Richard Fannande / alliteration and labour / 1457
In Christ’s Hospital, Abingdon, is hung a poem by Richard Fannande, an ironmonger, which begins “Of all werkys in this worlde”. The poem commemorates the building of Culham bridge, one of several 15th century bridges across the streams of the Thames near Abingdon. The bridge was maintained and tolled by the abbey and hospital.
Then the strengthe of the streme astoned hem stronge,
In labor and lavyng moche money was lore.
Ther loved hem a ladde was a water man longe,
He helpe stop the streme til the werke were a fore.
It was a solace to see in a somer seson
CCC. Iwysse workynge at onys.
iiii. and iiii. reulyd by reson
To wete who wrought best for the nonce
(‘The Bridges at Abingdon’, lines 39-46)
In the lines above, the difficulty of laying foundations in a strong flowing river is lightly conveyed in strong alliterative stresses: the ‘s’ sounds of the pushing current, “the strengthe of the streme astoned hem stronge”, against the ‘l’ sounds, “labor and lavyng”, lore, ladde and longe, which move through the labour of constructing a coffer dam, a watertight enclosure of wooden piles with the enclosed water removed by bucket*. This is a long alliterative run for the poem, over two lines, and in the middle of this fencing of l’s the “ladde” is marked out – an ‘l’ from the labour and lore – as a water man whose longe height enables him to “helpe stop the streme”. The alliterative line summons a further echo in the poetry of labour: as Ralph Hanna points out (see note), line 43 ends with an allusion to the first line of William Langland’s Piers Plowman: “In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne”. Whereas Will falls asleep beside a stream, “And as I lay and lenede and loked on the waters,” to see the world more clearly in a dream, Fannande also sees the world transformed: three hundred certainly working at once (“CCC. Iwysse…”) in teams of four and four (“iiii. and iiii”), ruled by reason, that is, the good of co-operative labour for the good of Abingdon, its markets and transport links: Langland’s unrhymed summer season becomes a match for such ruling reason. The alliterative lines are broken by the accounting – the l of labour and ladde divided into teams of four, a competition to find who works the best (“To wete who wrought best”). Instead of Langland’s allegories, the counting of workers presents a medieval fact, a transparent number in a direct relationship to description: the first stanza above tells us how the work was done; the second mirrors it, giving us a total of workers and their subdivision – as these modes intermix, the poem’s knowledge of the bridge is formed at the cost of its knotted alliteration, a form already rare in the south of England when Fannande was writing: here we see it fade into repetition, into the sameness of the work gangs, four and four.
Note:
Details on coffer dams and the construction of medieval bridges are from David Harrison’s The Bridges of Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 2004). Harrison discusses the Abingdon bridges and the Culham bridge poem as an insight into medieval bridge construction on pages 134-135. The source for the poem is Christ’s Hospital (Abingdon, Berkshire), Governor’s Archives, Object 13 (MS), ‘Forman’s Monument’. Ralph Hanna’s commentary on the poem and edited text is ‘The Bridges at Abingdon: An Unnoticed Alliterative Poem’ in Yee? Baw For Bokes: Essays on Medieval Manuscripts and Poetics edited by Michael Calabrese and Stephen H. A. Shepherd (Marymount Institute Press, 2013).