Assay Thy Friend Ere Thou Hast Need

DESCRIPTION: "Man, beware and wise indeed, And assay thy friend ere thou hast need." The singer hears a bird sing this refrain." He comes closer. The bird moves away but continues its refrain
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1475 (Oxford, Bodleian ms. Eng. Poet. e. 1)
KEYWORDS: warning bird MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #389, pp. 259-260, "Vnder a forest that was so long" (1 text plus variant readings)
Sidgwick/Chambers-EarlyEnglishLyrics CXI, pp. 193-194, "(no title)" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #3820
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #6098
ADDITIONAL: Roman Dyboski, Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems from the Balliol Ms. 354, Richard Hill's Commonplace Book , Kegan Paul, 1907 (there are now multiple print-on-demand reprints), #57, pp. 47-48, "Man, be ware & wise in dede" (1 text, with an additional text on p. 172)
Celia and Kenneth Sisam, _The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse_, Oxford University Press, 1970; corrected edition 1973, #256, pp. 534-535, "Assay a Friend" (1 text)
Richard Greene, editor, _A Selection of English Carols_, Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1962, #78, pp. 140-141, "(Under a forest that was so long)" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSEngPoetE1}, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodley 29734), folio 23
MANUSCRIPT: {MSRichardHill}, The Richard Hill Manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354, page 483
NOTES [118 words]: This isn't a ballad, and it may not be traditional, but it's quite interesting. It's in two extremely important manuscripts, the Richard Hill manuscript (Balliol 354) and Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet e.1. Unlike most carols of this period, it has a ballad format (four-line stanzas rhyming abab, although all four lines have four stresses rather than the common 4343 form of ballads). And it uses a bird to relate a proverb. In this particular case, I don't really think it's traditional, but I think the odds are just good enough that I decided to index it just in case.
For more about the famous anthology Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodleian 29734), see the notes to "The Golden Carol (The Three Kings)." - RBW
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