Notes
1] foster: forester (i.e., one who keeps (the king's) forests and the game within it, i.e., deer.
16] Lady Venus: this points to the performance of this song on January 6, 1514, at the royal palace of Richmond, Surrey, in an "Interlude with a moresque, devised by Sir Harry Guildford, of six persons including Ladies Venus and Beauty, and a fool" (Ian Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain: A Chronological Topography to 1558 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984): 255).
27] my saints' book: a book of saints' lives, e.g., the well-known Golden Legend.
29] The subtlety of the sexual innuendo utterly disappears here. The arrow--"glue"-less at the "nick" (13)--is phallic, and the bow vaginal (cf. line 11).
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: British Library Add. MS 31922, fols. 65v-66; John Stevens, Music & Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (London: Methuen, 1961): 408-09.
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1997.
Recent editing: 2:2002/2/7
Rhyme: aabbccdeed