This short poem offers a gnomic proverb on Fortune’s capriciousness with artful soundplay and alliteration. Its sentiment is pessmistic and cynical. “Weole” (Wealth or Fortune) always neglects the poor, and, because they lack it, they may never hope to commune with those who are rich. One group of society (the “freomen,” line 3) is born possessed of things that guarantee their happiness. The personified name “Weole” conveys a light pun on Fortune’s wheel. The lyric belongs with numerous other songs in Middle English that contrast woe and weal as the variable conditions of life over which one has little to no control.

The editions of Brown and of Luria and Hoffman print this poem as eight short lines, but there is no internal rhyme in its long lines. Morris prints it (as here) according to the long-line layout of the manuscript. Weal is one of several aphoristic, mnemonic poems in Jesus 29. See, in particular, Ten Abuses, Signs of Death, and Three Sorrowful Tidings (arts. 15, 22, 23), along with Will and Wit (art. 9), contributed by the Cotton MS.

[Fol. 179v. NIMEV 3873. DIMEV 6182. Louis, MWME, 9:3027, 3391–92 [304]. Quire: 3. Meter: 4 septenary lines, rhyming aaaa7. Layout: Four long lines, with caesuras punctuated. Editions: Morris, p. 86; Brown, pp. 65, 196; Luria and Hoffman, eds., Middle English Lyrics, p. 10 (with regularized spelling). Other MSS: None. Translation: Adamson, trans., A Treasury of Middle English Verse, p. 13.]