccu,
    Ne swike thu naver nu. 
    Sing cuccu, nu, sing cuccu,
        Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu!"*

    Ritson’s Ancient Songs.

BOOKS TO READ

Stories of Robin Hood, by H. E. Marshall.  Stories of the Ballads, by Mary Macgregor.  A Book of Ballads, by C. L. Thomson.  Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (Everyman’s Library).

Chapter XIX “PIERS THE PLOUGHMAN”

DURING the long years after the Norman Conquest when English was a despised language, it became broken up into many dialects.  But as time went on and English became once more the language of the educated as well as of the uneducated, there arose a cultured English, which became the language which we speak to-day.

In the time of Edward III England was England again, and the rulers were English both in heart and in name.  But England was no longer a country apart, she was no longer a lonely sea-girt island, but had taken her place among the great countries of Europe.  For the reign of Edward III was a brilliant one.  The knightly, chivalrous King set his country high among the countries of Europe.  Men made songs and sang of his victories, of Crecy and of Calais, and France bowed the knee to England.  But the wars and triumphs of the King pressed hardly on the people of England, and ere his reign was over misery, pestilence, and famine filled the land.

So many men had been killed in Edward’s French and Scottish wars that there were too few left to till the land.  Then came a terrible disease called the Black Death, slaying young and old, rich and poor, until nearly half the people in the land were dead.

Then fewer still were left to do the work of the farms.  Cattle and sheep strayed where they would, for there were none to tend them.  Corn ripened and rotted in the fields, for there were none to gather it.  Food grew dear as workers grew scarce.  Then the field laborers who were left began to demand larger wages.  Many of these laborers were little more than slaves, and their masters refused to pay them better.  Then some left their homes and went away to seek new masters who would be willing to pay more, while others took to a life of wandering beggary.