Saturday 22 August 2015

Through the 16th Century Church Committee Year

I am feeling most blessed to have discovered, in St Bogwulf Chapel's Book case, the following slip of paper, tucked into a first edition of the King James Bible. Especially as I had to drag the bible itself out of Drayton Parslow's hands, he claiming, "it's too good for ye!" It appears to be a compendium in verse of the life of a Church Committee just after the Reformation... 


Ye* Year of Ye Church Committee


In Aprille do they with ye Vicar
Have first meete and start to bicker
April showers drip through ye roof
And Warden doth declare "forsooth"

In June, ye annual Village Fete
Is helde within ye Greenwood
But since ye Squire's enclosed the lot
Ye verg-er's lockèd up for good,

In August, for financial aid
Ye Treasurer doth talk on giving
But since to tithe's the national law
It's pay up, serfs, or else stop living.

October with ye harvest o'er
About ye new Prayer Book they'd riot
But since King Hal's said they must use it
To keep their heads, they're keeping quiet.

December, Church is cold as ice
To keep ye holy Child-Night feast
But not as chilly as ye PCC's response
To the Vicar bringing in "ye Peace".

February with famine looming o'er
They argue o'er the chapel floor
Ye Vicar needs a faculty
It's only 200 years since they changed ye straw.

In  March elections, one man one vote
Each candidate puts forth his name
But ye one man voting is ye Squire
So ye PCC is just the same.


Note - ye "Y" in "ye" is a  thorn, not a "Y". So ye must pronounce it "Ye" whenever ye see it, not "Ye". Except when ye see "ye" and it means "ye".

Goodwife Kitty suggested ye old Saxon Font was in need of replacement.
Ye PCC agreed that it was probably good for another 500 years.

1 comment :

  1. Thorn = Þ
    keystroke ALT+0222 [using the numeric keypad]
    (it looks much nicer in Times New Roman)
    and if you can get hold of an early English handwriting font (such are supplied as freeware by many on the net) you can easily see how the lower-case þ (ALT+0254) could be mistaken and evolved into a y.
    Mind you, there is the very similar OE glyph for w - the wynn, which is also a rune (and which doesn't AFAIK make it into the Times New Roman set). I wonder why that wasn't transliterated into a y as well?

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