of affection, purity and refinement which an age that had not yet lost
the ideals of chivalry accepted as the normal qualities of a good woman.
The mothers, wives, and daughters of that day would appear to have been
before all things womanly, in an unaffected, instinctive way. Isaac (in
the _Chester Miracle Play_), thinking, in the hour of death, of his
mother's grief at home, says, 'Father, tell my mother for no thinge.'
When Mary is married (_Coventry Play_) and must part from her mother,
they bid farewell in this wise:

_Anna._ I pray the, Mary, my swete chylde,
Be lowe[20] and buxhum[21], meke and mylde,
Sad and sobyr and nothyng wylde,
And Goddys blessynge thou have....

Goddys grace on you sprede,
ffarewel, Mary, my swete fflowre,
ffareweyl, Joseph, and God you rede[22],
ffareweyl my chylde and my tresowre,
ffarewel, my dowtere yyng.[23]

_Maria._ ffarewel, fadyr and modyr dere,
At you I take my leve ryght here,
God that sytt in hevyn so clere,
Have you in his kepyng.

The heartbroken words of Mary at the foot of the Cross have already been
quoted. In the reconciliation between Joseph and Mary (_Scene 12_), in
Mary's patient endurance of Joseph's bad temper on the journey to
Bethlehem (_Scene 15_), in the mother's unrestrained misery at the loss
of the boy Jesus and rapture on finding Him in the Temple (_Scene 20_),