The Monk of Great Renown The Canfield collection, amassed in the late 1920s, has a text which seems to fall midway between the "A/B" and "C" versions in the second edition of The Erotic Muse. [ D ] There was a friar of great renown, There was a friar of great renown, And -- he -- Married a girl in our town, Married a girl in our town, Married a girl in our town. Ha, ha, ha, shhhhh. Similarly: He took her to the marriage hall, Fucked her up against the wall. He took her to the marriage bed, Fucked her until she was dead. They took her to the burial ground, Swore he'd have another round. The friars prayed from eight to ten, Fucked her back to life again. [ E ] There was a friar of great renown, There was a friar of great renown, There was a friar of great renown, And then he fucked the girl from out of town, Fucked the girl from out of town. CHORUS (SPOKEN): Ha, ha, ha, Ho, ho, ho. Horse shit. That dirty old son of a bitch, That rotten old cocksucker. Fuck him. He laid her on a downy bed, He laid her on a downy bed, He laid her on a downy bed, And busted in her maidenhead. He shoved it in until she died, He shoved it in until she died, He shoved it in until she died, And then he fucked the other side. He took her to the burial ground, He took her to the burial ground, He took her to the burial ground, He thought he'd go another round. The friar cried from grief and shame, The friar cried from grief and shame, The friar cried from grief and shame, So he fucked her back to life again. As "The Friar of Great Reknown," this is in Paul Woodford, "Hash Hymns II" (Xeroxed collection, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1994) Anti-Papist screeds have occupied British presses at least since the last quarter of the 17th Century. Roger Thompson notes in his Unfit for Modest Ears (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979, pp. 140, that The Popish Courant weekly reported the (invented) misdeeds of clerics, nuns, bishops, monks and sundry Catholic divines. "The typical convent, we learn in the second number, is a 'religious coneyborough' with usually an active father at work. Among rare sights, one of the rarest is a chaste nun, and the stews are 'more chast, sober and modest than some monasteries.' The secular priests, says No. 6, 'keep Misses, Concubines and Common Strumpets... and the Devil has given them Nephews in abominable abundance.' The law of Sweden that all priests caught in the act shall be gelded 'strikes sad thought into our Nunneries.'" And so on.