The Canvas-Tossing Allusion in the "Secunda Pastorum"

Author(s): Thomas J. Jambeck

Source: Modern Philology , Aug., 1978, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Aug., 1978), pp. 49-54
Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/436940

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 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS

The Canvas-tossing Allusion in the Secunda Pastorum

Thomas J. Jambeck

Infuriated by the "qwant gawde" played on the shepherds by Mak and Uxor, the
iii pastor impetuously contemplates the very worst for the culprits: "lett bren this
bawde / and bynd hir fast. / A fals skawde / hang at the last; / ... let do thaym to
dede."' But the primus pastor, his sense of humor apparently still intact,
intervenes:

syrs, do my reede.
ffor this trespas,
we will nawther ban ne flyte,
ffyght nor chyte,
Bot haue done as tyte,
And cast hym in canvas.
[Lines 623-28]

Curiously enough, in a play that has otherwise occasioned little critical unanimity,
there has been no real quarrel among readers of the Secunda Pastorum about the
meaning and purpose of the canvas-tossing episode. Indeed, for the past thirty
years, critics have largely accepted Claude Chidamian's observation that the
casting in a blanket was a primitive method used by medieval peoples to induce
delivery in a difficult childbirth and, therefore, an especially appropriate punish-
ment for Mak, "the perpetrator of a false childbirth."2 However, to read the
shepherds' high jinks as simple obstetric horseplay is to strip the episode of its
traditional associations, associations that serve not only to clarify the point of the
rustic comedy but also to link the incident typologically to the sacred event which
the play celebrates.
That the playwright describes the casting of Mak as taking place in a canvas
is by no means a casual detail in either the comic or the doctrinal structure of the
play. For the Wakefield peasants clustered about the pageant stage, canvas was a
familiar household appurtenance, its sievelike texture ideal for sifting or straining
in a variety of domestic chores.3 For example, a fifteenth-century cookbook
includes the following recipe for "quynade": "Take Quynces, & pare hem clene,
caste hem on a potte .... take whyte Wyne & Vynegre, an caste per-to pe mylke,
& let it stonde a whyle; take pan a clene canvas, & caste pe mylke vppeon, & with

1/George England, ed., The Towneley Plays, EETS E.S. 71 (London, 1897), p. 135. All subsequent
references are to this edition.
2/Claude Chidamian, "Mak and the Tossing in the Blanket," Speculum 22 (1947): 186-87.
3/See the following entries in the Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath (Ann Arbor,
Mich., 1959), vol. C, p. 35: "(a 1400) Privy Purse Expenses Eliz. of York 173: When it is sothen,
take and cast it on a canvas abrode. (a 1450) Hrl. Cook Bk. (1) 20: pan take a fayre canvas an
put per-on & late renne out pe water. (c 1450) Med. Bk. (2) 92: panne drawe hit porow3 a cane-
vasse, and put hit in to pe vessel. (c 1450) Stockh. PRecipes 84/20: Make it hote, and wrynge it
throw[t]h a canevas. (a 1475) Noble Bk. Cook. 109: Drawe it through a canvas into a pot. (c
1450) Stockh. PRecipes 125/25: Streyne it thorow a canvas-cloth."

? 1978 by The University of Chicago. 0026-8232/79/7601-0005$00.75

49

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50 Modern Philology (August 1978)

a platere stryke it of pe clope, & caste it on pe potte...." Similarly, in the

Treatises of Fistula, the home remedy "oile of rose3" calls for clipping rose petals
into "smale pecys and do hem into a glasen vessel, and do perto oile of olyue of
pe grenest pat pou may fynde, ana, & medle hem wele togidre in pi vessel and
stoppe it wele; And hete it agayn3 pe son 20 daie3 and pan draw it pur3 a kanva3
and cast away pe grounde3 of pe rose3.... " In its verb form, however, "to
canvas" suggests the much more vigorous action of sifting by tossing in a canvas
sheet. Thus, in his study of the Franco-Norman elements peculiar to the language
of Guernsey, Georges Metivier, defining the Old French cognate can' vachier as
"s'agiter, se tourmenter comme le canevas d'une voile," cites a Middle English
macaronic verse which depicts canvasing as a process closely analogous to that
described in the Secunda Pastorum: "I trotte, i cache, / Coumme i can'vache!"6
Of special interest in this regard is the fact that the loose weave of canvas
made it an especially popular fabric for winnowing grain. By casting corn in a
canvas sheet, the medieval farmer separated kernel from chaff, the heavier grain
falling through the sieve to the ground, while the chaff was carried away by the
wind.7 Although no clear examples of the verb "to canvas" in the literal sense of
winnowing have been found in Middle English texts, Randle Cotgrave provides
several illustrations from Old French sources which argue strongly for its English
currency. In the 1632 edition of his A Dictionnarie of the French and English
Tongues, Cotgrave defines Old French vanner as "to vanne, or winnow (not much
in our manner), letting the corne fall from the sive to the ground ... .Also, to
course, chide, canvasse, bayt, schoole; or to mocke, flout, ride, play upon, or to
rake up scoffingly."8 Similarly, in his gloss for berner, Cotgrave notes: "to vanne,
or winnow corne; also, to canvasse, or tosse in a sive; (a punishment inflicted on
such as commit grosse absurdities;) also, to flout, mocke, deride, ride, abuse,
ieast, scoffe at."9
Cotgrave's definitions provide an immediate point of contact with the
Secunda Pastorum on at least two counts, both of which confirm the dramatic
logic of the canvas-tossing episode. First, starting from the literal sense of "to toss
in a canvas sheet," to buffet, shake up, agitate, the verb derives the secondary
meaning as that of a mocking punishment.' In fact, by the early sixteenth century

4/Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth Century Cookery-Books, EETS O.S. 91 (London, 1888),
p. 27.
5/John Arderne, Treatises of Fistula in Ano Haemorrhoids and Clysters, ed. D'Arcy Power,
EETS O.S. 139 (London, 1910), p. 92.
6/Georges Metivier, Dictionnaire Franco-Norman ou recueil des mots particuliers au dialecte de
Guernesey (London, 1870), p. 110. See also OED, 1933 ed., s.v. "canvass, canvas": the verb's
literal sense as to "toss in a sheet" or to "shake up, toss to and fro."
7/See Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 1632). Also,
see in Thomas Wright, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies (ed. Richard Paul Wulcker,
2d ed. [London, 1884], vol. 1), where a fifteenth-century word list preserved in the library of
Trinity College, Cambridge, glosses capisterium as "a vanne [or a Seve]." Also, see OED (n. 6
above): Philemon Holland's 1606 translation of Suetonius' Historie of Twelve Caesars: "That
pastime with us in some places called the canvassing, and else where the vanning of dogs."
8/See Cotgrave.
9/Ibid.
10/OED (n. 6 above), esp. senses 1-4. Also, C. T. Onions, G. W. S. Friericksen, and R. W.
Burchfield, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford, 1966), p. 142: "toss in a

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 Notes and Documents 51

the derived sense is well established. The Oxford English Dictionary, for ex
cites the 1508 usage: "to a child of the kitchen being kanivassed before my
And, for 1530: "I kanvas a dogge or a matter, je trafficque." " So, also, Sh
speare uses the word twice in this sense: in 1 Henry VI: "Ile canvas thee in
broad cardinalls Hat, If thou proceed in this thy insolence" (1.3.36); and aga
in 2 Henry IV: "Doe if thou dar'st for thy heart: if thou doo'st, / Ile canvas
betweene a paire of Sheetes" (2.4.243-44). Whatever its exact provenance, can-
vasing, an apparently venerable custom known to the later Middle Ages as one
intended to discomfit the victim more by ridicule than by bodily injury, fits
precisely the comic impulses of the Mak episode. As a punishment inflicted upon
"such as commit grosse absurdities," the shepherds' rather rustic justice is apt not
only for the audacity of Mak's ruse, but also for his outrageous attempt to brave
it out even after the stratagem is discovered.
However appropriate to Mak's duplicity or to the shepherds' notion of
justice, canvasing, particularly in its literal sense as to sift by tossing in a canvas
sheet, elicits a second and more suggestive category of meaning. For, here as
elsewhere in his plays, the Wakefield Master invests the apparent farce of his
clowns with exegetical associations that evoke profound theological implications.
As has been frequently remarked, the opening scenes of the Secunda Pastorium
reflect several themes proper to the Advent season.12 The shepherds' complaints
about hunger, the oppressive discomfort of their night watch, the injustice of
capricious masters, the world that "slythys" are those very motifs which the
Advent liturgy sounds as the cry of the faithful who long for the peace of the
Messiah. But the liturgy of the season develops another theme which is at least
implicit in the doctrinal structure of the play. Although a time of preparation for
the historical appearance of the Redeemer, Advent looks forward also to the
eschatological liberation that the Incarnation promises, or as a sequentia for the
First Sunday puts it: "Adventu primo justifica, in secundo nosque libera ...."13
Accordingly, throughout the season, the liturgy enjoins the Christian to ready
himself not only that he might participate in the merits instituted by Christ at his
first coming as Savior, but also that he might be vindicated thereby at the Re-
deemer's second coming as judge. Thus, the Legenda Aurea explains the tonal
disparity which characterizes the liturgy of the season:

The chirche maketh mencion in especial but of twayne [advents], that is to wete, of that
he came in humayne nature to the world, and of that he cometh to the Jugement & dome,
as it apperith in thoffyce of the chirche of this tyme. And therfor the fastynges that ben
in this tyme, ben of gladnes and of joye in one partie, & that other partie is in bitternesse

canvas sheet, (hence) criticize destructively." See also Cotgrave's gloss for old French Cana-
basser, as "to canvas; or curiously to examine, search, or sift out, the depth of a matter"; and
Ch. Marty-Laveaux, ed., Les Oeuvres de Maistre Francois Rabelais (Paris, 1868), 1:267:
"... le pri&rent vouloir le process canabasser & grabeler i poinct."
11/OED (n. 6 above).
12/See, for example, Linda E. Marshall, "'Sacral Parody' in the Secunda Pastorum," Speculum
47 (1971): 720-36; Joseph A. Longo, "Symmetry and Symbolism in the Secunda Pastorum,"
Nottingham Mediaeval Studies 13 (1969): 65-85.
13/W. Henderson, ed., Missale ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis (London, 1872), 1:1.

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52 Modern Philology (August 1978)

of herte. By cause of the comynge of our lorde in our nature humayne, they ben of joye
and gladnes. And by cause of the comyng at the day of Jugement, they be of bitternes and
heuynes.14

Considered within this liturgical context, the canvasing episode is resonant

with typological implications that could hardly have escaped even the homeliest
wit in the Wakefield audience. It must be remembered, of course, that whether as
a grim reminder from the pulpit of the need to live virtuously, or as a part of a
more sophisticated exegesis, Christ's judgment was invariably described by anal-
ogy to the process of winnowing. As the peasant in medieval Yorkshire sifted corn
from chaff, so, too, at Doomsday the Lord would separate the good souls from
the evil, consigning each to its appropriate abode. Thus, in the twelfth-century
sermon, "De Natale Domini," the homilist exhorts his congregation to prepare
for Christ's advent by subduing the flesh lest sin wound the soul mortally; he
concludes with the pointed monition:
In pe deie of liureisun hwense god almihtin wule windwin pet er wes ipor[s]chen. he wile
ison hwiche bo6 po. pet mu3e stonden a3ein pes fleisces lust and wernen his a3ene fleisces
iwille. pet bitakne6 pet corn pet purle6 pe wind. pet smal chef pet flid ford mid pe winde.
bicume6 wurpinge pet corn me de6 in to gerner. pet bitakene6 pe gode men pe scule bon
idon in to heuene. pe ilke pe fole3e6 pes fleisces lust. Alse de6 pet smalchef pe winde. po
scule bileuen in posternesse. God almihtin iscilde us pet we ne bo noht of pe smalcheue.
Ah pet we moten bon of pe corne pe me scal don in to pe gernere pet is in to heuene. pe
feder and pe sune and pe halie gast. per omnia secula seculorum.15

Similarly, in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, Dan Michel, commending the humility of

mercy as a salutary antidote to the pride that "louep wel he3e stedes," warns:
"And zuo hit is of pe hyeape of huete y-porsse. pe cornes lyep benepe and pet chef
a-boue. Ac oure lhord ssel uanni his corn ate daye of dome ase zayp pet godspel
and ssel prawe pet chef in-to pe uere: and pet corn in-to pe greynere." 16 Although
such examples could be multiplied, so popular is the image in the later Middle
Ages, one final illustration is of special interest in that it suggests the liturgical
precedent of the winnowing image in the Secunda Pastorum. The "godspell" to
which Dan Michel alludes is that of Luke 3:7-18, a reading which appears in the
York Missal as a lectio for the First Sunday in Advent. In its liturgical context,
the Lucan passage is paired with a reading from Isaias in which the prophet,
addressing the "mockers" (viro illusores) who assume to bear rule over the people
of Jerusalem, warns of the justice that will appear in the last days." Concluding
the lectio, the Lucan account describes John the Baptist's angry renouncement of
those who attempt to flee the vengeance that is to come. While his is a baptism of
water, John explains, "one is yet to come who is mightier than I, so that I am not
worthy to untie the strap of his shoes. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit
and with fire. He holds his winnowing cloth ready to purge his threshing floor
clean; he will gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will consume with
fire that can never be quenched." 1

14/Frederick S. Ellis, ed., William Caxton's Golden Legend (Hammersmith, 1892), 1: 1.

15/Richard Morris, ed., Old English Homilies, EETS O.S. 29 (London, 1867), p. 85.
16/Dan Michel, Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Richard Morris, EETS O.S. 23 (London, 1866), p. 139.
17/See Henderson, p. 3.
18/Ibid.

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 Notes and Documents 53

Given its links with the typology of the Advent liturgy, the canvasing o
serves as a kind of interpretative touchstone in the doctrinal structure of
Secunda Pastorum. Poised between the farce of the false nativity and the s
ity of Christ's birth, the shepherds' action transforms the apparently s
episode into a convenient gloss upon the role of the Incarnation in the eco
of salvation. At one level of meaning, the canvasing incident is a comic me
of the Last Judgment, the shepherds' rustic justice adumbrating Christ
victory over the powers of chaos and illusion, a victory which begins, the
shepherd reminds us, at Bethlehem:

hayll, maker, as I meyne, / of a madyn so mylde!

Thou has waryd, I weyne / the warlo so wylde;
The fals gyler of teyn / now goys he begylde.
[Lines 711-13]

That the shepherds too requite "Sir Gyle" brings into sharp relief the d
impulses of Mak's cunning duplicity; for the canvasing episode, signalin
does the complex of eschatological themes endemic to the Advent season
another dimension to the popular critical identification of Mak as an age
Antichrist.19 As has been frequently noted, Antichrist emerges in the A
liturgy as the embodiment of that deception which diverts mankind from
truth that saves. Thus, in 2 Thess. 2:1-8, a reading which appears in the Y
Missal for the Saturday in the Quatuor Tempora of Advent, Paul cautions
faithful to be ever vigilant lest they succumb to the wiles of the deceiver
Paul warns, is abroad even now: "the mystery of iniquity is already at w
only when his "pretended signs and wonders," his "wicked deceptions" are
revealed, will the Lord "destroy him with the breath of his mouth, slay him by his
appearance and coming."'20 If Mak's guile, then, can be taken as a comic index of
the perennial "mystery of iniquity" which imperils mankind, the shepherds' res-
ponse, their decision to canvas the rascal, not only figures Christ's final triumph
but also becomes a paradigm of the Christian's defense in the "now" of Anti-
christ's rebellion. For, at another level of meaning, the shepherds' action, their
naive requital of what can only be regarded a grave offense,21 testifies to the
merciful charity which both befits the first witnesses of the Messiah and signals
the pattern of human conduct inaugurated at the Incarnation. Their resolve to
resist the natural inclination to avenge the "hee frawde," neither "to ban ne
flyte, / ffyght nor chyte," heralds a new order of peace wherein mankind, once the
hapless victim of a world that "slythys," is armed with the bright truth of the day
star, the exemplar of the human capacity to love.

19/See Marshall and Longo; see also Lawrence J. Ross, "Symbol and Structure in the Secunda
Pastorium," Comparative Drama 1 (1967): 122-49; William M. Manly, "Shepherds and Pro-
phets: Religious Unity in the Towneley Secunda Pastorum," PMLA 78 (1963): 151-55.
20/Henderson, p. 10. Also, Francis Proctor and Christopher Wordsworth, eds., Breviarium ad
Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Sarum (Cambridge, 1882), 1:xxiv.
21/Note, for example, Mak's fear and Uxor's admonitions that the culprit will hang for stealing
the sheep: lines 273, 308, 315-21, 326, 329-31, 344, 381, 409-10, 438-39; and 597-98 where the
shepherds' first impulse is indeed to hang Mak.

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54 Modern Philology (August 1978)

Thus, taken in either of its possible meanings, canvasing is a brilliant testi-

mony to the craftsmanship of the Wakefield Master. In its derived sense as a
punishment calculated to ridicule the victim, the shepherds' action complements
the secular energy of the Mak episode, their rough-hewn justice one which the
peasant audience must have found especially appropriate to the rogue's slick
duplicity. In its literal sense as to sift or winnow, the canvasing incident attests to
the coherence of the pageant's thematic structure, wherein even the apparently
casual detail expresses those eternal patterns of divine intention which inform the
play's doctrinal purpose. Taken together, the meanings of the canvasing episode
serve to clarify, in the idiom both of the shepherds and of the audience for whom
they are surrogates, the theological reality that the play celebrates, the trans-
forming power of the Nativity as the central event in the larger Christian drama
of salvation.

University of Connecticut

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