The last stop on the 2011 Cheese-trencher tour

[ppfuf]

GM and I went to visit his mom for Christmas, and I had an opportunity to go to Princeton's Firestone library and see their set of Elizabethan Roundels (Taylor MS 19, scroll to bottom for brief description). It's a charming set, very similar in design to the Fitzwilliam's Box containing twelve trenchers  and St Albans's Set of Tudor Roundels. The verses are secular (with one exception), and the spaces normally occupied by bible verses are used for the first couplet of the posies. This arrangement of text has only one other exemplar I know of, a lone survivor of a lost set in the Norfolk museum.  Several of the Taylor trenchers are badly damaged, but nearly all the texts were readable, yay!

And he that reads this verse even now

May happen to have a lowering sow, --

Those looks are nothing liked so bad,

As is her tongue to make him mad.

-----

Ask you your wife if she can tell

Together you in marriage have spent well

And let her speak as she does know

For [twenty] pounds she will say no.

-----

I curse his heart that married me,

My wife and I can never agree

A knavish queen, by this I swear

The husband's breeches she thinks to wear.

-----

If that a bachelor you be,

Keep you so, still be ruled by me,

Lest that repentance all too late,

Reward you with a broken head.

-----

If you are young then marry not yet;

If you are old you have more wit;

For young men's wives will not be taught,

And old men's wives are good for naught.

-----

Receive your luck as fortune sends,

For God it is that fortune lends;

Wherefore if you a shrew have got,

Your wife, yourself, it is your lot.

-----

Take up your fortune with cheerfulness,

With riches you do fill your lap;

Yet less were better for your store,

Your quiet [mind] should be the more [valuable].

-----

Why do you mistrust before you have need?

Your sire is good for word and deed.

As himself, he loves his wife,

Never to change during his life.

-----

You are the most fortunate man alive

Everything does make you thrive

Yet may your wife your master be,

Therefore take thrift and all for me.

-----

After all worldly pain and labor,

Die you shall in love and favor,

And by the grace of God Almight,

In heaven to have a place full bright.

-----

You have a shrew for your good man,

Perhaps an unthrift, to what then?

Keep him as long as he can live

And at his end his passport give.

-----

Though hungry meals be put in a pot

Yet conscience clear kept without a spot

Does keep your body in quiet rest [better]

Than he who has thousands in a chest.

-----
This grouping of posies has some overlap with the Molyneux, Golding, Metropolitan Museums of Art (NY), and National Museums of Scotland sets. It's not a clearly defined grouping like the Birmingham and Metropolitan sets, so this grouping is going to be an awkward category of 22 posies (sigh).

Comments

[lifeofglamour.livejournal.com]

I'm sensing a theme...

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

yeah...the 19th century historians would have placed these posies in the fortune-telling category. 9 of 12 are about marriage, and 7 are arguably misogynist. I should count some of the other sets and see if this is typical.

[xrian.livejournal.com]

And one is arguably misanthropist, or whatever the opposite of misogynist is. ;)

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

Since misanthropist is usually used to mean hatred of people, I usually use misandrist as the male equivalent of misogynist.
I'm trying to decide if I should try to differentiate between hatred directed at "men" or "women" and the hatred directed at "husbands" and "wives". I'm not sure there would have been any difference in public discourse in the late 16th century England.