Gossips' Meeting, The

DESCRIPTION: "I shall you tell of a full good sport, How gossips gather them on a sort." Seven or more gather to drink and talk. Men who strike their women will feel wrath in return. A harper plays. Once a week they will gather and drink, and then go home
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1475 (Oxford, Bodleian ms. Eng. Poet. e. 1)
KEYWORDS: drink travel home money abuse music MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #419, pp. 280-284, "(no title)" (2 texts plus variant readings)
Ritson-AncientSongsBalladsFromHenrySecondToTheRevolution, pp. 117-120, "Lytyll Thanke" (1 text) [DIMEV #3795]
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1362
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2274 (6-line version) and #3795 (quatrains)
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), #90, pp. 106-108, "[Hoow, gossip myne, gossip myn]" (1 text, with an additional text on pp. 187-188; the main version is DIMEV #2274, the one in the note #3795)
Celia and Kenneth Sisam, _The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse_, Oxford University Press, 1970; corrected edition 1973, #258, pp. 537-540, "Good Gossips Mine" (1 text) [DIMEV #2274]
MANUSCRIPT: {MSEngPoetE1}, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodley 29734), folio 57 [DIMEV #2274]
MANUSCRIPT: {MSRichardHill}, The Richard Hill Manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354, folio 206 [DIMEV #2274]
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library, MS. Cotton Vitellius D.XI, folio 43 [DIMEV #3795]
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A.XXVI, folio 161 [DIMEV #3795]
ST MSGosMee (Partial)
NOTES [265 words]: I had some difficulty deciding what to do with this piece. Its strong attestation argues for its inclusion in the Index: four manuscripts, including the Richard Hill manuscript and Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. e.1, both of which have contributed many songs to the Index. The relatively mundane, even vulgar, sentiment also argues for popular origin.
On the other hand is the fact that it exists in two forms (one in quatrains, Greene's "B" text, although this text is missing much text due to manuscript defects; not in IMEV, but #2358.5 in the IMEV supplement; DIMEV #3795) and one in six-line stanzas rhymed aaabbc (IMEV #1362, DIMEV #2274). What's more, it is the six-line form -- the less folk-like stanza form -- which is found in the Richard Hill and Eng. Poet. e.1 copies.
The two manuscripts with the quatrain version are not major folk manuscripts. The piece is the only poem in Cotton Vitellius D.XI; Cotton Titus A.XXVI has about ten poetic items, but except for "Erthe upon Erthe (Earth upon Earth, Earth out of Earth)," they are either long literary pieces or short proverbial scribbles. It seems clear that one form of this is a rewrite of the other, but it's not clear which is which. It is possible that the article by Rossell Hope Robbins "Good Gossips Reunited," British Museum Quarterly 27 (1963): 12-15: 12-13, clarifies the matter, but I haven't seen it.
In the end, I decided to index the piece and let you make up your own minds.
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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