'The Coming of Christ'

I've recently been thinking a bit about medieval drama, and in doing so came across a 'modern mystery play' which was new to me. The Coming of Christ, with words by John Masefield and music by Gustav Holst, was performed in Canterbury Cathedral in 1928. It was commissioned as part of the newly-instituted Canterbury Festival, and is said to have been the first attempt at reviving medieval mystery drama since the Middle Ages.

Apparently it was controversial at the time, attracting criticism both for representing sacred subjects on stage and for being performed inside the cathedral. It seems harmless enough now, and it's an interesting 1920s take on the medieval genre. The subject is the Nativity (though it was actually performed at Whitsun, on 28 May 1928), chiefly the adoration of the three kings and the shepherds. The kings are a capitalist, a tyrant and a mystical enthusiast, while the shepherds are cynical war veterans, who compare keeping watch over their sheep to their memories of night-watches in what sounds a lot like the trenches of the First World War. This was particularly controversial; for more on the context of the performance and its challenges, see this book.

Both Masefield and Holst worked with medieval texts and subjects on a number of occasions. I've written briefly about Masefield's poems on Anglo-Saxon saints before, as well as his Arthurian poetry. He was particularly fond of Chaucer, on whom he lectured and wrote frequently, so the Canterbury link here is apt; and I think there's a very faint whiff of the Pardoner's Tale in Masefield's shepherds. (On a tangent: do read Tolkien's brilliantly polite letter to Masefield, taking him to task for excessive praise of Chaucer as 'the first English poet'!) I don't know how much medieval drama Masefield might have read, but it seems relevant that he knew Piers Plowman; he drew a connection between the figure of Piers and the climactic scene in his most successful early poem, The Everlasting Mercy. (Both poems are set in the landscape of the Malvern Hills, near Masefield's native Ledbury).

For his part, Holst set a range of Middle English texts to music - most notable is probably 'Lullay my liking' (1916), but I also like this setting of four Middle English lyrics and his 'Four Old English Carols' (1907). I've so far only heard as much of the play's music as is available on Youtube, but there's a description of it from a contemporary review here and a fascinating account of the first performance here.

The play takes place in the Nave of Canterbury Cathedral, which has a ready-made stage in the form of steps up to the Quire. What particularly interests me is the scene at the beginning of the play, which is set before the Incarnation. This is a discussion between the figure of 'Anima Christi' and four spirits: The Power, The Sword, The Mercy and The Light. Anima Christi has not yet entered into the world, but 'stands here at the brink / Of life's red sea which stains and overwhelms'. The spirits try to dissuade him from choosing to be born into the world as a man, warning him of the suffering he and his followers will undergo, and arguing that the dark and violent world is already past saving:

Man will not change for one voice crying truth,
And dying, beautiful as fire, for wisdom.
Like a stone falling in a stagnant pond,
You will but make a ripple swiftly stilled
By the green weed...
Men are but animals, and you will fail.
This is the harvest you will reap on earth:
Your mother, broken-hearted at the cross;
Your brother put to death; your comrades scattered.

But Anima Christi, though momentarily hesitant, is not swayed:

O spirits, I am resolute.
I lay aside my glory and my power
To take up Manhood.

This debate is reminiscent of the 'Parliament of Heaven' type of scene found in medieval drama and other kinds of medieval texts, including Piers Plowman. In this scene, four allegorical figures debate whether Christ's coming into the world to redeem mankind can be reconciled with the demands of justice, which requires punishment for sin. Here's one version of the idea from a medieval mystery play, and below is a rare representation of a Parliament of Heaven scene on a 15th-century English alabaster panel:

(See the V&A's website for a full description of the scene.) Christ is descending head-first to Mary, and the surrounding figures are the Four Daughters of God - Mercy, Truth, Righteousness and Peace. The personification of these female figures as the four principles to be reconciled is an idea based on the verse from Psalm 85: 'Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other'. These women are usually the figures who debate the apparently unresolvable question, and each can be roughly equated with one of Masefield's four (male) spirits. Apparently this scene was one of the most controversial aspects of the play, because of Christ's hesitation. I wonder what those who objected to the modern dialogue of Masefield's shepherds would have made of Langland's even more vigorous debate, in which Truth tells Mercy 'That thow tellest is but a tale of waltrot!', and Righteousness asks Peace 'What, ravestow? or thow art righty dronke?'!

In Piers Plowman the women appear from the four corners of the world: Righteousness 'out of the nyppe of the north', Mercy 'out of the west coste... walkynge in the wey', and so on. In a similar way, the figures in this play enter from the North and South Transepts of the cathedral, and through the Quire door from the east. When Anima Christi resolves to become incarnate in the world, he passes eastwards into the Quire as the four spirits strengthen him with their respective attributes.

As he does so the Host of Heaven sing:

O sing, as thrushes in the winter lift
Their ecstasy aloft among black boughs,
So that the doormouse stirs him in his drowse,
And by the melting drift
The newborn lamb bleats answer: sing, for swift
April the bride will enter this old house.

Awake, for in the darkness of the byre
Above the manger, clapping with his wings,
The cock of glory lifts his crest of fire:
Far, among slumbering men his trumpet rings:
Awake, the night is quick with coming things,
And hiding things that hurry into brake
Before the sun's arising: O awake.

Awake and sing: for in the stable-cave,
Man's heart, the sun has risen, Spring is here,
The withered bones are laughing in the grave,
Darkness and winter perish, Death and Fear;
A new Life enters Earth, who will make clear
The Beauty, within touch, of God the King;
O mortals, praise Him! O awake and sing!

Then the kings appear, discussing their quest, and the shepherds watching their sheep. Cold, tired, and resentful about their unappreciated service in the war, the shepherds are talking of revolution: 'let us have a turn at the fire, the rich have a turn at the fold... It's time the workers should command and have the wealth they make'. One of them speaks of his faith in God, though the others scoff ('I'm only a poor shepherd, but I've known Him', he says, Piers Plowman-like: Piers' very first line in the poem is 'I know him as kyndely as clerke doth his bokes'.)

Next 'the Angels appear at the Quire Door, on the Upper Stage and in the Gallery and Clerestory' of the cathedral, and sing:

Glory to God in the highest,
Peace on earth among men in whom God is well pleased.

Praise Him who brings into the dark
Of human life, this shining spark
Which will burn clear and be a mark
For wandering souls on earth and sea.
By his companionship and sign
The unlit souls of men will shine
And be a comfort and be divine,
And bring a glory to men to be.

Through Him who is born in stable here
Our heavenly host will come more near;
The presence of God, which drives out fear,
The glory of God, that makes all glow,
The comfort of God, that sings and swells
In the human heart like a peal of bells,
And the peace of God, that no tongue tells,
Are given to man to know.

Praise Him who shines in the bright sea,
In golden fruit, in the green tree,
In valleys clapping hands with glee,
In mountains that His witness are,
In heavens open like His hand,
In stars as many as the sand,
In planets doing His command,
And in His Son this star.

The child and his mother appear, framed by the door of the Quire. The angels sing:

You who have known the darkness slowly yield,
And in the twilight the first blackbird's cry
Come, with the dripping of the dew new-shaken
From twigs where yellowing leaves and reddening berries lie,
And seen the colour come upon the field,
And heard the cocks crow as the thorps awaken,

You know with what a holiness of light
The peace of morning comes, and how night goes -
Not goes, but, on a sudden, is not, even.
Now God Himself is Man and all the banded Night
Will perish and the Kingdom will unclose.
O man, praise God, praise Him, you host of heaven.

The kings and shepherds present their gifts to the child, and the shepherds carry him and his mother out on a litter as they sing:

By weary stages
The old world ages;
By blood, by rages,
By pain-sown seeds.
By fools and sages,
With death for wages,
Souls leave their cages
And Man does deeds.

In mire he trudges,
In grime he drudges,
In blindness judges,
In darkness gropes.
His bitter measure
Yields little pleasure;
For only treasure
He has his hopes.

The hope that sailing
When winds are failing
Above the railing
A coast may rise;
The thought that glory
Is not a story,
But Heaven o'er ye
And watching eyes.

Behold us bringing
With love and singing
And great joy ringing
And hearts new-made,
The prince, forespoken,
By seer and token,
By whom Sin's broken
And Death is stayed.

Now by his power
The world will flower,
And hour by hour
His realm increase;
Now men benighted
Will feel them righted
And love be lighted
To spirit's peace.

Our God is wearing
Man's flesh, and bearing
Man's cares, through caring
What men may be;
Our God is sharing
His light and daring
To help men's faring
And set men free.

All you in hearing
Assist our cheering
This soul unfearing
Who enters earth;
On God relying
And Death defying,
He puts on dying
That Life have birth.

This final hymn, 'By weary stages', was published in the 1931 edition of the hymnal Songs of Praise, with Holst's tune titled 'Hill Crest' (the name of Masefield's house near Oxford).

The four spirits reappear, and speak again:

The Mercy: By mercy, and by martyrdom,
And many ways, God leads us home:
And many darknesses there are.

The Light: By darkness and by light He leads,
He gives according to our needs,
And in His darkest is a star.

The Sword: The angry blood was once the guide,
But perisht boughs are thrust aside
In the green fever of the Spring.

The Power: Friends, Christ is come within this hall,
Bow down and worship one and all,
Our Father for this thing.

One by one the four spirits pass into the Quire (where two Anglo-Saxon monks once heard angels singing.)

Looking into Canterbury Cathedral from the door of the Quire

Thanne pipede Pees of poesie a note:
'Clarior est solito post maxima nebula phebus;
Post inimicicias clarior est et amor.
After sharpest shoures,' quod Pees, 'moost shene is the sonne;
Is no weder warmer than after watry cloudes;
Ne no love levere; ne lever frendes
Than after werre and wo, whan love and pees ben maistres.
Was nevere werre in this world, ne wikkednesse so kene,
That Love, and hym liste, to laughyng ne broughte,
And Pees, thorugh pacience, alle perils stoppede.'
'Trewes!' quod Truthe; 'thow tellest us sooth, by Jesus!
Clippe we in covenaunt, and ech of us kisse oother.'
'And lete no peple,' quod Pees, 'parceyve that we chidde;
For inpossible is no thyng to Hym that is almyghty.'
'Thow seist sooth,' seide Rightwisnesse, and reverentliche hire kiste,
Pees, and Pees hire, per secula seculorum.
Misericordia et Veritas obviaverunt sibi, justicia et Pax osculate sunt.

The year's midnight, and the day's

It's been a while since I posted this, but today is the day for it.



'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.


This beautiful video and this extraordinary poem make me think two quite ridiculous, yet heartfelt thoughts:

1) I'm sorry that St Lucy's Day is no longer the shortest day of the year.  I think the world was somehow a slightly better place, slightly more in tune, when it was.

2) I'm glad that someone as breathtakingly talented and undeniably awesome as John Donne could feel this kind of grief; it means that feeling like nothing, year after year without spring's renewal, does not actually mean one is nothing.

A Song for All Souls

Singing a Requiem, BL Arundel 302, f.77v (English, 15th century)

For all Cristen saulys pray we:
Requiem eternam dona eis, Domine.

O God, we pray to the in specyall,
For all the saulis that sufferd payne infernall;
Now, Jhesu, for thi mercy graunt them lyffe eternall,
Et lux perpetua,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

In aspeciall for the saulys that han most nede,
Abydyng in the paynes of derkenesse,
Weche han no socoure but almysdede:
Et lux perpetua,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Now God, in heuen that art so hye,
These saulys thou graunte joy and blysse,
For wham this day we syng and crye,
Et lux perpetua,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

This is the text of a medieval English song on the commemoration of All Souls. It survives with its music in the Ritson manuscript (BL Additional 5665), which was compiled between c.1475-1510 at a religious house somewhere in Devon, possibly at Exeter Cathedral, and contains a number of songs in English and Latin. Other songs from this manuscript include the two carols based on the 'O' antiphons and the wonderful 'Marvel not, Joseph'; although to my knowledge this song has not been recorded, I imagine it to have sounded something like 'Marvel not, Joseph', which you can listen to at that link.

The Latin in the refrain is taken from the introit to the Requiem Mass: Eternal rest grant unto them, O God, and let perpetual light shine upon them.



The text of the song is printed in Greene, The Early English Carols (Oxford, 1977), pp. 186-7; here's my modernised version:

For all Christian souls pray we:
Requiem eternam dona eis, Domine.

O God, we pray to thee particularly
For all the souls who suffer pain infernal;
Now, Jesu, for thy mercy grant them life eternal,
Et lux perpetua,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Especially for the souls who have most need,
Abiding in the pains of darkness,
Who have no succour but almsdeeds:
Et lux perpetua,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Now God, in heaven that art so high,
These souls grant thou joy and bliss,
For whom this day we sing and cry,
Et lux perpetua,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.



This is a recording of the earliest surviving polyphonic setting of the Requiem, by Johannes Ockeghem. Written in the second half of the fifteenth century, it is roughly contemporary with the English poem.

Requiem, BL Royal 2 B VIII, f.144 (English, early 15th century)

Just for comparison, here are some English prayers for the dead from vernacular Prymers of the early sixteenth century, which I found in the book Monumenta ritualia ecclesiae Anglicanae. They form part of the Office of Compline, and are headed (as the song begins) 'for all Cristen soulis':

Euerlastynge reste, lord, 3yue to hem : And perpetuel ly3t shyne to hem : Fro the 3ate of helle : Delyuere, lord, the saulis of hem: I bileue to se the goodis of the lord : In the lond of lyuyng men.

Reste thei in pees. So be it.

God, the maker and a3enbiere of all feithful men : graunte thou remyssioun of alle synnes to the saulis of thi seruantis men and wymmen : that thei thru3 piteuouse preieris togider take the for3yuenesse which thei han euer desirid : that lyuyst and regnest god bi alle worldis of worldis. So be it.

Reste thei in pees. So be it.

The soulis of alle feithful deed men bi the merci of god reste in the pees of iesu crist. So be it.

Blesse ye.

The lord blesse.

God 3yue grace to the quyke, and to the deede reste, and for3yuenesse to the chirche, and to the kingdom pees and concorde, and to us synneris liif and endeles glorie. Amen.


That is:

Everlasting rest, Lord, give to them, and perpetual light shine on them. From the gate of hell, deliver, Lord, their souls. I believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of living men.

May they rest in peace. So be it. [i.e. Amen]

God, the maker and redeemer of all faithful people, grant thou remission of all sins to the souls of thy servants, men and women, that they through devout prayers together receive the forgiveness which they have ever desired; who livest and reignest God through all worlds of worlds. So be it.

May they rest in peace. So be it.

May the souls of all faithful dead by the mercy of God rest in the peace of Jesu Christ. So be it.

Bless ye.

The Lord bless.

God give grace to the living, and to the dead rest, and forgiveness to the church, and to the kingdom peace and concord, and to us sinners life and endless glory. Amen.

Souls entering heaven, BL Yates Thompson 13, f.138 (English, 14th century)

The Collect is translating this:

Fidelium Deus omnium conditor, et redemptor animabus famulorum, famularumque tuarum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum: ut indulgentiam, quam semper optaverunt, piis supplicationibus consequantur. Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum.

Another version of the Prymer has an alternate Collect:

Lorde, inclyne thyne eare vnto our prayers, wherin we ryght deuoutly call vpon thy mercy, that thou wylte bestowe the soules of thy seruauntes, both men and women, (whyche thou haste commaunded to departe fro this worlde) in the countrey of peace and reste, and further cause them to be made parteyners with thy sayntes. By Chryst our lorde. So be it.

Lord, incline thine ear unto our prayers, wherein we right devoutly call upon thy mercy, that thou wilt bestow the souls of thy servants, both men and women, which thou hast commanded to depart from this world, in the country of peace and rest, and further cause them to be made partners with thy saints. By Christ our Lord. So be it.

Sunday Music

I was charmed to come across this video yesterday:






I posted about Sam Lee's version of 'Puck's Song' a while ago, and you can now hear it on youtube here. Do read the Guardian article which accompanies the video, too, if only to be reminded of the tantalising strangeness of 'The Bitter Withy' - a folk song based on a medieval legend based on apocryphal gospels about the childhood of Christ (did you follow that?  It's explained better here).

Gypsy songs are close to my heart, because my father's father (whom I never met) was from a Romany family.  He was born in a caravan in a field in Buckinghamshire, as all his family were, as far as I can trace; he settled down in a house for a while when he married my grandmother, but disappeared into the night when his youngest child was four years old, never to return.  Thus, all I know about his family comes from my own research with birth certificates and census records - although they did their best to avoid such things! - rather than personal knowledge.  I can't think very kindly of him for the way he left his wife and children, but nonetheless there's a part of me that yearns after all things gypsy, and wonders what in me would be different without that genetic strain.  In almost every way my life couldn't be more different from my grandfather's: just about the only thing I know about his character is that although he was illiterate, he used to carry a newspaper around under his arm; and now here's me, a creature of books and libraries, essentially a professional reader.  His family had been travelling around the Oxfordshire/Buckinghamshire countryside for generations - how bizarre it would have seemed to them that their grandchildren should be studying at Oxford University, not camping at the gates but inside the walls.

Anyway, that video reminded me about this:



The singer is Sheila Smith, a gypsy girl who was seven years old when this was recorded in 1952.  It's just extraordinary.

'Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom'

More Ralph Vaughan Williams and Robert Louis Stevenson, this time in combination. This is from Vaughan Williams' series of settings of Stevenson's 'Songs of Travel'.




I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night,
I will make a palace fit for you and me
Of green days in forests, and blue days at sea.

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom;
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.

Within the woodlands, flowery gladed

After the dream-world of yesterday's Stevenson poem - a peaceful garden, all cultivated lawns and marble statuary, very definitely nature tamed by man - here's an idyll which is a little more rural:




Within the woodlands, flow'ry gladed,
By the oak trees' mossy moot;
The shining grass blades, timber-shaded,
Now do quiver under foot;
And birds do whistle overhead,
And water's bubbling in its bed;
And there for me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

When leaves, that lately were a-springing,
Now do fade within the copse,
And painted birds do hush their singing
Up upon the timber tops;
And brown leaved fruit's a-turning red,
In cloudless sunshine overhead,
With fruit for me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

Let other folk make money faster;
In the air of darkened towns;
I don't dread a peevish master.
Though no man may heed my frowns
I be free to go abroad,
Or take again my home-ward road,
To where for me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.


This is Ralph Vaughan Williams' setting of a text by the dialect poet William Barnes. The original is actually titled 'My Orcha'd in Linden Lea':


'Ithin the woodlands, flow'ry gleaded,
By the woak tree's mossy moot,
The sheenen grass bleades, timber-sheaded,
Now do quiver under voot;
An' birds do whissle auver head,
An' water's bubblen in its bed,
An' ther vor me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

When leaves that leately wer a-springen
Now do feade 'ithin the copse,
An' painted birds do hush ther zingen
Up upon the timber's tops;
An' brown-leav'd fruit's a-turnen red,
In cloudless zunsheen, auver head,
Wi' fruit vor me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

Let other vo'k meake money vaster
In the air o' dark-room'd towns,
I don't dread a peevish measter;
Though noo man do heed my frowns,
I be free to goo abrode,
Or teake agean my hwomeward road
To where vor me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.



I posted another poem by William Barnes last year, 'The Castle Ruins', which is also charming (and worth the effort it takes to decipher the dialect!). But the star of 'Linden Lea' is Vaughan Williams' setting, of course; I love how the piano accompaniment just takes off in the last verse!

The vocalist in the video above is Ian Bostridge, who does it wonderfully - but this version is a vintage delight:




I was thinking about 'Linden Lea' partly because of what's been in the news and on everyone's lips in Britain today: the Olympics, and particularly last night's opening ceremony. It seems to have been a roaring success, but for me it is a reminder of how alien so much of modern culture has become to me. The whole thing - the noise, the crowds, the vast expense of money, the glorification of all that's urban and modern and new; and what comes with it, the media chatter, the exaltation of corporate culture, the endless flood of opinion and comment, the Twitter-shallow level of discussion and thought - I'm afraid I don't understand how anyone can like it. The story of Britain that ceremony told isn't a story I recognise; it's not a story I believe to be true, based on my own knowledge of history and literature. It's a myth for a country that no longer learns its own history, and based on the favourable commentary of my acquaintances on facebook, it's a myth which is very popular. That's fine; I understand the need for myths and shared narratives, and there's no requirement for them to be accurate. But it's so very far from my own imaginative world - and so I begin to wonder, how did I get so separated from my contemporaries and the world we have to live in?

I don't have a sense of superiority about it; this alienation from all the modern world values is not going to work out well for me, since this way lies discontentment, failure in the eyes of the world, and loneliness. I don't care about failure, and I can work on learning contentment; it's the loneliness that's worst, the sense of being isolated from the people around you, and with a few blessed exceptions I've been used to that all my life. How do these people think? How can I form relationships with them, or talk to them about anything, when they don't care about what matters to me, and I don't understand what matters to them? My outlook on this is not ideological, but purely selfish - let other folks make money faster, and do whatever they like, as long as there are one or two people willing to share my mental world with me! I don't ask for much in the way of imaginative sympathy: one person to employ me and one to love me, and I wouldn't need anything else (and the employer is optional). Honestly, my mental world is a very nice place: it basically looks like this blog, all poetry and pretty pictures, with a bit of amateur etymology thrown in. Why don't more people want to live there rather than in the noisy flashy Olympic world? I don't get it.

Anyway, I've been daydreaming about escape: away from the town and the tourists to a world that makes more sense, that has a place for me. And so it's comforting to think that for all one's tendency to assume it's a modern problem, William Barnes felt exactly the same way a hundred years ago; that's what 'Linden Lea' is all about. For this reason, I'll probably be posting some more literary idylls in the next few days. In the meantime, if anyone would like to join me in a cottage in the woods, with no television and no internet, for the duration of the Olympics, that would be great...

I've fallen in love...

with a youtube channel. I've been aware of the music of the amazingly talented Tim Eriksen for a while, but only recently started watching his videos on youtube; they're currently my favourite thing on the internet. I'm not really sure I can explain why, so I'm just going to post a couple of videos and tell you to go and watch the rest...

Ah, but that involves deciding which ones are my favourites, and I can't really do that. But here's a fantastic ballad sung in the snow:



And this:



And this:



And this:



OK, I do know what it is I like - the combination of music and place, especially the natural environment, but also just by a random store made beautiful by sunset, or in an airport (a particularly perfect combination of song and setting, that one!) or in the middle of New York... It's all wonderful and you should watch every one.

'Against all ills the fortified strong place'

Vaughan Williams' setting elevates this Dante Gabriel Rossetti poem, 'Heart's Haven' (of which the best thing is the title) to something very tender and beautiful:





Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,—
With still tears showering and averted face,
Inexplicably fill'd with faint alarms:
And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
Against all ills the fortified strong place
And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.

And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
And as soft waters warble to the moon,
Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.



(warble? roundelay? Pah. Whatever, Rossetti.)

When do I see thee most, beloved one?

I've been listening to a lot of Vaughan Williams recently - it's very summery music for me, mostly because I love Silent Noon so very much. Beside 'Silent Noon', RVW set a number of other poems by DGR, or, as I like to think of him, the lesser Rossetti - more famous than his sister and possibly more talented but gosh, so much more of an idiot...

But Vaughan Williams can make anything good and so here's one of his settings, 'Love-sight':




When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death’s imperishable wing?

O the mind, mind has mountains

Doesn't it just. Here are two poems which don't have much in common except that they offer the only reliable comfort in this lonely world: sleep and oblivion.



No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."'

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.




This is Ian Bostridge singing Benjamin Britten's setting of Louis MacNeice's poem 'Cradle Song for Eleanor'.


Sleep, my darling, sleep;
The pity of it all
Is all we compass if
We watch disaster fall.
Put off your twenty-odd
Encumbered years and creep
Into the only heaven,
The robbers’ cave of sleep.

The wild grass will whisper,
Lights of passing cars
Will streak across your dreams
And fumble at the stars;
Life will tap the window
Only too soon again,
Life will have her answer –
Do not ask her when.

When the winsome bubble
Shivers, when the bough
Breaks, will be the moment
But not here or now.
Sleep and, asleep, forget
The watchers on the wall
Awake all night who know
The pity of it all.

The Songs of Godric of Finchale

Godric of Finchale, who died on 21 May 1170, was a merchant-turned-hermit and saint who is also one of the first named English songwriters - at least, his are the first songs in English for which the music survives. He was born at Walpole in Norfolk just after the Norman Conquest (c.1070), to English parents, and he became a successful merchant, trading and sailing to Scotland, Denmark and Rome.  He undertook several pilgrimages, but (partly inspired by a visit to St Cuthbert's Farne Islands) he was drawn to the life of a hermit, and eventually settled at Finchale near Durham, where he lived for the last sixty years of his life.

There are four verses attributed to him, preserved in accounts of his life by the monk Reginald of Durham.  Here are they are on one page from a manuscript in the British Library (Royal 5 F VII, f.85):

The first song here is said in the Life to have come to Godric when he had a vision of his sister Burhcwen, also a solitary at Finchale, being received into heaven.  She was singing a song of thanksgiving, in Latin, and Godric renders her song in English thus (bracketed by a Kyrie eleison):

Crist and sainte marie swa on scamel me iledde
þat ic on þis erðe ne silde wid mine bare fote i tredie

'Christ and St Mary so carried me with a crutch
That I never had to tread upon this earth with my bare foot.'

Godric's most famous song also came to him in a vision: the Virgin Mary told him to sing it whenever he was tempted, weary or in pain, and she would come to his aid.

Sainte marie uirgine
moder ihesu cristes nazarene
onfo schild help þin godric
onfang bring heȝilich wið þe in godes riche

Sainte marie xristes bur
maidenes clenhad moderes flur
dilie min sinne rix in min mod
bring me to winne wið þe selfd God

That is:

'Saint Mary, Virgin,
Mother of Jesu Christ of Nazareth,
Receive, shield, help your Godric;
Received, bring him on high with you in God’s kingdom.

Saint Mary, bower of Christ,
Purest of maidens, flower of mothers,
Efface my sins, reign in my mind,
Bring me to joy with that same God.'

In the first verse, Godric is playing on the meaning of his own name: godes riche means ‘God’s kingdom’. These verses already have some of the motifs which would later become so popular in Middle English devotional poetry, especially the romance tinge of Mary as 'bower of Christ', and the flower imagery.

And the last of Godric's verses is a prayer to St Nicholas:

Sainte Nicholaes godes druð
tymbre us faire scone hus
At þi burth at þi bare
Sainte nicholaes bring vs wel þare

'Saint Nicholas, God’s beloved,
Build for us a fair bright house;
At the birth, at the bier,
Saint Nicholas, bring us safely there.'

(The interpretation of the third line is disputed, but this is the reading I'd go for - in other words, asking for Nicholas' help from birth to death).

Here are the songs being sung:



These verses are fascinating, partly because they provide a glimpse into the obscure and much-underrated world of twelfth-century English literature. The traditional view for a long time was that the thriving vernacular literature of Anglo-Saxon England came to an abrupt end at the end of the eleventh century, not to re-emerge until some time in the thirteenth - as if the Norman Conquest made everyone forget overnight that they had ever told stories or sung songs or heard homilies in the English language. Much did change, of course, but scholarship is increasingly showing the traditional 'rupture' model to be much too simplistic. Godric's songs are an interesting case-study in this context.  The verses are more than competent, the use of rhyme particularly - this clearly isn't somebody fumbling around with poetic techniques he didn't understand. As far as we know Godric had no formal education, and tracing the cultural influences of someone who lived such a well-travelled and varied life is a tricky endeavour. However, his Fenland origins are especially intriguing, because we do have a little evidence for vernacular song in the twelfth-century Fens - Cnut's song from Ely is my favourite example, but there may also have been verses about the local heroes Hereward and Waltheof (and as for English prose, monks at Peterborough, Ely, Crowland and Ramsey - the houses closest to Godric's native Walpole - were all certainly reading and in some cases writing English well into the twelfth century). It's just possible that Godric grew up with a tradition of English song, and that his verses should thus be seen as a development of this rather than a complete innovation. There's much about them that's new (bower/flower rhymes, for a start), and they are justly celebrated as a 'first' - but they didn't come out of nowhere.

Pleasure it is

Pleasure it is
To hear, iwis,
The birdes sing.
The deer in the dale,
The sheep in the vale,
The corn springing.
God's purveyance
For sustenance,
It is for man.
Then we always
To Him give praise,
And thank Him then,
And thank Him then.


(N.B.: purveyance means 'provision')

This little sixteenth-century song is by William Cornish (or Cornysshe), Master of the Chapel Royal under Henry VII and Henry VIII. The song was printed in 1530 in Wynkyn de Worde's Twenty Songs (Bassus) (BL K.1.e.1), a book of twenty part-songs. Only one copy survives and you can see images of the whole book here at the 'View music' link - this song is folio 34-5, with a splendid initial 'P'!

The music there is only the bass part (as the name of the book suggests...) so the melody of the song hasn't survived. It has been set to music by modern composers, though - by Benjamin Britten, as 'Spring Carol', number 9 in his Ceremony of Carols (1942):



And by John Ireland in 1938 as 'A Thanksgiving', the first song in his Five XVIth Century Poems (1938):

Brigg Fair and The History of Glee

This is a beautiful version of the folk song 'Brigg Fair' which I came across the other day, sung by Jackie Oates:


'Brigg Fair' is a well-known song and I suppose I'd heard it before, but somehow I had never put together in my head 'the folk song Brigg Fair' and 'the Lincolnshire place called Glanford Brigg'; having finally done so, and having heard this version of it, I have a new appreciation for the song. And so I started thinking about fairs.

Brigg Fair is about a man meeting his lover at (guess what) Brigg Fair. Here's a history of the song, which was collected by Percy Grainger at Brigg in 1905 and then arranged by him and subsequently also by Frederick Delius. This is the song as collected by Grainger from Joseph Taylor:

It was on the fifth of August, the weather hot and fair,
Unto Brigg Fair I did repair, for love I was inclined.

I got up with the lark in the morning with my heart full of glee,
Expecting there to meet my dear, long time I wished to see.

(Taylor couldn't remember any more of the verses.)

What struck me about these lines was the use of the word 'glee'. Obviously here it means 'happiness, excitement', which is a fairly common sense of the word in traditional folk songs, though not quite how we would use it today. It's a lovely word with an interesting history. The OED's definition of glee in this sense is charming: "mirth, joy, rejoicing; a lively feeling of delight caused by special circumstances and finding expression in appropriate gestures and looks". In Old and Middle English it's chiefly a poetic word, meaning primarily 'entertainment, pleasure, sport', and especially 'musical entertainment, music, melody' (this is how we get musical glees and glee clubs and a current popular television series). Anglo-Saxon poets sang 'glees' (gleow) with their harps, and a common Middle English word for 'minstrel' is gleeman.

I have a fondness for words which begin with gl-; just think how many beautiful ones there are: gleam, glitter, glory, glimmer, glimpse, gladsome, glamour, glade, glance, glass, glaze, glean, glebe, gleed, glen, glide, glint, glisten, gloaming, glossy... That's a list of some of the most poetic words in the English language! I could write a post about any one of those.

But today it's glee. Take a look at the Middle English dictionary entry for glee, which should give you a sense of the scope of the word. It's not just my own taste which made me comment on the words which alliterate with glee; it frequently appears in alliterative phrases in medieval poetry. To quote just a few from the MED entry, we have the expression ne gladieth me no gle 'it brings me no joy', and Christ being called mi gleo & mi gledunge 'my joy and my gladness', ' and the very common game and glee 'fun and merriment' (more of that in a moment...). And another comes from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, describing Christmas festivities: "Much glam and gle glent up þerinne", 'much revelry and fun sprung up there'.

Glam (with a long a, not as if short for glamorous...) comes from Old Norse glaumr, 'noisy merriment', which is cognate with the Old English gleam, 'joy, revelry'. And with this we have come back to Glanford Brigg, site of the fair and folk song - for one possible etymology for Glanford is gleam + ford, the name meaning "ford where sports/festivals are held" (+ Old Norse bryggja, 'jetty, quay'). The fair of the folk song dates back to the thirteenth century, but if this etymology is correct it sounds like Brigg was a good place for partying even in the Anglo-Saxon period. And one feature of such fairs and entertainments, in medieval literature, is that young people go there to meet their lovers and have all kinds of glee with them. The hero of 'Brigg Fair' is in a proud tradition.

Since it's in the same general area of Lincolnshire, when thinking about Brigg Fair I couldn't help being reminded of medieval Lincolnshire's premier sportsman, the young Danish prince-in-exile Havelok of Grimsby. Havelok, a gentle giant with near-superhuman strength, is very good at games:

For thanne he weren alle samen
At Lincolne at the gamen,
And the erles men woren al thore,
Than was Havelok bi the shuldren more
Than the meste that ther kam:
In armes him noman nam
That he doune sone ne caste.
Havelok stod over hem als a mast;
Als he was heie, als he was long,
He was bothe stark and strong -
In Engelond non hise per
Of strengthe that evere kam him ner.
Als he was strong, so was he softe;
They a man him misdede ofte,
Neveremore he him misseyde,
Ne hond on him with yvele leyde.
Of bodi was he mayden clene;
Nevere yete in game, ne in grene,
With hire ne wolde he leyke ne lye,
No more than it were a strie.

[For when they were all together at Lincoln at the games, and the earl's men were all there, Havelok was a shoulder taller than the biggest of them; no one could wrestle with him whom he couldn't quickly overthrow. Havelok stood over them like a mast; just as he was tall and well-grown, he was strong and powerful too - there was no equal to him in strength throughout England. But just as he was strong, so he was gentle: even if someone often treated him badly, he never spoke against him or laid a hand upon him with ill intent. In body he was as chaste as a maiden - he would never amuse himself with a woman or lie with her for sexual dealings and passions, any more than he would with a witch.]

If you're wondering what chastity has to do with anything, well, that brings us back to game and glee. There's some game-related wordplay in the last three lines here: game is frequently used in Middle English to refer to (as the MED puts it) 'amorous play, love-making, esp. sexual intercourse', and that's the primary meaning here - but since it comes in the middle of an episode about Havelok's prowess in athletic sports, the pun is that although he's good at games like wrestling and stone-casting, he doesn't engage in 'games with women'; nevere yete in game, ne in grene primarily means 'neither in sexual dealings nor amorous passions' but could also conceivably mean 'neither at the games nor on the green' (games take place on greens; lots of things happen on greens in Havelok). The wordplay is continued in the next line with leyke, which means 'play' in both the sexual and non-sexual senses.

Havelok loves puns and wordplay, and the point I think is that public games and fairs were notoriously occasions when licentious behaviour reigned. At a similar event three centuries previously, down in Warwickshire, the future St Wulfstan of Worcester, a teenage sprinter, experienced serious sexual temptation when a girl tried to seduce him. Apparently medieval English girls really loved athletes...

Having established that Havelok is a) very good at sport b) too virtuous for the other kind of sport, the poem then describes how nonetheless, without meaning to, he wins himself a wife with his sporting prowess. The irony! The wicked usurper Godrich, who has stolen the kingdom of England from its rightful queen Goldburh, comes with his men to Lincoln for a parliament, and as young men do, they start a spontaneous game of kick-about football wrestling:

And fel it so that yungemen,
Wel abouten nine or ten,
Bigunnen the for to layke.
Thider komen bothe stronge and wayke,
Thider komen lesse and more
That in the boru thanne weren thore -
Chaunpiouns and starke laddes,
Bondemen with here gaddes,
Als he comen fro the plow.
There was sembling inow;
For it ne was non horse-knave,
Tho thei sholden in honde have,
That he ne kam thider, the leyk to se.
Biforn here fet thanne lay a tre,
And pulten with a mikel ston
The starke laddes, ful god won.
The ston was mikel and ek gret,
And al so hevi so a neth;
Grundstalwyrthe man he sholde be
That mouthe liften it to his kne;
Was ther neyther clerc ne prest,
That mithe liften it to his brest.
Therwit putten the chaumpiouns
That thider comen with the barouns.
Hwo so mithe putten thore
Biforn another an inch or more,
Wore he yung, wore he hold,
He was for a kempe told.
Al so the stoden and ofte stareden,
The chaumpiouns and ek the ladden,
And he maden mikel strout
Abouten the altherbeste but,
Havelok stod and lokede thertil,
And of puttingge he was ful wil,
For nevere yete ne saw he or
Putten the stone or thanne thor.
Hise mayster bad him gon therto -
Als he couthe therwith do.
Tho hise mayster it him bad,
He was of him sore adrad.
Therto he stirte sone anon,
And kipte up that hevi ston
That he sholde putten withe;
He putte at the firste sithe,
Over alle that ther wore
Twelve fote and sumdel more.
The chaumpiouns that put sowen;
Shuldreden he ilc other and lowen.
Wolden he nomore to putting gange,
But seyde, "Thee dwellen her to longe!"
This selkouth mithe nouth ben hyd:
Ful sone it was ful loude kid
Of Havelok, hw he warp the ston
Over the laddes everilkon,
Hw he was fayr, hw he was long,
Hw he was with, hw he was strong;
Thoruth England yede the speche,
Hw he was strong and ek meke;
In the castel, up in the halle,
The knithes speken therof alle,
So that Godrich it herde wel:
The speken of Havelok, everi del.

[and so it happened that some young men, about nine or ten of them, began to play at sports. The strong and weak came there, the humble and the great, all who were in the town - champions and strong lads and peasants with their cattle-goads who had just come from the plough. It was a big gathering, for there was no stable-boy who should have been at his post who didn't come to see the games [I love this Dickensian touch!]. Before their feet was a log [to mark the foul-line], and the strong lads, a good number of them, threw a big stone. The stone was big and huge, and heavy as an ox - he would have to be a very strong man who could lift it even to his knee. There was no clerk or priest who could lift it as high as his breast. With this the contenders who had come there with the noblemen played at shot-put. Whoever could throw the stone further than the next man, by an inch or more, was considered an outstanding performer, whether he was young or old.

As they were watching and comparing the performances, the athletes and the boys, and having a debate about which was the best of the throws, Havelok stood by and watched. He knew nothing about shot-put, because he had never seen stone-casting before that day. His master told him to go and see how well he could do. Although his master ordered him, he doubted himself; but he quickly stirred himself and picked up the heavy stone he had to throw. The first time he putted it, he threw it twelve feet further than anyone else, and a bit more. The athletes who saw that throw elbowed each other and laughed; they didn't want to play any more, and said, "You've been here too long!". This marvel could not be concealed: it was soon widely known about Havelok, how he threw the stone further than every one of the other lads - and how he was fair, how he was tall, how he was broad, how he was strong. The story went throughout England, how he was strong and humble too. In the castle, in the hall, the knights all spoke of it, and so Godrich heard all about this story of Havelok.]

The direct result is that Godrich, who thinks Havelok is a strong but stupid peasant (rather than what he actually is, the exiled son of the king of Denmark), decides to marry Havelok to the young princess whom Godrich is keeping prisoner - and so Havelok gets himself a girl at the games after all.

The huge stone thrown by Havelok, by the way, was one of the tourist attractions of medieval Lincolnshire - it used to be kept in Lincoln castle and shown to visitors...

Are you wondering what any of this has to do with 'Brigg Fair'? I think it was people falling in love at public entertainments - yes, that was it. The snappiest medieval description of this phenomenon - which I take to be a social reality as well as a literary trope - comes in a snippet from a song quoted (disapprovingly) in a twelfth-century sermon as evidence of the kind of thing sung by light-minded women:

Atte wrestling my lemman I ches,
And atte ston-kasting I him for-les.

[At the wrestling I chose my lover, and at the stone-casting I lost [or possibly left] him.]

How better to chose a lover, for a medieval peasant-girl, than to pick the best wrestler in town? Go to a fair with various kinds of glee, and find a lemman, and sing about it.

Pleasingly, one of the OED citations for the sense of glee meaning 'entertainment, play, sport' is from Havelok. This is from the passage which describes the celebrations on the occasion of Havelok's coronation, and it shows you just what the poet thought was necessary for a good party:

Hwan he was king, þer mouthe men se
Þe moste ioie þat mouhte be:
Buttinge with sharpe speres,
Skirming with taleuaces, þat men beres,
Wrastling with laddes, putting of ston,
Harping and piping, ful god won,
Leyk of mine, of hasard ok,
Romanz reding on þe bok;
Þer mouthe men here þe gestes singe,
Þe gleymen on þe tabour dinge;
Þer mouhte men se þe boles beyte,
And þe bores, with hundes teyte;
Þo mouthe men se eueril gleu,
Þer mouthe men se hw grim greu;
Was neuere yete ioie more
In al þis werd, þan þo was þore.

[When he was king, there were the greatest rejoicings you could imagine: jousting with sharp spears, fencing with swords which men carry, lads wrestling, putting stones, lots of harping and piping, games of backgammon and dice, reading romances from books; there one could hear tales sung, minstrels beating the drum, and boars being baited. There one might see every kind of glee, there one might see how the excitement grew. There had never before been so much rejoicing in the whole world as there was that day.]

So every kind of glee, and note also the gleymen, 'glee-men', the minstrels, helping to provide it. This is a royal entertainment but it's really just a description of the jolly times of medieval Lincolnshire writ large. It sounds fun - worth getting up 'with the lark in the morning' for that!

"This morning is the first of May, / The primest of the year"

May Day is a Big Deal in Oxford, where people first gather at 6am to hear Magdalen choir sing madrigals and then proceed to wander around in a puzzled, awake-too-early kind of daze as Morris dancers and Jack-in-the-Green weave their way through the crowds. This morning I didn't brave the rain or the early start, so here are some photographs from last year's idyllic May Day, when the sun shone.

Dawn over Magdalen


Looking up the High Street...

Looking down the High Street.


The towers of All Souls


Back then I lived next door to Holywell Cemetery, which explains why I went to take pictures in a graveyard on the year's most life-filled day. It was quiet and dewy and full of flowers.




Morris dancers in Broad Street:


Christ Church meadow, as the sun grew stronger:





This, I think, is may.

"My heart is like a singing bird"

Continuing yesterday's youtube theme, this video is an absolutely perfect combination of words, music and pictures - for none of which am I responsible, but which I highly recommend. (Also, I know the birthday is this poem is a metaphorical one, but today actually is my birthday, and I couldn't think of anything else to post about...)

The Nameless Lassie

There 's nane may ever guess or trow my bonnie lassie's name,
There 's nane may ken the humble cot my lassie ca's her hame;
Yet though my lassie's nameless, an' her kin o' low degree,
Her heart is warm, her thochts are pure, and, O! she 's dear to me.

She 's gentle as she 's bonnie, an' she 's modest as she 's fair,
Her virtues, like her beauties a', are varied as they're rare;
While she is light an' merry as the lammie on the lea--
For happiness an' innocence thegither aye maun be!

Whene'er she shews her blooming face, the flowers may cease to blaw,
An' when she opes her hinnied lips, the air is music a';
But when wi' ither's sorrows touch'd, the tear starts to her e'e,
Oh! that 's the gem in beauty's crown, the priceless pearl to me.

Within my soul her form 's enshrined, her heart is a' my ain,
An' richer prize, or purer bliss, nae mortal e'er can gain;
The darkest paths o' life I tread wi' steps o' bounding glee,
Cheer'd onward by the love that lichts my nameless lassie's e'e.




'The Nameless Lassie' is a song by James Ballantine (1806-1877) - who was both a poet and stained-glass artist, what a combination!  Unlike the other Victorian Scottish songs I've posted so far, this one shades a little too far into the sentimental and the didactic for me (my tolerance level for Victorian sentimentalism is sky-high, but this is just a bit much - I think it's the 'lammie' that does it!).  But I do like the last verse, and, in combination with the lovely tune, by Alexander Mackenzie (1819-1857), the effect is really rather charming.

My faithful fond one

I thought I'd posted this pretty little song before, but since I haven't, here it is. The words of 'My faithful fond one' are translated from the Gaelic ('Mo Run Geal Dileas') by 'Professor Blackie' (you can read those here); this is how they appear in Songs of the North. Here's the sole performance on youtube, but it looks like Percy Grainger also set it - I must investigate this further...


Chorus:
My fair and rare one, my faithful fond one,
My faithful fair, wilt not come to me,
On bed of pain here who remain here
With weary longing for a sight of thee?

If wings were mine now to skim the brine now,
And like a seagull to float me free,
To Islay's shore now, they'd bear me o'er now,
Where dwells the maiden that is dear to me.

O were I yonder with her to wander
Beneath the green hills, beside the sea,
With birds in chorus that warble o'er us
And ruth of kisses so sweet to me.

For let the sky here be wet or dry here,
With peaceful breeze here or windy war,
In winter glooming or summer blooming,
'Tis all one season, love, when thou art far.

A Mothers' Day Carol

Today is Mid-Lent Sunday or Laetare Sunday or 'Refreshment Sunday', the day when Lenten discipline is relaxed a little. In England it's also Mothering Sunday (for the history of which, see here), and the Oxford Book of Carols includes a sweet little modern carol in honour of this (semi-)medieval tradition, 'It is the day of all the year'.

Various places on the internet will tell you this is a medieval carol, but it's not - it was written by George Hare Leonard, a writer and historian, in the first part of the twentieth century. It's a nice bit of medieval revivalism, and it is sung to a medieval tune - that of the fifteenth-century German carol, 'Ich weiss ein lieblich Engelspiel' ('I know a lovely angel-game'), which you can hear here (at 2:48):



(If you're like me, you can't hear the name of that carol without thinking of the Chalet School's Christmas plays and Joey Bettany's 'golden voice' reducing everyone to tears...)

The Oxford Book of Carols editors have this mouth-watering note:

"'He who goes a-mothering finds violets in the lane' [this is a proverb]. In many parts of the country it was the custom for the children of the family who had left the old home to come back to visit their Mother on the 4th Sunday in Lent (Mid-Lent Sunday). The eldest son would bring a wheaten cake - in modern times a plum cake with an icing of sugar, or a simnel-cake. Sometimes cinnamon comfits ("lambs'-tails") or little white sugar-plums with a carraway seed, or some morsel of spice within - such as may still be found at country fairs - were brought for an offering. One of the children home for the day would stay in and mind the house, so that the mother should be free for once to attend morning service at the church."

Perhaps we could also name today Sugar-Plum Sunday.

It is the day of all the year,
Of all the year the one day,
When I shall see my mother dear
And bring her cheer,
A-mothering on Sunday.

So I'll put on my Sunday coat,
And in my hat a feather,
And get the lines I writ by rote,
With many a note,
That I've a-strung together.

And now to fetch my wheaten cake
To fetch it from the baker,
He promised me, for mother's sake,
The best he'd bake
For me to fetch and take her.

Well have I known, as I went by
One hollow lane, that none day
I'd fail to find - for all they're shy -
Where violets lie,
As I went home on Sunday.

My sister Jane is waiting-maid
Along with Squire's lady;
And year by year her part she's played
And home she stayed
To get the dinner ready.

For mother’ll come to Church you'll see-
Of all the year it's the day-
'The one,' she'll say, 'that's made for me'
And so it be:
It's every Mother's free day.

The boys will all come home from town
Not one will miss that one day;
And every maid will bustle down
To show her gown,
A-mothering on Sunday.

It is the day of all the year,
Of all the year the one day;
And here come I, my mother dear,
And bring you cheer,
A-mothering on Sunday.

'Bold Fisherman' and the Heroes of Medieval Romance

[I started writing this post about a folk song, but it somehow turned into a post about Havelok the Dane instead. So I left it for a few days and started writing a post about a different folk song, only for that also to turn into a post about Havelok the Dane before I'd even realised it. This is ridiculous, and probably makes the points I was trying to make in each post look less convincing that they otherwise would be, because you're just going to think I'm obsessed with Havelok the Dane and attempting to link everything to it whether appropriate or not. I assure you that's not the case! I could post this one and then leave the other for a few weeks, to make myself look like obsessive, but instead I'm just going to post them both and if it undermines my point, I apologise. The songs are still great ;)]

A Folk Song A Day reminded me that I've long been meaning to post about one of my favourite traditional songs, 'Bold Fisherman'. You can listen to an excellent rendering at that link, but I think I still prefer Tim Van Eyken's gorgeous version:



'Bold Fisherman' is a widely-distributed song, collected from all over England and beyond; this page has different versions of the lyrics and here you can see all the places it was collected/recorded, which is lots of fun if you like that kind of thing (which I do). For instance, Vaughan Williams collected it in East Horndon, Essex, while at Northmoor, just outside Oxford, a woman named Sarah Calcott sang it to Alfred Williams, who wrote:

Northmoor is a lonely little village on the banks of the Thames between Standlake and Oxford. The road is broken by the river which must be crossed by ferry to Bablock Hythe and Appleton. The old woman, who lives alone, sang me several songs including Lord Bateman, while her pet jackdaw sat upon the arm of her chair in the fire light. At the same time, though extremely poor, she insisted upon my taking tea with her, and proudly filled my pockets with choicest apples to eat on the way home.

Awesome. Isn't it wonderful, the stuff you can find on the internet?

Lucy Broadwood collected it from a woman named Mrs Joiner at Chiswell Green, Hertfordshire, on 7th September 1914, and wrote a little about it in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society 19 (1915), pp.122-148. There she says:

I have always had a strong impression that the modern broadside may be a vulgar and secularized transmutation of a mediaeval allegorical original. To students of Gnostic and Early Christian mystical literature, the River, the Sea, the royal Fisher, the three Vestures of Light (or Robes of Glory), the Recognition and Adoration by the illuminated humble Soul, the free Pardon, the mystical Union of the Bride to the Bridegroom in the House of the Father (or Father-House), are familiar elements, and we can find them all, certainly, amongst the variants of this ballad.

This is the opinion which attracts some derision in the articles linked above, and it does obviously go too far; it's also very typical of this era of folk-song studies (just look at all those capital letters!). But it's not actually that silly a theory in essence, though of course unprovable; the allegory Lucy Broadwood was looking for would be most profitably sought not in 'Gnostic and Early Christian Literature' but in medieval romance.

The idea of Christ-as-suitor is everywhere in medieval religious literature; I can't think of a better way to illustrate this than to link to this passage from Ancrene Wisse, in which Christ is imagined as the knightly suitor of a proud and disdainful lady. Another example which always springs to mind when I'm listening to 'Bold Fisherman' is the fifteenth-century lyric 'In a valley of this restless mind', which also features a handsome nobleman seeking and wooing his wayward spouse, and forgiving her inability to love him - but it is, of course, Christ wooing the soul. What we see in these texts as in so many others are generic features of romance being adapted for Christian literature in imaginative, creative ways, intended to inspire the soul with a love of God.

And this goes both ways: just as Christ is often presented as a hero of romance, so heroes of romance are often presented as Christ figures. By this I mean that they are paragons of men: handsome, humble, generous, chaste, brave, explicitly Christian (attending mass, praying, bearing crosses, etc.), with near-supernatural strength but also near-supernatural heroic virtue. Men in folk songs are not usually like this... The bold fisherman, who has come specifically to seek his lover, who is covered in (highly symbolic, kingly) chains of gold, and who is superbly forgiving of the woman's transgression, is much more like a hero of medieval romance than anything else. I'd be prepared to bet that this is what set off Lucy Broadwood's intuition (or "strong impression") that this song has a little more to it than the obvious boy-meets-girl story. I can see how it's easy to be scornful of her language, but some parallels from medieval romances might help to set the song in context.

For instance, the verse where the fisherman takes off his shirt and she realises he's a nobleman. Heroes in romance often have physical tokens which promote recognition of their true identity even when in disguise - unusual beauty, resemblance to some particular person (a father, for instance), their own particular heraldry, distinctive clothes or weapons, etc. In this particular case I can't help being reminded of Havelok, from the Middle English romance Havelok the Dane, which takes this extremely literally. Havelok, the son of the king of Denmark, is deprived of his inheritance and his royal identity as a child by a wicked usurper, but his true nature literally shines out of him: when he sleeps, a light streams from his mouth. He also has a birthmark (the romance calls it a kinemerk, which means 'royal token') in the shape of a red gold cross on his right shoulder - the kind of birthmark only a king could have. The combination of the shining light and the golden cross reveals his true identity on three crucial occasions in the romance - first as a child, when he is about to be killed by the fisherman who has been ordered to murder him; again when he is staying with a Danish nobleman, and when he's asleep the whole house sees the light streaming from his mouth and the cross on his naked shoulder; but most famously on his wedding night, when his new wife Goldboru, who believes Havelok to be only a kitchen boy, realises from these tokens that she has in fact married a prince (I posted an extract from that scene a little while ago).

Recognition scenes are a very common trope of both romance and folk song, but I do wonder just a little bit if the revelation moment in 'Bold Fisherman', where the woman learns the fisherman's true identity by seeing rings of gold concealed by his clothing, is a rationalisation of a kinemerk sort of scene. It's a little different from the use of a ring as a recognition token, which is extremely common in ballads and folk songs - including one which is definitely a version of a medieval romance, Hind Horn, a much-shortened version of King Horn, a romance in which the hero does a great deal of 'rowing upon the tide' to meet his lady love. Fishes feature prominently in King Horn, where the heroine has a frightening dream in which a giant fish bursts from a net (symbolising that someone will try to destroy her); when she is captured and held prisoner, the royal hero (another dispossessed prince) disguises himself as a fisherman to gain entrance to the castle, in order to show her the gold ring that reveals his true identity. Horn, with his extraordinary personal beauty and virtue and his twelve loyal disciples... sorry, I mean, 'companions', is another Christ figure, and there's no way that in this romance the fisherman disguise is not meant to recall that.

(I hope you noticed that Havelok was supposed to be killed by a fisherman; that man adopts Havelok instead and brings him up, living a fisherman's life at Grimsby. Havelok contains more words for different kinds of fish than any not-about-angling book you could care to mention).

So fishermen and rings and secret marks of identity all say 'medieval Christian romance' to me, and this is the context in which I think 'Bold Fisherman' is best interpreted. Of course this does not admit of definite proof, and I wouldn't encourage anyone to accept Lucy Broadwood's ideas about allegories of mystic union and Gnosticism - that's looking in the wrong direction. But the relationship between the ballad and medieval romance is undeniable, and that means that some of the generic features of medieval romance - such as Christ-as-wooer, and wooer-as-Christ - have made their way into ballads. Make fun of allegorical theories and call it just a 'very classic love story' all you like, but stories have histories, and those histories help us understand them. I don't know why folk singers are so fond of claiming otherwise.