[53] "Carmina Burana. Lateinische und Deutsche Lieder und Gedichte einer Handschrift des XIII. Jahrhunderts aus Benedictbeurn auf der K. Bibliothek zu München." 8vo. Stuttgart, 1847. [54] "Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries," edited by Thomas Wright, Esq. 8vo. London, 1838. The goliards did not always write in verse, for we have some of their prose compositions, and these appear especially in the form of parodies. We trace a great love for parody in the middle ages, which spared not even things the most sacred, and the examples brought forward in the celebrated trial of William Hone, were mild in comparison to some which are found scattered here and there in mediæval manuscripts. In my Poems, attributed to Walter Mapes,[55] I have printed a satire in prose entitled "_Magister Golyas de quodam abbate_" (i.e., Master Golias's account of a certain abbot), which has somewhat the character of a parody upon a saint's legend. The voluptuous life of the superior of a monastic house is here described in a tone of banter which nothing could excel. Several parodies, more direct in their character, are printed in the two volumes of the "Reliquæ Antiquæ."[56] One of these (vol. ii. p. 208) is a complete parody on the service of the mass, which is entitled in the original, "_Missa de Potatoribus_," the Mass of the Drunkard. In this extraordinary composition, even the pater-noster is parodied. A portion of this, with great variations, is found in the German collection of the Carmina Burana, under the title of _Officium Lusorum_, the Office of the Gamblers. In the "Reliquæ Antiquæ" (ii. 58) we have a parody on the Gospel of St. Luke, beginning with the words, _Initium fallacis Evangelii secundum Lupum_, this last word being, of course, a sort of pun upon Lucam. Its subject also is Bacchus, and the scene having been laid in a tavern in Oxford, we have no difficulty in ascribing it to some scholar of that university in the thirteenth century. Among the Carmina Burana we find a similar parody on the Gospel of St. Mark, which has evidently belonged to one of these burlesques on the church service; and as it is less profane than the others, and at the same time pictures the mediæval hatred towards the church of Rome, I will give a translation of it as an example of this singular class of compositions. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that a mark was a coin of the value of thirteen shillings and fourpence:--