The Death of Archbishop Scrope: English Carol

---

Source:

Cambridge, Trinity College MS. 652, fol. 171 r.

---

Editions:

• Frederick J. Furnivall, Hymns to the Virgin and Christ, The Parliament of Devils, and Other Religious Poems, EETS, o.s. 24 (London, 1868), p. 128.
• Richard Leighton Greene, The Early English Carols (Oxford, 1935), pp. 288-89.
• Rossell Hope Robbins, Historical Poems of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (New York, 1959), p. 90.

Hay, hay, hay, hay,
thynke on Whitson monday!

The bysshop Scrope that was so wyse,
nowe is he dede, and lowe he lyse;
To hevyns blys yhit may he ryse,
Thurghe helpe of Marie, that mylde may.

When he was broght vnto the hyll,
he held hym both mylde and styll;
he toke his deth with full gode wyll,
As I haue herde full trewe men say.

He that shulde his dethe be,
he kneled downe vppon his kne:
"lord, your deth, forgyffe it me,
Full hertly here to yowe I pray."

"Here I wyll the commende,
thou gyff me fyve strokys with thy hende,
And than my wayes thou latt me wende
To hevyns blys that lastys ay."

Note: The burden "Hay, hay, etc." is to be repeated after each stanza.