THE PROPHESY OF MERLIN (DUBLIN MS)

The Prophesy of Merlin (Dublin MS)

Edited by James M. Dean
Originally Published in Medieval English Political Writings
Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1996
(Trinity College Dublin MS 516 fol. 115r)
When lordes wille is londes law,

the law of t

he land
Prestes wylle trechery, and gyle hold soth saw, 1
Lechery callyd pryv solace,

is called secret ple

asure
And robbery is hold no trespace held to be n
o crime
5
Then schal the lond of Albyon torne into confusioun!
(se
e note)
A M CCCC lx and on, few lordes or ellys noone. In 1461 [there are]; (se
e note)
Longe berde herteles,

i.e., An old man; (se

e note)
Peyntede hoode wytles,
foolish
Gay cote graceles,
annered
10
Maketh Engelond thrifles.
rthless

ill-m
wo

THE PROPHESY OF MERLIN (DUBLIN MS): FOOTNOTES

1 Priests intend treachery, and guile turns into figures of speech

THE PROPHESY OF MERLIN (DUBLIN MS): NOTES

5 Albyon. The legendary, antique name for Britain, as in Geoffrey of Monmouth's
History of the
Kings of Britain. The fool in King Lear quotes this or a related poem when he sa
ys: "Then shall the
realm of Albion / Come to great confusion" (III.ii.85-86).
6 A M CCCC lx and on. RHR does not print this part of the poem, nor does he incl
ude the
material I have here numbered 7-10 as if it were subjoined to the above six line
s. The lyrics are
separate poems, yet the thought seems to be related. The dating 1461 should be c
ompared with
"When Rome Is Removed" lines 60-63.

7-10 Longe berde . . . thrifles. These lines, which constitute a separate poem,
are part of a
catalogue genre that Siegfried Wenzel terms "Type A" complaint lyrics. Wenzel te
rms them a
priamel, "in which a list of individual instances, the abusiva, leads to a 'part
icular point of interest or
importance,' the 'evil things' of the last line" (Preachers, Poets, and the Earl
y English Lyric
[Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986], p. 178). The "Type A" lyrics deri
ve from De
duodecim abusivis (the twelve abuses: seventh century, although attributed to Cy
prian), a popular
Latin treatise used extensively by medieval preachers; and Wenzel believes that
many of these
verses "derive from a native and oral tradition" (p. 181). See the discussion an
d many examples
Wenzel provides in chapter 6. Lines 7-10 of the present lyric - which also appea
rs in The Brut
(Wenzel, p. 180) - resemble the moralizing "Abuses of the Age" lyrics, with thei
r "world upside
down" contents. RHR prints the following fragment attributed to "Aluredus king"
(sayings of King
Alfred) from the flyleaf of Trinity College Cambridge MS 108 (thirteenth-century
):
Ald man witles
yung man recheles
wyman ssameles
betere ham were lifles

Old
shameless
for them to be

See RHR, p. 328, and the poem which this note glosses ("Bissop lorles, / Kyng re
deles"): Abuses
of the Age, I from British Library MS Harley 913 fol. 6v (Index 1820). The "Prov
erbs of Alfred"
(c. 1175, frequently edited) were an amorphous collection of gnomic sayings gene
rically related to
The Distichs of Cato. See S. O. Arngart, The Proverbs of Alfred, 2 vols. (Lund:
Gleerup,
1942-55), and Derek Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry (London: Rou
tledge,
1977), pp. 77-79. The Proverbs of Alfred have also been edited by Richard Morris
(EETS o.s. 49,
1872), W. W. Skeat (1907), J. Hall (1920), and Brandl and Zippel (2nd ed., 1927)
. For similar
examples of "Abuses of the Age" verses, see When Rome Is Removed lines 5-9 and n
ote to line 5;
The Letter of John Ball (from Stow's Annales); Ball's Letter in the Addresses of
the Commons
from Henry of Knighton's Chronicon: lines 35-41.