Ecologue

The English ecologue draws from Classical pastoral poetry, most notably the poetry of Virgil and of the Greek poet Theocritus. Apparantly Dante popularized a false etymology of the word as deriving from aix (goat) and logos (speech), thus goat herder or shepherd's tales. "The Renaissance was the heydey of the ecologue."

Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar is an example of an ecologue.

Pierce. Cuddie.

CVddie, for shame hold vp thy heauye head,
And let vs cast with what delight to chace:
And weary thys long lingring Phoebus race.
Whilome thou wont the shepheards laddes to leade,
In rymes, in ridles, and in bydding base:
Now they in thee, and thou in sleepe art dead?


Sources: Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger