Philobiblon

Writing a poem was a task that anyone with any claim to education could do in the early modern period pretty well as easily as we write an email, and they could be written, almost, anywhere – the bottom of trenchers (plates) being a particular favourite for ephemeral verses. Women might often embroider them, a form that was hardly more lasting, but this lovely example comes from a manuscript of 1603, in which it was recorded for posterity. Its title tells all:

A gentlewoman yt married a yonge Gent who after forsooke whereuppon she tooke hir needle in which she was excelent and worked upon hir Sampler thus

Come give me needle stitchcloth silke and haire,
That I may sitt and sigh and sow and singe,
For perfect collours to discribe the aire
A subtle persinge changinge constant thinge.

No false stitch will I make my hart is true,
Plaine stitche my sampler is for to complaine
Now men have tongues of hony, harts of rue,
True tongues and harts are one, Men makes them twain.

Give me black silk that sable suites my hart
And yet som white though white words do deceive
No greene at all for youth and I must part,
Purple and blew, fast love and faith to weave.
Mayden no more sleepeless ile go to bedd
Take all away, the work works in my hedd.
(pp. 155-6)

A nice variation on washing your troubles away, and that line “tongues of honey, hearts of rue” (rue being of course a bitter herb) is a beautiful one.

This is from an excellent, extremely broadranging anthology, Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology (1520-1700), edited by Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson. (I’ve made a note to myself to immediately latch on to anything in which Stevenson is involved. As I’ve noted elsewhere, her Women Latin Poets is brilliant.)

So many of these sorts of anthologies just rehash the usual suspects; it is lovely to see lots of new voices here. (It has just fallen open at “Verces made by Mistress Battina Cromwell, wife to Henry Cromwell ers Sir Oliver Cromwell’s sone”.)

It even has poems in Welsh – and translations…