Joly Jankin (As I Went on Yole Day In Oure Prossession)

DESCRIPTION: "As I went on ypl day In owr prossessyon," the girls knows jolly Jankin, who "began the offys:" "Kyrie, so kyrie, Jankin singyt merie, with Aleyson/Eleyson." He performs the service well. On his way out "on mine fote he tread." "Alas, I go with childe."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1430 (British Library -- Sloane MS. 2593)
KEYWORDS: MiddleEnglish clergy courting sex seduction adultery
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (11 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #457, p. 309 "(no title)" (1 text)
Sidgwick/Chambers-EarlyEnglishLyrics CXXVI, pp. 220-221, "(no title)" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #377
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #635
ADDITIONAL: John Speirs, _Medieval English Poetry: The Non-Chaucerian Tradition_, Faber and Faber, 1957, pp. 82-83, "(Kyrie, so kyrie)" (1 text)
Maxwell S. Luria & Richard Hoffman, _Middle English Lyrics_, a Norton Critical Edition, Norton, 1974, pp, 84-85, #86 (no title) (1 text)
Celia and Kenneth Sisam, _The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse_, Oxford University Press, 1970; corrected edition 1973, #199, pp. 445-446, "Jolly Jankin" (1 text)
Rossell Hope Robbins, _Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Century_, Oxford University Press, 1952, pp. 21-22, "Jolly Jankin" (1 text)
Richard Greene, editor, _A Selection of English Carols_, Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1962, #98, pp. 106-107, "(Kyrie, so kyrie) (1 text)
R. T. Davies, editor, _Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology_, 1963, #73, pp. 162-163, "Jankin, the clerical seducer" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSSloane2593}, London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 34
NOTES [276 words]: This lyric exists only in the Sloane Manuscript, which has a lot of folk material but clearly isn't all folk; normally I wouldn't index a piece based on its inclusion only in that manuscript. But this plot is so interesting that I put it in. It certainly intrigued the editors of Middle English compilations, as shown by how many times it has been reprinted!
There is a general consensus that it parodies the language of the mass (so, e.g., Speirs, Robbins).
Speirs makes the interesting point that "Aleyson/Eleyson" (as in "Kyrie Eleison"="Lord, have mercy") sounds very much like "Alison/Alisoun." He suspects that the girl in this song is, in fact, named Alison -- meaning that she has the same name as the Wife of Bath, and he has the same name as the Wife of Bath's fifth husband. Speirs further suggestion that Jankin might have distorted the pronunciation to make it sound even more like "Alison."
Greene suggests a comparison between this and the famous "Second Shepherds' Play" of the Wakefield Mystery Play cycle, lines 656-658. I don't have the edition he cites, but in my edition (Cawley's), these lines involve the Shepherds discussing the song that the angels had just sung announcing the birth of Jesus:
[656] 2nd Shepherd: Say, what was his song? Hard ye not how he crakyd it,
[657] Thre brefes to a long?
3rd Shepherd: Yee, Mary, hee hakt it:
[658] Was no crochett wrong, nor nothyng that lakt it.
So the comparison is simply between the description of how the angels sang their message and how Jankin sang the office. Not really a very close parallel, to my mind. Similarly with two citations of the (rarely-reprinted) "First Shepherds' Play."
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