"Love-Poems (by Women?) from the Findern Manuscript"
as writings in English from Chaucer to Spenser. An Anthology 1375-1575,
Blackwell

The Findern manuscript (CUL MS Ff I.6) is a late fifteenth-century household album from Derbyshire into which well-known poems and extracts from famous authors were copied by professional and amateur scribes, and also poems of original composition. The latter are customarily assumed to be all by men, and mostly written from the point of view of a man. However, a number of women's names (not attached to particular poems) are written in the manuscript ('Margery Hungerford', 'Frauncers Crucker', 'Elisabet Frauncys', 'Anne Schyrley') and it seems possible they may have been authors as well as readers. Indeed it has been claimed by S. McNamer, in Viator 22 (1991), 279-310, that female authorship of certain poems (she prints 15 in the appendix to her essay, including the five below), and not only those that purport to be spoken by women, can be determined from internal evidence, they are, she says, 'expressions of authentic female experience' (p. 296), in which the masculine 'game of love' (see headnote to Wyatt) is transformed is not sad or anxious or joyful reality. Since they would thus be among the earliest poems in English presumed to be by women argument is tempting; tone and expression can be compared with the love-complaints of Charles of Orleans and Wyatt, and with the poems in which men write of absence (Myn hertys joy', attributed to the duke of Suffolk) or write in the person of a woman lamenting such absence (Surrey, Poems 7 and 8).
There is a facsimile of Findern with introduction by R. Beadle and A.E.B. Owen (London, 1977), and a study by K. Harris, TCBS 8 (1983), 299-333; see also Barratt (1992), pp. 268-74.

I (fol.28v)
This is not about love-sickness; clumsily metred, stilted in diction, it yet speaks from the heart of anxious, passive waiting

As in yow restyth my joy and comfortt,
Youre dissese ys my mortal payne.
Sone God send me seche reporte
That may comfort myn hert in every vayne.
Ho but ye may me sustayne 5
Or of my gref be the remedy
But ye sone have amendement of yowre maledy?

Weche ys to me the heviest remembraunce
That ever can be thouht in any creature,
Myne hert hanggyng thus in balaunce 10
Tyl I have knowledge and verely sure
That God in yow hath lyst done thys cure
Of yowre dyssese to have allygaunce alleviation
And to be relevyd of allyowre grevaunce.

2 (fol. 56r)

What-so men seyn,
Love is no peyn
To them, serteyn,
Butt varians;
For they constreyn 5
Ther hertis to feyn,
Ther mowthis to pleyn
Ther displeasuans

(Whych is indede
Butt feynyd drede,
So God me spede, 10
And dowbilnys),
Ther othis to bede
Ther lyvys to lede,
And proferith mede,
Newfangellyns. 15

For when they pray
Ye shallhave nay,
What-so they sey:
Beware for sham! 20
For every daye
They waite ther pray lie in wait for
Wher-so they may
And make butt game.

Then semyth me 25
Ye may well se
They be so fre (free with their premises)
In evyry plase,
Hitt were pete
Butt they shold be 30
Begelid, parde, beguiled
Withowtyn grase.

3 (fol. 69v)

My woofull hert, thus clad in payn,
Wore natt welle what do not seyn:
Longe absens grevyth me so

For lakke of syght nere am I sleyn,
All joy myne hert hath in dissedeyn: 5
Comfort fro me is go.

Then thogh I wold me owght complayn
Of my sorwe and grete payn,
Who shold comforte me do?

Thjere is nothynge can make me to be fayn 10
Butt the syght of hym agayn
That Cawsis my wo.

None butt he may me susteyn,
He is my comfort in all payn:
I love hym and no moo. 15

To hym I woll be trywe and playn,
And evyr his owne in serteyn
Tyll deth departe us to.

My hert shall I never fro hym refrayn:
I gave hitt hym withowte constrayn, 20
Evyr to contenue so.

Note to ll.13-15: I love hym and no moo: written over ' my joy for well or w', perhaps to avoid the repetition of the rhyme-word (there are only two rhymes in the poem), as well as to replace the conventional phrasing with a downright declaration of love.

Note to l.18: Tyll deth departe us to: the echo of the marriage-service goes with much else to suggest an affirmation of wifely devotion and fidelity.

4 (fol. 135r)

A cycle of four poems, lamenting the lover's/husband's absence, seeking forgiveness for complaining about it, complaining about being neglected, and rejoicing at his return. The speaker is identified as female, and the situation is characteristically that of the woman, as we see in several of the Paston letters. The four poems are in an unusual metrical form: each is of 13 lines, on two rhymes only, in stanzas of five, three, and five lines, with the second rhyme of each poem picked up as one of the rhymes of the next. 'Welcome be ye' is placed first in the MS, but the rhyme-sequence (and the desire for a happy ending), argue that it should be put last (see Barratt, 1992, p. 271: she suggests further that the 'lost line' of ' Welcome be ye' is a clue to the 51 lines of the whole cycle-and a 51-week absence).

(a)
Come home, dere herte, from tarieng-
Kausith me to wepe, bothe weile and wring,
Also to lyve evere in distresse
So gret there may no wight expresse:
Al my joye ye torne to mournyng. 5

Soirowe is in myn herte digging-
To dethe, I trowe, he would me bring would like to
In woful trans withoute redresse.

Whanne I have of you sume tiding,
Gret joye I have, withoute failing, 10
Right as me ought with rightwisnesse;
But yetmay notmyn heveynesse
Depart from me til your comyng.

(b)
To you, my joye and my worldly plesaunce,
I wol shrive me with dredful countenaunce fearful (of rebukes) 15
Of chiding, which your letter bereth wittenesse;
Therto constrained by my woful distresse,
Asking you absolucion and penaunce.

What wol ye more of me but repentaunce?
God wol himselve have therof suffisaunce: 20
Mercy I seke and aske aye foryevenesse.

By seynt Martyn, and ye knew my grevaunce, (would that you knew)
The whiche I suffred with long continuance,
Dreding ye were of my woos roghtlesse:
That was to me a grevous hevinesse, 25
Yet aske I mercy to be in pacience.

( c )
There may areste me no pleasance, stop me (grieving)
And our be our I fele grevaunce. hour by hour
I not to whom I may complaine,
For he that may my woo restreine 30
Wol have of me no remembrance.

Sith I am under his governaunce,
He shuld sett me suche ordinaunce
As I might have ease of my paine.

Me thinkith he might have conscience 35
And of my woos sum suffisance,
Considering that I am so plaine open and candid
To him ever, with joy or paine:
Let him have therof repentance. Compunction

(d)
Welcome be ye, my sovereine, 40
The cause of my joyfull peine,
For the while ye were away
Myn hert seyd noght but 'walaway'.

No more I do my mirthis fayne
But in gladnesse I swym and baine: bathe 45
Ye have my mornyng dreven away.

Of your comyng I am so fayne
That mirthes done my sorow steine make pale
And make amonge theim suche afray
That reste may they with me no day 50
Gladnesse ye have brought me againe.

5 (fol. 138v)

Continuance
Of remembraunce
Withowte endyng

Doth me penaunce
And grete grevaunce 5
For your partynge.

So depe ye be
Graven, parde
Withyn myn hert

That afore mee 10
Ever I yow see
In thought covert.

Though I ne playn
My wofull payn
But bere yt styll; 15

It were in vayn
To sey agayn
Fortunes wyll.