← Table of contents
Shakespeare Jest-Books

Note 258 — The Table. (continued 2)

Reading edition

Consult the new edition of Nares' Glossary, voce Walsingham. "This is an Image of oure Ladye. Ergo it is oure Ladye, and here she wyll worke wounders more than in an other place, as she dyd at Walsingham, at Boston, at Lincoln, at Ipswiche, and I cannot tell where."—Wilson's Rule of Reason, 1551, 8vo. sign S ii verso. In Percy's Reliques, ii. 91, is the ballad "As I went to Walsingham." "Have with you to Walsingham" is mentioned as a musical composition in Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham College. See also Burney's Hist. of Music, iii. p. 111. When people employed this form of adjuration, as was formerly very common, they were said, for brevity's sake, "to swear Walsingham." In the play of The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 1600, 4to. Barnaby Bunch the Botcher sings:

"King Richard's gone to Walsingham, To the Holy Land!"

with what are intended for comic interlocutions. In March, 1502—3, Elizabeth of York, consort of Henry VII, made an oblation of six shillings and eightpence to "oure lady of Walsingham" (Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, edited by Nicolas, p. 3). This offering may not appear very large, but it was thought a considerable sum to devote to the purpose in those days; for in the Northumberland Household Book, ed. 1827, p. 337, we find that the yearly offering of the Earl of Northumberland (Henry Algernon Percy, 5th. Earl, b. 1478, d. 1527) to the same shrine was fourpence. There is a fuller account of the Shrine of Walsingham, &c., in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, 121, et seqq.

Explore with AITake your curiosity a little further.

Reading settings