[The text is taken from the following sources:—

i. Beauvais, thirteenth century.—(a) [Duc.]—Ducange, Glossarium (ed. 1733-6), s.v. Festum, from a lost MS.; copied incorrectly by Gasté, 23, and apparently also by Clément, 158: (b) [B¹]—Brit. Mus. Egerton MS. 2615, f. 1, with music for singing in unison: (c) [B²]—Same MS. f. 43, with music harmonized in three parts; partly facsimiled in Annales Archéologiques (1856), xvi. 259, 300.

ii. Sens, thirteenth century.—[S]—MS. Senonense, 46ᵃ, as printed by G. M. Dreves, Analecta Hymnica, xx. 217. The text has also been given from the MS. by F. Bourquelot, in Bull. de la Soc. Arch. de Sens (1858), vi. 79, and others. The version of Clément, 126 is probably, like the facsimile given by him in Ann. Arch. vii. 26, based on one ‘calqué’ from the MS. by a M. Amé, and, where it differs from that of Dreves, is the less trustworthy. Dreves, xx. 257 (cf. infra) and Millin, Monum. Ant. Inédits, ii. 348, also give the music of the opening lines. Modern settings are provided by B. De la Borde, Essai sur la Musique (1780), and Clément, in Ann. Arch. vii. 26, and Chantes de la Sainte Chapelle. An old French translation of the text is printed in Leber, ix. 368.

On these Beauvais and Sens MSS. cf. ch. xiii.

iii. Bourges.—[Bo.]—The first verse with the music and variants in the later verses are given by A. Gachet d’Artigny, Nouveaux Mémoires (1756), vii. 77, from a copy of a book given to Bourges cathedral by a canon named Jean Pastoris. Part of the Bourges music is also given by Millin, loc. cit.

I print the fullest version from Ducange, italicizing the lines not found elsewhere, and giving all variants, except of spelling, for the rest.

Outside Beauvais, Sens, and Bourges the only localized allusion to the prose that I have found is the Autun order of 1411 (vol. i. p. 312) ‘nec dicatur cantilena quae dici solebat super dictum asinum.’ It is not in the Puy officium for the Circumcision, which, though in a MS. of 1553, represents a ceremony as old as 1327 (U. Chevalier, Prosolarium Ecclesiae Aniciensis, 1894). The officium is full of conductus and farsumina, and the clericuli at second Vespers tripudiant firmiter. The sanctum Praepucium was a relic at Puy.

The following passage is from Theoph. Raynaudus, Iudicium de puerorum symphoniacorum processione in festo SS. Innocentium (Opera Omnia, 1665, xv. 209): ‘Legi prosam quandam de asino e Metropolitanae cuiusdam Ecclesiae rituali exscriptam; quae super sacrum concinebatur in die S. Stephani, et dicebatur prosa fatuorum, qua nihil insulsius aut asino convenientius. Similis prosa de bove, quae canebatur in die S. Ioannis, intercidisse dicitur, haud magno sane dispendio. Itaque hae prosae erant particulae festi fatuorum, occoepti a die S. Stephani.’ I have never come across the ‘Prose of the Ox,’ or any notice of it which appears to be independent of Raynaud’s.]

I append the air of the Sens prose, as given by Dreves, Analecta Hymnica, xx. 257.