Four Seasons of the Year, The

DESCRIPTION: "The spring is the quarter, the first that I'll mention, The fields and the meadows are covered with green." The singer catalogs the seasons: Spring (and Valentine's day), the busy summer, the hunting season of autumn, the chill winter, and repeat
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1845 (broadside, Bodleian Harding B 11(1253))
KEYWORDS: nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South,West))
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "FOUR SEASONS, THE"
Williams-FolkSongsOfTheUpperThames, pp. 125-126, "The Four Seasons" (1 text) (also Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Gl 73)
Leather-FolkLoreOfHerefordshire, pp. 207-208, "Four Seasons of the Year" (1 text, 1 tune)
Palmer-EnglishCountrySongbook, #128, "The Seasons" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST Leath207 (Partial)
Roud #1180
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(1253), "Four Seasons of the Year" ("Come all you lads and lasses awhile give attention"), J. Pitts (London), 1819-1844; also Harding B 16(98c), Firth b.34(113), "The Four Seasons"
NOTES [531 words]: Several versions of this, including Palmer's, say that the birds pair off on Valentine's Day. This motif goes back at least to Chaucer's "The Parliament of Fowls." According to Chaucer/Benson, p. 383, "No one knows how 14 February became one of love's 'halyydayes,' for which Chaucer wrote 'many an ympne' (Pro[logue to the Legend of Good Women] 422). There is no basis for the old theory that he drew on some folk tradition, no association of love with Saint Valentine's Day in previous literature, and little in the saint's legend to suggest such an association."
Chaucer/Lynch, p. 105 note 8 (on line 309 of "The Parliament of Fowls") says, "Chaucer is often credited with having created Valentine's Day (the Oxford English Dictionary lists this line in the Parliament as the first reference. Various saints have been proposed as the honoree of this holiday, and it has been associated with both February 14, when it is currently celebrated, or alternatively with early May due to another reference to Valentine's Day in the Prologue to Chaucer's [unfinished] Legend of Good Women (145-146). The tradition that birds choose their mates on Valentine's Day is shared with the Legend of Good Women and a poem by Chaucer's contemporary Oton de Graunson...."
Chaucer/Brewer, p. 131, describes Oton de Grandson's [his spelling] Le Songe Saint Valentin, which also involves birds courting on Saint Valentine's Day, but it cannot be shown which poem came first, although Chaucer would eventually borrow from de Grandson for The Complaynt of Venus. Even if de Grandson is Chaucer's source, that doesn't push the idea appreciably earlier.
If Chaucer was the source, the idea spread fairly quickly. Fowler, p. 131, notes a 1477 comment in the Paston Letters: "And, cousin, upon Friday is St. Valentine's Day, and every bird chooseth him a mate." The actual text which Fowler modernized is "And, cousyn, vppon Fryday is Sent Volentynes Day, and euery brydde chesyth hym a make" (Paston/Davis-II, pp. 436; letter #791, Dame Elizabeth Brews to John Paston III, i.e. the mother of John Paston III's future wife to her future son-in-law). Note that "brydde" might mean "bird" -- but might just as well mean "bride."
The caution with making too much of this is that the Pastons might have gotten the idea from Chaucer. Paston/Davis-I, pp. 517-581, letter #316, is an inventory of books owned by John Paston II; it is defective, but item #3 is a black[-bound] book containing "The Legende off Lad..." (almost certainly Chaucer's "The Legend of Good Women"), "...saunce Mercye" (probably a lost piece which we would title "Bele Dame saunce Mercye," already a catchphrase even though no poem of that era survives, but perhaps "Merciless Beauty," a poem widely but not universally thought to be Chaucer's, which has no title in the manuscript copies), "Þe Parlement off Byr..." (clearly "The Parliament of Birds," i.e. "The Parliament of Fowls"), plus some other pieces by Lydgate and others. Item 5 is another book which also contained "Þe Parlement off Byrdys." Thus the Pastons had direct access to Chaucer's own story of Valentine's Day -- and probably liked it, if they had two copies! - RBW
Bibliography

Chaucer/Benson: Larry D. Benson, general editor, The Riverside Chaucer, third edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1987 (based on F. N. Robinson, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, which is considered to be the first and second editions of this work)
Chaucer/Brewer: D. S. Brewer, editor, The Parlement of Foulys, 1960, 1972 (I use the 1990 Manchester University Press paperback)
Chaucer/Lynch: Kathryn L. Lynch, editor, Geoffrey Chaucer: Dream Visions and Other Poems: A Norton Critical Edition, W. W. Norton, 2007
Fowler: David C. Fowler, The Bible in Middle English Literature, University of Washington Press, 1984
Paston/Davis-I: Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Volume I, Edited by Norman Davis, Oxford University Press, 1971
Paston/Davis-II: Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Volume II, Edited by Norman Davis, Oxford University Press, 1976

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File: Leath207

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