Mock Chivalry: "The Tournament of Tottenham"

A CEL Subcast episode! Today we look at a comic poem from the first half of the 15th century: "The Tournament of Tottenham."  But who's the joke on?

On Hold Music: "Lounge" by Serge Quadrado

Transcript

Hello, Literati, and welcome to the second episode of the Classic English Literature Subcast – another place for rhyme to get its reason.  Today’s episode: Mock Chivalry: The Tournament of Tottenham.

I should say at the outset that, all you Hotspurs fans, this may not be the podcast you’re looking for.  Today, we’re not talking about footie, but about a short 15th century comic poem called “The Tournament of Tottenham.”

I first came across this poem when in graduate school and my professor said that no one had yet done much scholarly work on this text and that this might be a good opportunity for a young scholar to earn his Spurs (arf, arf) by giving it a thorough critical treatment.  Being a nascent scholar of some ambition I felt compelled to comb the archives, peruse the manuscripts, amalgamate the critics, to preach the Tournament to the world, but I laid down and the feeling soon passed.

And now, here I am, decades later, and the casual stroll through Google has not revealed all that much research on the poem, and most of that by textual critics from the mid-20th century.  So the brass ring comes round again!  I could still make my bones as a serious researcher and critic.

I feel I need to lie down.

But I think I could manage a brief, informal podcast about it.

“The Tournament of Tottenham” was written sometime in the early decades of the 14th century in a northern Middle English dialect.  Even in the modernized version I’m using, some peculiar northernisms have been retained.  It is a burlesque of chivalric romance written in a curious hybrid of the Anglo-Saxon alliterative line with really punchy, percussive rhymes.  It also makes use of the “bob-and-wheel” stanza form that so characterizes “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”

I say a “burlesque” of chivalric romance, but that’s not quite right.  Let me sketch out the story for you.  “On a dear day,” as the poem says, the laborers around Tottenham (north of London) gather for a great feast.  A potter named Perkin sidles up to the Randolf the Reeve and says he would like to know who, among all the men gathered, would be the best husband for the reeve’s daughter Tyb.  Of course, he feels he knows the answer: “To Tybbe I have hight

That I shall be always ready in my right.”  The rest of the assembly clamors: how dare a mere potter presume to the lovely Tyb?  “We are richer men than he, and more good haves

Of cattle and corn.”  

Then said Randolf the reeve, "Ever be he waryed

That about this carping longer would be tarried! 

I would not that my daughter that she were miscarried, 

But at her most worship I would she were married. 

Therefor a tournament shall begin 

This day seven-night, 

With a flail forto fight; 

And he that is of most might 

Shall brook her with winne.

So, on the day marked for the tournament, the country men gather in ridiculous arms: they wear bowls for helmets, use farming tools as lances, winnowing fans as breastplates, flails as, well . . . flails, I suppose.  On the sidelines, mounted on a gray mare with a sack of seeds for a saddle, waits the wondrous Tyb, complete with a hen and a spotted sow.  A dizzying dowry.

A gay girdle Tyb had on, borrowed for the nones,

And a garland on her head full of round bones, 

And a brooch on her brest full of safer stones,

With the holy rode tokening was written for the nones -- 

No cattle was there spared! 

When jolly Gyb saw her there, 

He gird so his gray mare 

That she let a faucon-fare

At the rearward. 

Remember the lingering descriptions of the lady’s accoutrements in Lanval or Gawain and the Green Knight?  Here’s an upside-down of that – though Tyb’s farting horse is an original touch.

Each of the combatants make their formal boasts before their lady, vowing to God to fight boldly.  Notably, one young fella, Terry, plans to “take Tyb by the hand and her away lead.”  Sounds rather like a kidnapping.  We get declarations of hardihood, the excellence of horses and prowess.  When the melee begins, despite the silliness of its circumstances, we get real violence, some pretty graphic wounds.  The women of Tottenham have to come with wheelbarrows, sledges, and hurdles “their husbands home to fetch.”  Now, why husbands are fighting in a tournament for the right to marry the reeve’s daughter is never made clear, though I imagine the wives did a fair degree of interrogating.

At the end of the fight, of course Perkin is triumphant. He takes Tyb home for the evening – bit of a try before you buy for each of them.  They approve of each other and live happily ever after with, of course, the mare, the hen, and the spotted sow following a splendid feast in which the crutch-leaning guests split an egg five ways.

Well, I suppose there’s a reason scholars have conserved their ink when it comes to The Tournament of Tottenham.  Its humor relies on broad  caricature – makes Saturday Night Live seem subtle and nuanced by comparison.   This is parody, not satire.  In the latter, the mockery intends some positive social or personal transformation.  Parody is just mockery because it’s fun.  

And this is a silly bit of fun.  Think of some old Mel Brooks films or the Warner Brothers cartoon of the mid-20th century.  The point is to laugh together knowingly at the humorous references.  If you look carefully at the text, it does seem structured for some public reading or performance.  Its composed in a strange 9 line stanza: the first 4 lines of which have something of the Old English alliterative line, but each line rhymes with an identical end-stop.  Then there’s a series of five trimeter lines, the first and 5th of which rhyme while the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th share their own rhyme.  It’s actually quite a complex prosody: a rather deft blending of alliterative and accentual verse, with a bob and wheel, and a rhyme scheme whose seeming simplicity artfully deceives while its percussive sounds relentlessly drive the silliness forward.  This stanza is almost breathlessly accumulative in the way it hurtles the action on, like a snowball swelling as it rolls off the mountain.

Here’s the description of the melee itself:

I wot it is no children's game when they together met! 

When each a freke in the field on his fellow beat.

And laid on stiffly; for nothing would they let -- 

And fought ferly fast till their horses sweat,

And few words spoken. 

There were flails all to-slattered,

There were shields all to-clattered, 

Bowls and dishes all to-battered, 

And many heads broken.  

We can also see how the poem lends itself to public recital or performance.  Note the blustering speeches offered by each of the prospective warriors – we can easily imagine folks declaiming these in a tavern or an innyard or at some village festival.  We do have an interesting hint that the roleplaying potential of the poem actually made for a public entertainment at Rougemont Castle in either 1432 or 33.  An entry in the Exeter Receiver’s Account Rolls witnesses the payment of 20 pence “given to players playing in the Castle concerning the tournament of Tottenham by order of the mayor."

This actually introduces a kind of a chicken and the egg conundrum.  Since the text we have is obviously a narrative poem and not a script, what has this Rougemont performance to do with our little burlesque?  Was the poem extant and its latent theatrical possibilities embroidered by a few professional show-offs?  Or was there a tradition of performance that some single poet adapted, a bit like novelizing a film?  Alas, we may never know.  But I am happy to report that I have resolved the chicken and the egg enigma.  Obviously, the egg came first because breakfast comes before lunch.  A-thank you.

The last question to ponder is: if this is a parody, who is it ridiculing?  I titled this episode “Mock Chivalry” knowingly.  If I think of “mock” as an adjective, then we are mocking these country bumpkins for their coarse impersonation of aristocratic manners and customs.  Silly peasants aping their betters.  But if we take “mock" as a verb, then the poem takes the piss out of every story you’ve ever heard about King Arthur or Lancelot or Gawain or Charlemagne or Orlando.  It strips the glamor from a chivalry that is, at base, a vulgar brawl.  I suspect that the Tournament of Tottenham is an early example of bourgeois parody – middle class merchants, landowners, and artisans punching down and punching up at the same time.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Classic English Literature Subcast.  Thank you so much for your support.  Please feel free to get in touch any way that suits: email, social media, a loud shout from your window.  If you'd be so kind, please leave a positive review on whichever podcatcher you’re listening to.  Yeah, go ahead, do it now.  I’ll wait.

Thanks, everyone.  Talk to you next time.