  The order adopted in this essay brings us now to drinking-songs. Next to spring and love, our students set their affections principally on the tavern and the winebowl. In the poems on the Order we have seen how large a space in their vagrant lives was occupied by the tavern and its jovial company of topers and gamesters. It was there that— "Some are gaming, some are drinking, Some are living without thinking; And of those who make the racket, Some are stripped of coat and jacket; Some get clothes of finer feather, Some are cleaned out altogether; No one there dreads death's invasion, But all drink in emulation." The song from which I have extracted this stanza contains a parody of S. Thomas Aquinas' hymn on the Eucharist. "Bibit hera, bibit herus, Bibit miles, bibit clerus, Bibit ille, bibit illa, Bibit servus cum ancilla, Bibit albus, bibit niger, Bibit constans, bibit vagus, Bibit rudis, bibit magus." Several of the best anacreontics of the period are even more distinctly parodies. The following panegyric of wine, for example, is modelled upon a hymn to the Virgin:— FOOTNOTES: |
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