That word is good to seye and synge

In Mischef and in bonchef bothe
that word is good to seye and synge
And not to wayle ne to bi wrothe
Thaugh all be nought at ure lykynge

--Vernon Manuscript folio 407a
ed. Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century, No. 96, ll. 49-50

The words "Deo Gracias" are good to say and sing, according to this fourteenth-century lyric-writer. Christiana Whitehead suggests the words come to have a talismanic power--as the lyric suggests, it's important to say these words in adversity and in good times. Reading is perhaps equally important as singing and saying, however, since the lyric begins with an image of a clerk bringing a book forward and reading from it the words "Deo Gracias."

Textual witnesses
We can see from the New Index of Middle English Verse that this lyric also appears in BL Additional 22283, also known as the Simeon manuscript, as well as NLS Advocates 19.31, a fifteenth-century manuscript. The first line ("In a church, where I can kneel...") is also very similar to the first line of a chanson d'aventure lyric that appears in Bodleian Ashmole 61 (a fifteenth-century manuscript) and Bodleian Rawlinson C.86, a miscellany containing Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and Prioress's Tale.