The Fayrfax Manuscript (c. 1505) is one of three major songbooks which contain virtually all that survives of English secular songs from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It has several claims on the attention of anyone interested in the period: the repertory it presents seems to reflect not only some secular and ‘occasional’ tastes of Henry VII's court narrowly considered but also a wider world of traditional fifteenth-century pieties. There is one claim, however, of particular interest to students of literature – the way its composers set English words:

This new musical practice is, of course, of interest in itself, since it is one of the symptoms of a changing ‘aesthetic’. But it could also throw some light on a problem that needs all the light it can get – the rhythm of late fifteenth-century ‘Chaucerian’ verse.

In this essay I shall attempt to assess some of the evidence relating to verse-sound, and therefore possibly the spoken performance of verse, which the surviving musical settings seem to offer.