College revisited: 13th - 14th century Poetry

Anonymous Lyrics of the Thirteenth & Fourteenth Centuries

Now Go'th Sun Under Wood

Nou goth sonne under wode -
me reweth, Marie, thi faire rode.
Nou goth sonne under tre -
Me reweth, Marie, thi sone and the.

There is a reason I took a class in thirteenth and fourteenth century literature in my first year in college, and it's because the damn stuff is so illegible, I needed a teacher to get me through it. It's like a whole other language! What are we speaking here, Canterbury Tales? That said, I ended up with a specialization in Shakespeare, so Jodi Mikalachki clearly did her job in laying the foundations to early modern English poetry. Man, she was awesome.

Anyway, this is clearly all about the Virgin Mary and her son on the tree. "Reweth" being cross-listed in the Norton as "pity", but one can see that it is "rue-th", or "rue for" - "I rue for you & your son, Mary". 

If one reads this aloud in the proper tones of Middle English (who had to memorize the C. Tales prologue other than me? give me a woot woot!), the rhyme is fine, though the poem is generally bland. Who cares? I didn't sign up for a Short Almost-Rhyming Almost-Haikus About Jesus class; I want some Lyrical Beauty in Larger Themes class. Fail.

Rhyme: B

Subject matter: F

Overall Score: D

Now Go'th Sun Under Wood gets a thumbs down.