England, too, had her pilgrim trade to Santiago de Compostela, thirty-three miles south of Corunna, where the shrine of St. James caused these travellers to cross the Bay of Biscay to Spain. By the fifteenth century this transportation of pilgrims had become a regular trade, and in 1434 Henry VI granted a licence to carry no fewer than 2433 such enthusiasts. Indeed the earliest English sea song is that which describes the life on board one of these pilgrim ships. The manuscript is in the Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and it begins by saying that “men may leve all gamys, that saylen to Seynt Jamys,” for when these people have joined the ship at Sandwich, Winchelsea, Bristol or wherever it may be, their hearts soon begin to fail, “for som ar lyke to cowgh and grone, or hit be full mydnyght.” The cook is ordered to get food ready, but the pilgrims have “no lust” for eating, but lie “with they bowlys fast them by” and complaining that their heads would “cleave in three”—“splitting,” as the modern martyr to sea-sickness expresses it. Then the carpenter comes along and with his gear makes small cabins for the unhappy passengers to sleep in. A sack of straw formed the mattress, and in some cases the pilgrims found they had to sleep near the pump and bilge-water in the reeking hold. “A man were as good to be dede, as smell thereof the stynk.” For there are few odours more objectionable than the bilge-stench of an aged ship, and in those days, when refuse was thrown into the hold and there was little idea of sanitation, a pilgrim’s voyage from England to Spain, across the boisterous Bay, could not have been more pleasant than from Venice to the Syrian shore. In this poem just quoted it is interesting to notice, also, the life on board the merchant ship as regards the mariners. We see the master at once ordering his “shyp-men” to stand by the mast and handle their tackle. Then, with the old expression of the sea (still surviving in sailing merchant vessels to-day), “Ho! Hissa,” they hoist away, whilst one man reprimands another for standing too close to his neighbour to allow him room to haul. Then one or two boys go up aloft, out on the yard, and unfurl the square-sail, while the rest of the crew haul aft the sheets. The captain then orders the boatswain to stow the ship’s boat, and next “haul the bowline,” the ship being now on a wind; but presently “veers the sheet” to allow her to run before the breeze. The steersman is sent to the helm and told to sail no nearer to the wind, after which the master calls the steward to bring him a pot of beer, which is promised “with good chere.” It is now time to haul in the brails of the yard, and one of the crew is admonished for not hauling; and then see “howe well owre good shyp sayles.” The steward is told to get food ready “and tary not so long,” whilst the ship’s pessimist comes and prophesies a storm or squall. He is promptly told to hold his “pese” and not to interfere.