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Sunday, March 1, 2020

Tone in Middle English Double Entendre Songs





Double entendre lyrics appear worldwide and throughout history. In the late Middle Ages, as some performers came to rely on written texts, a number of such songs were recorded in manuscript. While most of the scant body of earlier secular lyrics on the theme of love were written casually and almost accidentally preserved, sometimes in margins by clerics primarily occupied with religious writings, [1] these poems provide a direct glimpse into the popular music of the day. Among the songs recorded from the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the double entendre genre was not confined to stimulating a “wink wink nudge nudge” Eric Idle-type response. One such work is an ingenious and elegant riddle, while another is coarse and transgressive, with hints of aggression and nastiness, and a third sounds like a good-natured joke. Each expresses an element of human eroticism.



1

I haue a gentil cook,
Crowyt me day.
He doth me rysyn erly,
My matyins for to say.

I haue a gentil cook,
Comyn he is of gret.
His comb is of reed corel,
His tayil is of get.

I haue a gentyl cook,
Comyn he is of kynde.
His comb is of red scorel,
His tayl is of Inde.

His legges ben of asor,
So geintil and so smale.
His spores arn of syluer qwyt,
In to the worte wale.

His eynyn arn of cristal,
Lokyn al in aumbyr,
And euery nyght he perchit hym
In myn ladyis chaumbyr.


This poem, perhaps the best-known of the late medieval English double entendre songs, is included in a 15th century manuscript on the same page as the beautiful haunting religious lyrics “Adam lay ibounden” and “I syng of a mayden.” [2] The rooster – cook is a variant form of cock -- has a history as an emblem of Christ from the earliest times, a tradition toward which this poet nods with the reference to the bird’s awakening him “my matyins for to say,” yet this association is playfully misleading. In fact, the expression “to say matins” was a euphemism meaning to copulate. [3]

With its extended description the poem resembles Old English riddles, and, as in some of those, the answer is erotic. According to the OED the earliest denotative use of cock in the sense of male genitals is not until 1618, but verbal play with the association existed long before then. It will strike the young as extraordinary that, until a half century ago, scholars read, analyzed, and anthologized this poem with the assumption that it is simply an elegant and affectionate account of a pet bird. [3]

“I haue a gentil cook” is indeed an affectionate lapidary tribute to its subject. Though some have had difficulty in applying certain particulars of the rooster’s appearance to the genitalia, other critics have found every detail apt. The male organs have found few such worshipful tributes between this and Auden’s “A Day for a Lay.” [4] Emphasizing the cock’s “gentility” (mentioned six times in the piece’s twenty lines) and his beauty, described as though it were Cellini’s enameled gold salt cellar, the poet seeks to remove any trepidation or reluctance on the lady’s part. This unthreatening seduction technique is similar to that of Mississippi John Hurt in “Candyman” which includes lines like “His stick candy don't melt away/ It just gets better, so the ladies say,” delivered in a disarmingly sweet and gentle tone.

The listener’s solution of the riddle will dawn with a sense of discovery analogous to that of sexual exploration. Here is no suffering in love, no courtly self-subjugation, simply a celebration of the gift of sexuality. The speaker is secure in the knowledge that the cock has a nightly perch “in myn ladyis chaumbyr.” The verses are pretty and warmly charged with the potential for pleasure. Though male boasting about one’s sexual member or experiences is universal and often coarse, the tone here might even be called decorous.


2

Other late Middle English double entendre poems are not so refined. “May no man slepe in youre halle,” also from a songbook, [5] is far more explicit, The tone is raucous and dirty.




May no man slepe in youre halle
For dogges,
Madame,
For dogges,
Madame,
But gyf he haue a tent of xv ynche
With twey clogges
To dryue awey the dogges,
Madame.
Iblessyd be such Clogges
That gyuef such bogges
By twyne my lady legges
To dryue awey the dogges,
Madame.

May no man slepe in youre halle
For rattys,
Madame,
For rattys,
Madame,
But gyf he haue a tent of xv enche
Wyt letheryn knappes
To dryve awey the rattys,
Madame.
Iblessyd be suche knappes
That gyveth such swappes
Vnder my lady lappes
To dryve awey the rattys,
Madame.

May no man slepe in youre halle
For flyes,
Madame,
For flyes,
Madame,
But gyf he haue a tent of xv enche
Wyt such byes
To dryve awey the flyes,
Madame.
Iblessyd be such byes
That maketh such suyes
By tuynne my lady thyes
To dryve awey the flyes,
Madame.


Since vermin such as rats and flies, not to mention the notoriously unwanted attention of dogs, flock to the lady’s “hall,” the man’s role is, in the first instance, to drive off all the competition for what is variously called “between her legs,” her “lap,” and her “thighs.” [6] Hints of bestiality, corruption, and illness are here associated with sex.

The scene is essentially comic, low-mimetic. The sexual parts are not compared to precious and beautiful objects but to functional tools of wood and leather. Emphasizing its distance from a love lyric, the persona does not even seek to join the woman himself, rather with ironic mocking graciousness, he expresses the hope that whoever dares take her on will be up to the challenge. Outsize penises are virtually always comic, and, at any rate, the fifteen inch threshold would surely mean that few, if any, could qualify.

Though “I haue a gentil cook” derived its appeal from its polish and tasteful obliqueness and “May no man slepe in youre halle” is coarse, almost rude, glorying in its dubious propriety, both may well have been performed on the same occasion, perhaps along with pious Christian songs. The crudely bawdy and the sublimely erotic are never far apart in Classical literature or the work of the Troubadours. The testimony of literature suggests the same paradoxical mélange in the human mind.


3

The tone is quite different in “I have a newe gardin.” [7] Here the sexuality is high-spirited, wholesome and fresh. Rather than sounding transgressive, this verse is light and sweet, melodious, contrasting with the percussive effects in “May no man slepe in youre halle.”


I have a newe gardin,
And newe is begunne;
Swich another gardin,
Knowe I not under sunne.

In the middis of my gardin
Is a peryr set,
And it wele non per bem
But a per Jenet.

The fairest maide of this towne
Preyed me
For to griffen her a grif
Of min pery tree.

Whan I hadde hem griffed
Alle at her wille,
The win and the ale
She dede in fille.

And I griffed her
Right up in her home;
And be that day twenty wowkes,
It was quik in her womb.

That day twelve month,
That maide I mette;
She said it was a per Robert,
But non per Jonet.



The riddling opening phrase “I have a . . .” introduces the central image of the pear tree in the garden. A playful slipperiness surrounds the associated significations. While the garden makes one think of the Garden of Eden and the Fall, it is also a lovers’ bower, a locus amoenus. The pear tree, clearly phallic, is at the same time identified with the woman. The image of conception as grafting derives straight from medical description, including a passage in Hippocrates. [8] The punning on Jenet/Jonet is perhaps the main gag, and I use the term because this poem seems to me a joke in verse. Jenet, today Janet, is an early fruit as well as a personal name which may be either female or male. The phonological identity of pear and père supports this jeu de mots.

The ambiguity of the conclusion is the punch line. Is the speaker named Robert or John? If Robert, the final two lines mean that, rather than an early pear, the speaker has made him a father. It could be read, however, as revealing that he, John, is not the father, the father is another lover previously unmentioned, named Robert. While the explanation may be ponderous, the actual telling unfolds with a light and natural conversational ease, leaving the listener suspended between the possibilities.

The levity with which the subject is treated is in part derived from the speaker’s apparent youth (a “new” garden, just begun). The woman approaches him “alle at her wille” asking for the “graft.” So pleased was she that they partied with wine and ale. The relationship, whoever may be the father of the baby, seems entirely consensual.


4
Conclusion

Each of these songs entertains the audience with the riddle-like game implicit in every metaphor. The territory shared by the sexual meaning and the non-sexual varies widely to represent different aspects of the erotic, yet in each case the ludic character of the double entendre form emphasizes the positive. In “I haue a gentil cook” sexual vaunting is given an artful form in which what amounts to praise of one’s own body is done so playfully that it verges on self-satire. “May no man slepe in youre halle” is a rowdy, insulting verse of a sort that might have found favor at a modern fraternity stag. In the end high spirits and good humor mask the potential nastiness of the underlying misogyny. Finally, “I have a newe gardin” is a pleasant telling of an old story which at any rate acknowledges the possibility of a child. In this merry version no one seems to suffer. If the poet’s “gardin” is not Eden, it yet may feel for some moments as though it is.






1. The borderline between the pious and the improper was often ill-defined. Apart from the church’s toleration of parody ceremonies such as the Drinkers Mass (Missa Potatorum), the Gamblers Mass (Officium Lusorum) and the Feast of Fools (Festum Fatuorum), one may think of much of Rabelais and, among critics, of Huizinga and Bakhtin.

2. Sloane 2593, ff.10v-11. See Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages edited by Jan M. Ziolkowski. The same essay provides overwhelming evidence from parallel passages in English and other languages to support the identification of cock and penis.

3. For the suggestive use of matins, see Ziolkowski p. 123.

4. Auden’s poem includes lines admiring his young friend’s “delicate wrinkles and the neat/ Sutures of the capacious bag.” Written in 1948, Auden’s poem was unpublished until 1965, when Edward Sanders printed it in Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts (Vol 5 No 8) in March 1965, with a cover by Andy Warhol. It is sometimes titled "The Platonic Blow" or “The Gobble Poem.” Its publication history can be found in Bloomfield and Mendelson’s W. H. Auden: A Bibliography 1924-1969.

5. Cambridge University Add. 5943.

6. Bugs in the crotch are, of course, most likely pubic lice.

7. Again, from British Museum Sloane 2593.

8. On the Nature of the Child.

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