Medieval Verse (2): A Hart there was...

[ This hitherto untranscribed text is by a hand unknown and no putative attribution to any earlier scriptor should be assayed. ]

Discovered inscribed in cursiva anglicana (Middle English

and Latin) by stylus on a wax tablet. Early 14th Century.

This tabletta (tabula or ceraculum), one of a number sealed in a carrying-pouch,
is in the personal possession of Catherine Eisner who has transcribed the 

orthographical variants, with reference to The Middle English Dictionary

and to The Index to Middle English Verse;

and within the limitations of current scholarship Eisner 

believes this text to be a faithful rendering.

                       A Hart there was, 

                                                    a Hart so grievous hurt,

                       A Cry there was, 

                                                    a Cry of Hounds astart,

                       A Death there was,

                                                    a Death of Beauty caught,

                       A King there was,

                                                    a King most desolate.

This verse appears to be a hazardous essay into lese-majesty,
almost certainly written in 1312 or shortly after, for in that year
the King’s Favourite, Piers Gaveston, described as ‘the Minion of
a hateful King’ was hunted down and executed by a group of nobles
led by the Earls of Lancaster and Warwick, who had long sought by
any means to eliminate the influence – considered meddlesome and
scandalously improper – the upstart Piers exercised over Edward II.

For a transcription of the First of these medieval verses by an unknown hand, see:
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2016/03/medieval-song.html
For the Third transcribed verse, believed to be in chronological order, see:
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2020/02/medieval-verse-3-when-lief-churl.html
The Fourth verse, which ends the series (the succeeding wax tablets are irredeemably welded together) see:

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2020/02/medieval-verse-4-praise-crown-restored.html

Occupation . . . Baghdad . . . Paris . . . Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose* . . .

  Dateline 1942:
‘In Hôtel Ampurias there is a respectably-sized arsenal of instruments for extracting information,’ Régine was warned on her first arrival in Paris. The place was said to echo with screams of a horrible significance.
  Locals called the street the Rue des Phalangistes, he’d added.
  The door Régine next entered had the Generalleutnant’s nameplate on it.  
  ‘A pleasant room with unpleasant uses,’ was Régine’s first thought.
  The elegant suite the general had chosen to occupy, with its magnificent gilded panels and cornices, marbled pillars and rich velvet, gold-tasselled drapes – an apartment that was never designed for a brigand chief – told the truth about him because of its lie. (Régine remembered tales of the Franco-Prussian War and of the fallen city and of imperial chaises longues chopped up for firewood by the marauding homo teutonicus.) 

From The Lost Hour – A Memoir of a Trauma

by Catherine Eisner 2016

  Dateline Paris 1942

Régine stared blankly at the figure seated at the general’s campaign desk
then read the name chalked on the roster board behind him :
Oberleutnant Reinhard von Heitmann. The young aide-de-camp, half hidden
by a card-index holder and dossiers of suspects, rose and removed a
file from the stack. Régine saw von Heitmann withdraw her identity card.

  Dateline Paris 1870

Anton von Werner’s 1894 painting Im Etappenquartier vor Paris

(A Billet outside Paris) at the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

The painting depicts German troops occupying the Château de Brunoy

outside Paris on October 24, 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War.

  Dateline Baghdad 2003 

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Chad Touchett, centre, relaxes with comrades
from A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment,
on April 7, 2003, after searching one of Saddam Hussein’s
palaces damaged by bombs in Baghdad.
( Photo: John Moore / AP )

  *The more things change, the more they stay the same.