This piece was first printed in Speght's edition of 1602, with this title: 'Chaucer's A. B. C. called _La Priere de Nostre Dame_: made, as some say, at the Request of Blanch, Duchesse of Lancaster, as a praier for her priuat vse, being a woman in her religion very deuout.' This is probably a mere guess, founded on the fact that Chaucer wrote the Book of the Duchess. It cannot be literally true, because it is not strictly 'made,' or composed, but only translated. Still, it is just possible that it was _translated_ for her pleasure (rather than use); and if so, must have been written between 1359 and 1369. A probable date is about 1366. In any case, it may well stand first in chronological order, being a translation just of that unambitious character which requires no great experience. Indeed, the translation shews one mark of want of skill; each stanza begins by following the original for a line or two, after which the stanza is completed rather according to the requirements of rime than with an endeavour to render the original at all closely. There are no less than thirteen MS. copies of it; and its genuineness is attested both by Lydgate and Shirley.[247] The latter marks it with Chaucer's name in the Sion College MS. Lydgate's testimony is curious, and requires a few words of explanation. Guillaume De Deguilleville, a Cistercian monk in the royal abbey of Chalis[248], in the year 1330 or 1331[249], wrote a poem entitled _Pèlerinage de la Vie humaine_. Of this there are two extant English translations, one in prose and one in verse, the latter being attributed to Lydgate. Of the prose translation[250] four copies exist, viz. in the MSS. which I call C., Gl., Jo., and L. In all of these, Chaucer's A. B. C. is inserted, in order to give a verse rendering of a similar prayer in verse in the original. Of Lydgate's verse translation there is a copy in MS. Cotton, Vitell. C. xiii. (see foll. 255, 256); and when he comes to the place where the verse prayer occurs in his original, he says that, instead of translating the prayer himself, he will quote Chaucer's translation, observing:-- 'My mayster Chaucer, in hys tyme, Affter the Frenchs he dyde yt ryme.' Curiously enough, he does not do so; a blank space was left in the MS. for the scribe to copy it out, but it was never filled in[251]. However, it places the genuineness of the poem beyond doubt; and the internal evidence confirms it; though it was probably, as was said, quite an early work. In order to illustrate the poem fully, I print beneath it the French original, which I copy from the print of it in Furnivall's _One-text Print of Chaucer's Minor Poems_, Part I. p. 84.