Owing to such attacks, he was obliged to flee and take sanctuary at Westminster, where he died.  His most entertaining pieces are “Speke Parrot,” “Phyllyt Sparrowe,” and “Elynour Rummynge.”  In the first a fair lady laments the death of her bird, killed by “those vylanous false cattes.”  She sings a “requiescat” for the soul of her dear bird, and recounts all his pretty ways—­

  “Sometyme he wolde gaspe
   When he sawe a waspe;
   A fly or a gnat
   He wolde flye at that;
   And prytely he wold pant
   When he saw an ant;
   Lord, how he wolde pry
   After the butterfly! 
   Lord, how he wolde hop
   After the gressop,
   And whan I said Phypp, Phypp,
   Than he wolde lepe and skyp,
   And take ane by the lyp. 
   Alas it will me slo
   That Phillyp is gone we fro!”

She gives a long list of birds, who are to attend at his funeral, from which our nursery story of cock-robin may be taken.  Skelton seems to have been fond and observant of birds.  In Speke Parrot, he thus describes

  “With my beeke bent, my lyttyl wanton eye,
   My fedders freshe as is the emrawde grene,
   About my neck a cyrculet lyke the ryche rubye
   My lyttyl leggys, my feet both fete and clene,
   I am a mynyon to wayt uppon a quene;
   My proper parrot my lyttyl prety foole,
   With ladyes I lerne and go with them to scole.”

It will be observed that the humour in the above pieces is little separated from poetry.  In Elynour Rummynge however, we have something undoubtedly jocose, and proportionally rustic and uncouth.

Skelton adopted, as we have seen, a quick, short metre, somewhat analogous to the “Swift Iambics,” of the Greek humorists.  Sometimes also he alternated Latin with English in a conceit not very uncommon towards the end of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth century as—­

  “Freeres, freeres, wo ye be! 
     Ministri malorum,
   For many a mannes soul bringe ye,
     Ad poenas infernorum.”

No work became more popular than the Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brandt.  It was published in Germany in 1494, and was speedily translated into Latin and French.  Alexander Barclay altered it so considerably in the rendering as almost to make a new work, especially applicable to the state of things existing in this country.  Ersch and Grueber speak of Brandt’s fools as contemptible and loathsome, and say what he calls follies might be better described as sins and vices.  But here and there we meet with touches of humour in the mishaps and absurd actions of those he censures.  The whole work is rather of a moral and religious complexion, as the following heading of the poem will suggest—­

“Of newe fassions and disgised garmentes.  Of Avaryce and prodygalyte.  Of vnprofytable stody.  Of lepynges and dauncis and Folys that pas theyr tyme in suche vanyte.  Of Pluralitees, of flatterers, and glosers.  Of the vyce of slouth.  Of Usurers and okerers.  Of the extorcion of knyghtis.  Of follisske, cokes, and buttelers.”