If Thou Serve a Lord of Price (For Service Is None Heritage)

DESCRIPTION: "Beware, squire, yeoman, and page, For service is no heritage." "If thou serve a lord of price, Be not too boisterous in thine service, Damn not thy soul in no wise." Weather and women and fortune change, so serve God and take heaven as heritage
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1430 (British Library -- Sloane MS. 2593)
KEYWORDS: warning servant MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (13 citations):
Sidgwick/Chambers-EarlyEnglishLyrics CIV, p. 185, "(no title)" (1 text)
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #381, p. 255, "(If thou serue a lord of prys)" (2 texts)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1433
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2407
ADDITIONAL: Richard Greene, editor, _A Selection of English Carols_, Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1962, #76, pp. 138-139, "(Bewar, sqwyer, yeman, and page)" (1 text)
R. T. Davies, editor, _Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology_, 1963, #65, pp. 154-155, "A warning to those who serve lords" (1 text)
Celia and Kenneth Sisam, _The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse_, Oxford University Press, 1970; corrected edition 1973, #187, pp. 431-432, "Service is no Heritage" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSSloane2593}, London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 8
RELATED: The poem "In a chamber as I stood, There lordys were and Barenis bold"/"For Service Is None Heritage"
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1446
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2441
MANUSCRIPT: {MSHeege}, The Heege Manuscript, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS. Advocates 19.3.1, folio 91
MANUSCRIPT: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson poet. 36 (Bodleian 14520), folio 2
NOTES [346 words]: The attestation of this song by itself would not justify its inclusion in the Index; it is found in only one manuscript, although that one manuscript, British Library MS. Sloane 2593, is exceptionally important. However, Sidgwick/Chambers-EarlyEnglishLyrics point out that three other poems or songs use the refrain "For servys ys none erytage" ("For service is no heritage"), for which see, e.g., the RELATED references, and it is quoted by Shakespeare as a proverb in "All's Well that Ends Well," I.iii.26. Greene-Selection calls it "one of the commonest and longest-lived of medieval proverbs," known even to Sir Walter Scott. He mentions a use in Hoccleve's The Regiment of Princes, line 841.
Greene also notes that the first lines of the second stanza are similar to a proverb recorded by John Ray in 1678, "Winter-weather and women's thoughts change oft."
Thus there is some sort of tradition about that line, at least. Since Sloane is the folkiest of the sources, I've indexed its text that uses the line.
The Shakespeare passage, as given in the Riverside Shakespeare, is spoken by Lavatch the clown, in conversation with the Countess and Rinaldo the Steward: "In Isbel's case and mine own. Service is no heritage, and I think I shall never have the blessing of God till I have issue a' my body, for they say barnes [bairns, children] are blessings."
The Hoccleve passage, as given on p. 63 of Thomas Hoccleve The Regiment of Princes, edited by Charles R. Blyth, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1999, is
"Service, I woot wel, is noon heritage;
When I am out of court anothir day,
As I moot whan upon me hastith age,
ANd that no lenger I laboure may,
Upon my poore cote [glossed as "cottage," not "coat"], it is no nay [it can't be denied],
I moot me draw [withdraw] and my fortune abyde,
And suffre storm after the mery tyde.... [etc. The passage also warns of the loss of friendship.]
For more on manuscript Sloane 2593, see the notes to "Robyn and Gandeleyn" [Child 115]. - RBW
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