olde english

[harewoodhouse]

do any of you know who wrote these poems...or can tell me what they say as I can make some of it out but not enough to figure it all out, they are called
"Upon the death of Queen Elizabeth" and "Upon  Sir Francis Drakes return from his voyage ? ? "

[harewoodhouse]

I found them on some paper tucked into an old (C1800) history book and I would love to know who wrote them and what they say

[Jean McGurn]

What a great find.

Judging by the lines:

O Fie, O Fie, O Fie, O Fie, O Fie thou cruel death
for thou has taken away from us
Our good Queen Elizabeth

Another line reads:
To make her concience prick her
Nor ever would submit to him
That called himself Christ ....
But rather chose Couragiously
To fight under his Banner
...  ...  and the Pope The King of Spain
And all the dwell with ... her.


Ending with the last line reading:
Of the proud Pope of Rome.

Looks like this poem is about the life of Elizabeth, her standing up to Philip of Spain and the Spanish Armada.


 
It looks 17th century phrases and writing although it may have been copied from a pamphlet of the time.



Jean

Modified because the unknown words .... came up as smileys 

[Berlin-Bob]

It's something well known (or well known, then !).
One line reads "you gallants all of the british blood", so I put that in a search engine and got this Oxford University 'hit':

NOTES AND QUERIES.
murder of their brethren here, 1 warrant you."—Act. I. Sc. 5 (p. 7.)1 ... Gallants all of British blood,. Why do not ye sail on the ocean'sflood? ...
nq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/s3-VI/144/266-d.pdf -

Unfortunately it's a subscription site so I couldn't actually read what they said about it.

But "Act. I. Sc. 5 (p. 7.)" suggests a play.

Bob

[Berlin-Bob]

Even better:
http://www.sourcetext.com/sourcebook/Star/21-40/ch21.html

getting nearer, but still not quite there:

        Sir Francis, Sir Francis, Sir Francis is come!
        Sir Robert, and eke Sir William his son,
        And eke the good Earl of Huntington
        Marched gallantly on the road.

        Then came the Lord Chamberlain with his white staff,
        And all the people began to laugh;
        And then the Queen began to speak,
        "You're welcome home, Sir Francis Drake."

        You gallants all o' the British blood,
        Why don't you sail o' the ocean flood?
        I protest you're not all worth a filbert
        If once compared to Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

        For he went out on a rainy day,
        And to the new-found land found out his way,
        With many a gallant both fresh and green,
        And he ne'er came home again. God bless the Queen! ⁴


4. EIizabethan Lyrics, coll. by Norman Ault

[PaulaToo]

I love trying to read old writing, but I can't make out much of this.

I do love the lines,
'They came with ships, filled full of Whipps...'
and
'But she had a Drake, made them all cry Quake,'

They don't write em like that any more...
What a fantastic find.

[Jean McGurn]

I think Whipps may be a name for the Spanish - possibly a derisary name.

 Jean 

[PaulaToo]

In this ancient grey fuzziness that passes for my brain, I seem to remember something about a duff up between our Admiral Blake and the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp in the 1650s... Popular story was that Van Tromp tied a broom to his mast to show that he would sweep the seas, and Blake retaliated by tying a whip to his mast and saying he would whip him.... perhaps there was a going symbolism there that we have forgotten...

[Little Nell]

I don't think the transcriptions are necessarily that old.  There are elements of the Secretary hand used in England in the 17th and 18th centuries (even the 19th) but the spelling is far too consistent with modern spelling for them to be very old.  The capital letter 'U' is of an old style, as is the use of 'ff' as the capital F, but the 'H' is not old.  Neither does the writer use the long 's'

Norman Ault as given in Bob's post, was a scholar of seventeenth century poetry and of Alexander Pope.  Ault died in 1950.  He published an anthology of Elizabethan lyrics in 1925. 

Bob's quote is the second one exactly!

Nell