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His fellow taught him homeward* privily *on the way home
From day to day, till he coud* it by rote, *knew
And then he sang it well and boldely
From word to word according with the note;
Twice in a day it passed through his throat;
To schoole-ward, and homeward when he went;
On Christ’s mother was set all his intent.

As I have said, throughout the Jewery,
This little child, as he came to and fro,
Full merrily then would he sing and cry,
O Alma redemptoris, evermo’;
The sweetness hath his hearte pierced so
Of Christe’s mother, that to her to pray
He cannot stint* of singing by the way. *cease

Our firste foe, the serpent Satanas,
That hath in Jewes’ heart his waspe’s nest,
Upswell’d and said, “O Hebrew people, alas!
Is this to you a thing that is honest,* *creditable,
That such a boy shall walken as him lest becoming
In your despite, and sing of such sentence,
Which is against your lawe’s reverence?”

From thenceforth the Jewes have conspired
This innocent out of the world to chase;
A homicide thereto have they hired,
That in an alley had a privy place,
And, as the child gan forth by for to pace,
This cursed Jew him hent,* and held him fast *seized
And cut his throat, and in a pit him cast.

I say that in a wardrobe* he him threw, *privy
Where as the Jewes purged their entrail.
O cursed folk! O Herodes all new!
What may your evil intente you avail?
Murder will out, certain it will not fail,
And namely* where th’ honour of God shall spread; *especially
The blood out crieth on your cursed deed.

O martyr souded* to virginity, *confirmed <9>
Now may’st thou sing, and follow ever-in-one* *continually
The white Lamb celestial (quoth she),
Of which the great Evangelist Saint John
In Patmos wrote, which saith that they that gon
Before this Lamb, and sing a song all new,
That never fleshly woman they ne knew.<10>

This poore widow waited all that night
After her little child, but he came not;
For which, as soon as it was daye’s light,
With face pale, in dread and busy thought,
She hath at school and elleswhere him sought,
Till finally she gan so far espy,
That he was last seen in the Jewery.

With mother’s pity in her breast enclosed,
She went, as she were half out of her mind,
To every place, where she hath supposed
By likelihood her little child to find:
And ever on Christ’s mother meek and kind
She cried, and at the laste thus she wrought,
Among the cursed Jewes she him sought.

She freined,* and she prayed piteously *asked* <11>
To every Jew that dwelled in that place,
To tell her, if her childe went thereby;
They saide, “Nay;” but Jesus of his grace
Gave in her thought, within a little space,
That in that place after her son she cried,
Where he was cast into a pit beside.