Per row—The Last Will and Testament in Literature. 723 
Das Testament der Messe (1526) is a tract belonging to tbe 
controversy waged between German Protestants and Catholics 
of the early sixteenth century. 1 It is a satire in which the 
Mass, represented as about to die, makes its last will and testa¬ 
ment. 
. .The Testament of the Papyngo (1530) by David Lyndsay is 
a poem of more than eleven hundred lines 1 arranged in rime 
royal. 2 It is a satire directed against the court and the church. 
The poet tells how he saw the king’s parrot blown from the 
topmost branch of a tree which she had tried to ascend. She 
is represented as dying as the result of her fall. She com¬ 
plains against ambition and shows how it has been her ruin. 
She directs a! letter to King James I, bequeathing to himj her 
heart and a document advising him how to live and rule. 3 A 
second letter is addressed to her brother at court. This con¬ 
tains a tirade against the dangers and abuses of the court with 
extended examples of men who have met disaster from ambi¬ 
tion. 4 The letter closes with adieus to several Scottish towns. 
Kow come to her side the magpie, the kite, and the raven, all 
professing to be ecclesiastics and urging her to make her con¬ 
fession. The parrot has noted their wicked lives and does not 
want to trust her soul’s welfare to them. She takes occasion to 
recount to them many abuses that she has noted in the church. 
At last she trusts the kite to shrive her, and she makes him and 
his companions the executors of her will. She then divides up 
her body among several birds, reserving her heart for the king. 
Her spirit she gives to the queen of the fairies. She is no 
sooner dead than the greedy pretenders fall on her body and 
devour it. 
The poem is cleverly conceived but shows some faults of con¬ 
struction. The long letters dealing with questions of state and 
society seem undramatic, as does also, though to a less degree, 
the extended criticism of the church. The scene in which the 
1 Printed in Baechtold und Vetter’s Bihliothek dlterer Schriftwerke 
der deutcTien Schweiz, IL 232. 
2 David Laing, The Poetical Works of Sir David Lyndsay, Edin¬ 
burgh, 1879, T, 61. 
3 Cf. page 452 and following. 
4 Really a collection of tragedies. Cf. note on page 485. 
