'Mary hath borne alone'

Virgin and Child, from a 15th-century Book of Hours (BL Add. 50001, f. 119v)

Mary hath borne alone
The Son of God in throne.

That maiden mild her child did keep
As mothers doth echone, [as all mothers do]
But her dear son full sore did weep
For sinful man alone.

She rocked him and sung 'Lullay',
But ever he made great moan.
'Dear son,' she said, 'tell, I thee pray,
Why dost thy weep alone?'

'Mother,' he said, 'I shall be slain,
Who sin did never none,
And suffer death with woeful pain;
Therefore I weep alone.'

'Lullay,' she said, 'sleep and be still,
And let be all thy moan,
For all thing is at thine own will
In heaven and earth alone.'

'Mother,' he said, 'how should I sleep?
How should I leave my moan?
I have more cause to sob and weep,
Since I shall die alone.'

'Dear son,' she said, 'the king of bliss,
That is so high in throne,
Knoweth that thou didst never amiss,
Why shouldest thou die alone?'

'Mother,' he said, 'only of thee
I took both flesh and bone,
To save mankind and make it free
With my heart blood alone.'

'Dear son,' she said, 'thou art equal
To God, that is in throne,
For man therefore, that is so thrall,
Why shouldest thou die alone?'

'Mother,' he said, 'my father's will
And mine, they be but one;
Therefore by skill I must fulfill [for this reason I must fulfill]
My father's will alone.'

'Dear son,' she said, 'since thou hast take
Of me both flesh and bone,
If it may be, me not forsake
In care and woe alone.'

'For man I must the ransom pay,
The which to hell is gone,
Mother,' he said, 'on Good Friday,
For he may not alone.' [man cannot do this by himself]

'Dear son,' she said unto him tho [then]
'When thou from me art gone,
Then shall I live in care and woe
Without comfort alone.'

'Mother,' he said, 'take thou no thought,
For me make thou no moan;
When I have bought that I have wrought, [when I have redeemed what I created]
Thou shalt not be alone.'

'On the third day, I thee behight, [promise]
After that I am gone,
I will arise by my great might
And comfort thee alone.'

Baby Jesus (BL Add. 50001, f. 95v)

This is a poem from a manuscript of carols which was compiled by the Canterbury friar James Ryman at the end of the fifteenth century. Ryman's manuscript (now CUL MS. Ee 1.12) contains more than 150 carols on a range of topics and in varying moods, from a cheery farewell to Advent fasting to stately songs in praise of the Virgin Mary and sombre songs like this one. In this week's Catholic Herald I've written a short piece about medieval Christmas celebrations, with an emphasis on festivity and fun and all the things people in the Middle Ages did to celebrate the season, and medieval carols give us some lively pictures of that merriment. But amid the jollity there is another strain, which seeks to explore something more serious, sad, and strange. Medieval carols can speak of joy, comfort, liberation - but they can also imagine a tiny baby telling his mother 'I shall die alone.'

At this time of year medieval images of the Nativity are to be found everywhere, and they usually look serene and beautiful - gazing mother, quiet baby, angels adoring. Some medieval Nativity carols are like this too, but others - a surprisingly large number - offer Nativity scenes which are not peaceful but deeply painful and poignant: the baby Jesus shivering in the cold, or crying and screeching, while Mary and Joseph lament their poverty. I wrote about one particularly powerful example in detail here, but I think this one, gentle and dignified and sad, is my favourite example of the theme:

Child, it is a wepyng dale that thou art comen in;
Thy poure cloutes it proven wel, thy bed made in the bynne;
Cold and hunger thou most thoeln, as thou were geten in synne,
And after deyen on the tree for love of all mankynne.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, no wonder thogh thou care,
Thou art comen amonges hem that thy deeth shullen yare.

The central idea in all these poems is that we live in a 'weeping world', a place of many sorrows; this baby faces pain and death in his future because he has come to share that sorrow, to feel the grief that all human beings feel, and to suffer for our sake.

In James Ryman's poem the keyword, repeated again and again, is that poignant alone. The carol plays delicately with the different shades of meaning this word had in Middle English, so it doesn't quite mean the same thing every time it is used here: sometimes it means 'solitary', but it also means 'only', conveying the sense that this child alone, by his death, can save mankind. In response to Mary's confusion about why her child should suffer by his Father's will, alone also emphasises the unity of will between the Father and the Son (they are 'all one'). No wonder poor Mary struggles to understand, and the carol follows several stages of her confusion and her attempts at comfort: if everything in the universe is at her baby's command, she wonders, what can there be to cry about? She knows her child's power, and his nature - that he is God, equal with his Father - but not what that means, or what it will mean for her. His death alone is also his choice alone; her child is God enough to choose his own death, and yet human enough to weep for it.

It's Mary's reaction which makes this poem particularly moving, especially when she begins to comprehend, and asks him not to leave her: 'If it may be, me not forsake / In care and woe alone.' The force of her grief is reminiscent (perhaps deliberately so) of the powerful dialogues between Mary and Christ on the cross, such as 'Stond wel, moder, under rode', where she clings to her son and cannot let him go, though he begs her to let him die. There she learns, her son tells her, a common sorrow: 'What pain they endure who children bear, / What sorrow they have who children lose.' In her grief she gains kinship with all mothers, just as Christ, becoming a crying baby, shares a pain we all have known.

This genre of medieval poem can be painful reading at Christmastime, but it seems more honest and clear-eyed than the sentimentality which often surrounds a modern Christmas; there is no expectation here that everyone is happy and jolly, living the perfect life which really exists only in Christmas adverts and newspaper supplements. In truth many people at Christmas do feel very much alone; this is a season which, precisely because of its expectation of pleasure, draws painful attention to absences in our lives - whether a specific person or place we are missing, or a more general sense of something we wish to have and don't. These poems offer companionship in that sorrow. Their predominant mood is compassion, in its literal sense: Christ has come into this 'weeping world' to suffer with us. This baby grieves for us, and the idea is that we should be moved by these poems to feel compassion for him and for his mother. It's almost impossible not to, just as it's hard to hear a crying baby and not respond to it. These poems seek to provoke a stirring of what Middle English poets called kynd love - the love which is innate to all creatures, a part of our essential nature, which comes ultimately from God and can be trained to lead us back to him. The love between a mother and her baby is the most kynd instinct in the human heart, Julian of Norwich says; and so she explains why God chose to become a child to his mother that he might be a mother to us all:

Our kynd Mother, our gracious Mother, for he would all wholly become our Mother in all things, he took the ground of his work full low and full mildly in the maiden’s womb... Our high God, the sovereign wisdom of all, in this low place he arrayed him and dyte him [prepared himself] full ready in our poor flesh, himself to do the service and the office of motherhood in all things. The mother’s service is nearest, readiest, and surest. Nearest for it is most of kynd, readiest for it is most of love, and surest for it is most of truth. This office might not nor could never be done to the full but by him alone. We know that all our mothers bear us to pain and to dying. And what is that but our very Mother Jesus? He, all love, beareth us to joy and to endless living...

This fair, lovely word mother, it is so sweet and so kynd of itself that it may not verily be said of none nor to none but of him and to him who is very Mother of life and of all... And in this I saw that all our debts that we owe, by God’s bidding, to fatherhood and motherhood is fulfilled in true loving of God, which blessed love Christ worketh in us; and this was shewed in all, and namely in the high plenteous words where he sayeth, I it am that thou lovest.

Miniature Nativity (BL Add. 50001, f. 100v)

'Every word here is a wonder'

Nativity (Royal MS 17 E VII 2, f.134, 14th century)

I've just written a short piece for the classical music website Corymbus on the medieval carol 'As I lay on Yule's night'. It's a beautiful and poignant lullaby carol, and you can read about it here.

This carol survives in several versions, but the one I discussed comes from a manuscript compiled by a Norfolk friar, John of Grimestone, in 1372. (The manuscript is now Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS. 18.7.21.) It seems to have been John's preaching handbook, in which he collected texts and materials for use in his sermons. His collection includes several tender poems about or addressed to the infant Christ, as well as the one described in my article: this lullaby (Lullay, lullay, little child/Thou who wast so stern and wild), 'Learn to love as I love thee', and 'Lullay, little child, rest thee a throwe'.

Alongside these longer poems, the manuscript also contains numerous miniature verses in English - mostly translations of Latin proverbs or verse tags - of the kind a medieval preacher might slip into a sermon. They are very short, often just couplets, and there are more than two hundred of them in total (here's a list). I find them strangely fascinating, in their extreme brevity and pithiness, so here are a few of my favourites. First, four lines 'on pleasures worth attending to':

To þe flour springende
To þe foul singende
To þe deu fallende
To þe snow meltende

To the flower springing
To the bird singing
To the dew falling
To the snow melting.

Good advice! On the dangers of wasting time (lorn = lost):

For lore of godes I wepe sore
but more for lore of day
Þou godes ben lorn I may han more
Time lorn aȝen comen ne may.

For loss of goods I weep sore
But more for loss of day;
Though goods be lorn I may get more;
Time lorn I never may.

On wisdom:

He is wis þat can ben war or he is wo
He is wis þat louet is frend & is fo
He is wis þat hat inou & þanne seit Ho
He is wis þat dotȝ ay wel an seit ay so

He is wise who can beware before he comes to woe;
He is wise who loves his friend and his foe;
He is wise who has enough and then says ‘Whoa!’
He is wise who does ever well and says ever so.

On study and sin:

Bisiliche ȝef þe to lore
Als þu suldest liuen eueremore
But fle senne in ich a play
As to morwen sulde ben þi ded day

Busily give yourself to lore [learning]
As if you should live evermore;
But flee sin in every play [pleasure]
As if tomorrow were your dying day.

Why you should beware of praise:

To eueri preysing is knit a knot
Þe preysing wer good ne wer þe but
I ne woth neuere wer it may ben founde
Þat with sum but it is ibounde

Within all praise is knit a knot:
Praise would be good, were it not for the 'but';
I know not where it may be found
Where with a ‘but’ it isn't bound.

And so on...

These miniature texts intersect with John's longer poems in interesting ways. The tender approach to children found in the lullaby lyrics is also noticeable in these verses, as in this couplet:

Children ben litel brith & schene & eþe for to fillen
Suetliche pleyȝende fre of ȝifte & eþe for to stillen

Children are little, bright and fair, and easy to satisfy;
Sweetly playing, free with giving, and easy to pacify.

And the poignancy of the lullaby lyrics is there too:

With a sorwe & a clut
Al þis werd comet in & out

With a sorrow and a clout
All this world comes in and out.

A 'clout' is a cloth, a winding-sheet, such as both infants and corpses are wrapped in. The idea here, vividly expressed, is that the beginning and end of life are in many ways very similar. This couplet succinctly encapsulates a poetic conceit explored at much greater length in the lullaby lyrics (especially 'Lullay, little child, rest thee a throwe'): that the crying of a baby, and perhaps also here the pain of childbirth, is a kind of foreshadowing of life's inevitable sorrows. The idea is that a baby, who cries without understanding why it's crying, has cause indeed to cry, because it has been born helpless into a world full of pain. The lullaby lyrics apply this to Christ by having him speak of his painful future and his death, not because it is unique to him, but because it is the common human fate he has chosen to share. The difference is that the baby Christ, the infant Word, knows it and (in these poems) can articulate it, where an ordinary baby has only a wordless cry.

'With a sorrow and a clout / All this world comes in and out.' John of Grimestone's language here finds an echo in the Christmas sermon of a later preacher, Lancelot Andrewes, describing how 'He that cometh here in clouts, He will come in the clouds one day':

We may well begin with Christ in the cratch; we must end with Christ on the cross. The cratch is a sign of the cross... To be swaddled thus as a child, doth that offend? What then when ye shall see Him pinioned and bound as a malefactor? To lie in a manger, is that so much? How then, when ye see shall Him hang on the cross? But so, — primo... ne discrepet imum, 'that His beginning and His end may suit well and not disagree', sic oportuit Christum nasci, 'thus ought Christ to be born', and this behoved to be His sign...

Signs are taken for wonders. 'Master, we would fain see a sign,' that is a miracle. And in this sense it is a sign to wonder at. Indeed, every word here is a wonder. An infant, Verbum infans, the Word without a word; the eternal Word not able to speak a word... swaddled; and that a wonder too. 'He,' that (as in the thirty-eighth of Job he saith), "taketh the vast body of the main sea, turns it to and fro, as a little child, and rolls it about with the swaddling bands of darkness' — He to come thus into clouts, himself! 3. But yet, all this is well; all children are so. But in præsepi, that is it, there is the wonder. Children lie not there; He doth. There lieth He, the Lord of glory without glory. Instead of a palace, a poor stable; of a cradle of state, a beast's cratch; no pillow but a lock of hay; no hangings but dust and cobwebs; no attendants, but in medio animalium, as the Fathers read the third of Habakkuk. For if the inn were full, the stable was not empty we may be sure. A sign, this, nay three in one, able to amaze any...

For loquitor signis, 'signs have their speech,' and this is no dumb sign. What saith it then to us? Christ, though as yet He cannot speak as a new-born babe, yet by it He speaks, and out of His crib, as a pulpit, this day preaches to us; and His theme is, Discite a Me, 'Learn of Me, for I am humble,' humble in My birth ye all see. This is the præcipe of the præsepe, as I may call it, the lesson of Christ's cratch.

This is from a sermon preached in 1618. Poetry and preaching can be very close together, as John of Grimestone knew; and Andrewes' words are probably best known today not from his sermon but via Eliot's Gerontion:

Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign”:
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger

In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers.

Þa hyrdas ða spræcon him betweonan, æfter ðæra engla fram-færelde, "Uton gefaran to Bethleem, and geseon þæt word þe geworden is, and God us geswutelode." Eala hu rihtlice hi andetton þone halgan geleafan mid þisum wordum! "On frymðe wæs word, and þæt word wæs mid Gode, and þæt word wæs God". Word bið wisdomes geswutelung, and þæt Word, þæt is se Wisdom, is acenned of ðam Ælmihtigum Fæder, butan anginne; forðan ðe he wæs æfre God of Gode, Wisdom of ðam wisan Fæder. Nis he na geworht, forðan ðe he is God, and na gesceaft; ac se Ælmihtiga Fæder gesceop þurh ðone Wisdom ealle gesceafta, and hi ealle ðurh þone Halgan Gast geliffæste.

The shepherds then spoke amongst themselves, after the departure of the angels: "Let us go to Bethlehem, and see þæt word þe geworden is [the thing which has come to pass], which God has made known to us." O, how rightly they confessed the holy faith with these words! "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." A word is the revealing of wisdom, and the Word, which is the Wisdom, is brought forth from the Almighty Father, without beginning; for he was ever God of God, Wisdom of the Wise Father. He is not created, because he is God, and no created thing; the Almighty God created all created things through that Wisdom, and gave them life through the Holy Ghost.

And this is Ælfric, preaching on the same text as Lancelot Andrewes, six hundred years earlier. Ælfric was a poet too, and a lover of language; and þæt word þe geworden is, Ælfric's version of 'this thing which has come to pass', is literally a 'word within a word', since word is wrapped inside geworden. (I wrote about this at greater length here). 'Every word here is a wonder'!

Nativity from BL Stowe 12, which is (like John of Grimestone) from 14th-century Norfolk

'Learn to love as I love thee'

Nativity (BL Harley 2915, f.28)

Learn to love as I love thee.
In all my limbs thou mayest see
How sore they quake for cold;
For thee I suffer all this woe,
Love me, sweet, and no mo; [no other]
To thee me take and hold.

Jesu, sweet son dear,
In poor bed thou liest now here,
And that grieveth me sore.
For thy cradle is a bier,
Ox and ass are thy fere, [companions]
Weep may I therefore!

Jesu, sweet, be not wroth;
I have neither scrap nor cloth
Thee in for to fold;
I have but a piece of a lappe, [the fold of a cloak]
Therefore lay thy feet to my pap
And keep thee from the cold.

Cold thee taketh, I may well see;
For love of man it must be
For thee to suffer woe;
For better it is thou suffer this
Than man should lose heaven's bliss.
Thou must ransom him thereto.

Since it must be that thou be dead
To save man from the fiend,
Thy sweet will be done.
But let me not stay here too long:
After thy death me underfonge [receive]
To live for evermore. Amen.

One last Christmas poem. This is a version in modern spelling of a fourteenth-century poem (the original can be found here) which imagines a dialogue between Mary and the infant Christ. It comes from a manuscript which belonged to a friar called John of Grimestone (the manuscript is now Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates Lib. 18.7.21; the first three verses also appear in British Library, Harley 7322). His manuscript, which dates to 1372, is a collection of preaching materials, containing a large amount of English verse and including several tender poems about the baby Christ: 'Lullay little child, rest thee a throwe' is especially lovely, as are 'As I lay upon a night' and this lullaby carol. Although it focuses on Christ's death rather than his birth, Grimestone's 'Love me brought' also has some parallels to this poem.

Long-term readers of this blog will know that I have a soft spot for Middle English lullaby carols, especially ones in which the baby and his mother talk about his future, the suffering both will face before his work on earth is completed. I always feel - perhaps this is excessively literal of me - that these poems are more fitting reading for the weeks after Christmas than for the day itself. They look forward, turning the reader's attention from Christ's birth to his future life, while being careful always to evoke the naturalistic details of their setting in his first newborn days: makeshift cradle, anxious mother, a baby to be fed, wrapped, soothed, sung to. This one is not a lullaby, though the lulling ls of its first line might bring the sound to mind, but the speaker of all except the first verse is Mary; the fact that the verses are all dialogue makes it possible for the reader to take on her voice, to feel and to plead with her. 'Learn to love as I love thee', she, and we, are told.

These poems are sweet and gentle but tinged with sadness, the vulnerability of the child and his mother's fears piercing any sentimentality with a sharp dart of cold realism. Cold is a word which quivers through this poem, and it seems to be the discomfort most troubling baby and mother - not only because they're poor, we might think, and staying in a chilly stable, but perhaps too because it suggests something about the nature of the world this child has come to. In Middle English cold often evokes death, the chill of the clammy grave, and so hints at the death the baby will face for mankind's sake; and it also suggests the coldness of a hard heart, cruelty and lack of love, the very opposite of the warm-hearted tenderness we are supposed to learn from this poem. The months after Christmas are usually colder than December itself, despite the turn of the year at the solstice; there used to be a proverbial saying, 'as the day lengthens, so the cold strengthens'. And so it is here, as the elation of the child's birth turns into contemplation of the sorrow his future will bring. It reminds me of Neale's 'Earth Today Rejoices', a version of a medieval carol which is titled, in some carol-books, 'A January Carol':

Though the cold grows stronger,
Though the world loves night;
Yet the days grow longer,
Christ is born, our Light.

BL Royal 2 A XXII, f. 13v (The 'Westminster Psalter', c.1200)

'Tidings, tidings that be true: Sorrow is past and joy doth renew'

BL Sloane 2321, f. 125

By this point in January, Christmas can feel like a distant memory. But in the Middle Ages the Christmas season lasted forty days, ending with the Feast of the Presentation on February 2, and medieval carols enjoin us to keep singing Christmas songs, and exploring Christmas themes, all through the season - 'Sing we Yule til Candlemas!', we are encouraged. According to the carols it's not until Candlemas that Christmas bids farewell, or that we bid farewell to him:

Farewell, Christmas fair and free!
Farewell, New Year's Day with thee!
Farewell, the holy Epiphany!
And to Mary now sing we:
Revertere, revertere,
The queen of bliss and of beauty.

The idea of celebrating Christmas for a month afterwards (rather than a month beforehand, as people generally do today) appeals to me, and seems somehow healthier than the modern desire to celebrate early and then purge as soon as January brings the return of workday routine. I don't know about you, but for me January is a much harder month to get through than December - colder and greyer, without anything in particular to look forward to - and if the thought of Christmas offers hope and comfort in the darkness, those are more welcome in January than at any other time. So I won't apologise for posting another medieval Christmas carol today; these carols are so full of wit, creativity and imagination that I can't resist sharing just one more out of the ample supply. (If you read a medieval Christmas carol a day for the forty days of the Christmas season, you wouldn't run out for years!). There are three of the forty days remaining, so here's a fifteenth-century carol which doesn't feel too out of place for the end of January; it looks both backward and forward.

Tidinges, tidinges that be true,
Sorowe is paste and joye dothe renue.

Qwereas Adam caused be sinne
Oure nature thus to be mortall,
A maiden sone dothe nowe begin
For to repaire us from that fall.
And that is true;
The name of him is Criste Jesu.

Sume of oure kinde hathe hadd such grase
That sin his birthe they did him se
Bothe sonne and mother fase to fase
In the chefe cite calde Jure.
And that is true;
Bothe kinges and schepardes they it knue.

The prophettes thereof ware nothing dismaide,
Of that tidinges before that they hadde tolde;
For nowe it is full righte as they saide,
A clene maide hathe borne a king in folde.
And that is true;
For he is borne to ware the purpull hue.

E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics (London, 1921), p. 133. In the third verse, 'in folde' is the editors' suggestion to complete a defective line.

The language of this carol is fairly straightforward, but here's a translation all the same:

Tidings, tidings that be true,
Sorrow is past and joy doth renew.

Whereas Adam caused by sin
Our nature thus to be mortal,
A maiden's son doth now begin
For to repair us from that fall.
And that is true;
The name of him is Christ Jesu.

Some of our kind hath had such grace
That since his birth they did him see,
Both son and mother face to face
In the chief city called Jure. [i.e. Judea]
And that is true;
Both kings and shepherds they it knew.

The prophets thereof were nothing dismayed
Of the tidings before that they had told;
For now it is full right as they said,
A clean maid hath born a king in folde. [on earth]
And that is true;
For he is born to wear the purple hue.

The point of the last verse is that the prophets found their own 'tidings' proved true, so they were not dismaide ('confounded'). 'The purple hue' is a royal robe, purple being the traditional colour of kings and emperors; but it's also the colour of blood and of mourning, and so a reminder that Christ is born to die.

BL Sloane 2321, f. 54

This carol forms a natural bookend to one I posted in Advent, 'A marvellous thing I have mused in my mind'. It comes from the same manuscript, in which these two are the only carols among a disparate range of other texts (the manuscript is British Library, Lansdowne 379, whose contents are described in that link). But it's not only their manuscript context which makes these carols seem like twins. 'A marvellous thing' draws on the language and imagery of the Old Testament prophecies referenced in the third verse of 'Tidings':

A marvellous thing I have mused in my mind:
How that Veritas sprang out of the ground,
And Justicia for all mankind,
From heaven to earth he came down.

The mention of Veritas also finds an echo in this carol, with its refrain 'tidings that be true' and repeated line 'And that is true'. The more times I read this carol, the more I think its insistent repetition of the word true is significant. These refrains work on two levels: they don't just assert the verity of the 'tidings', but (thanks to the flexible nature of Middle English grammar) can also be read as a reminder that the tidings themselves are Truth, that is, Christ, truth incarnate. In Modern English we tend to restrict the relative pronoun that to inanimate things, but in Middle English it was regularly used for people; so if you wanted, you could read every instance in this carol of 'And that is true' not just as a general comment on the truth of the statement which has just been made, but as a reinforcement of the reference to Christ in the preceding verse. It works each time, I think:

'A maiden's son doth now begin / For to repair us from that fall; And he is true'
'Since his birth they did him see, / Both son and mother... And he is true'
'A clean maid hath born a king in folde, / And he is true'

You don't have to read it that way, but you could if you chose, and it adds an extra layer to the carol's focus on what is 'true'.

The refrain's exclamation 'Tidings!' means 'News!', but the word's an interesting one and worth a little exploration. It appears in the refrain of a number of carols, and in some cases seems to suggest a dramatic context - a person playing the character of a messenger who comes with news. But since the word runs the gamut from respectable, important news (the gospels, or prophecies) all the way down to gossip, rumour and slander, it's a slippery concept. Ultimately all 'tidings' are only words, and there's no guarantee of their truthfulness. This is an idea explored by Chaucer through his House of Fame, which is "full of tydynges... of fals and soth compouned" - rumour and gossip which spread like wildfire whether true or not. (Chaucer's House of Fame is Twitter, basically.) Maybe 'tidings which are true' is meant to be a little bit paradoxical, or at least to cause some surprise. We could compare the 'wonder tidings' in the carol 'What tidings bringest thou, messenger?', where the suggestion is that the messenger's tidings, the paradoxes of Christ's birth, are almost too radical and strange to be believed: a new-born baby who has always existed, a virgin bearing a child, a daughter who is her own father's mother. Who would believe such bizarre rumours, hearing them for the first time? And yet - 'that is true', the carols claim. In my post on 'A marvellous thing' I mused on the extraordinary power some medieval carols have for 'making strange', turning a well-known story (within what might seem to be the very simplest of poetic forms) into something new and fresh and wonderful, allowing you to hear it as if for the first time. In its exploration of the paradoxes of the Incarnation, 'What tidings bringest thou, messenger?' delights in a world turned upside down, and perhaps 'Tidings' does too, in a quieter way. (We could ask why the prophets might be 'dismayed' of their tidings, if it weren't the case that those tidings seemed too strange to be believed.) In these carols the familiar becomes strange, the strange becomes familiar, the impossible becomes true - something worth musing about for all forty days of the Christmas season, and beyond.

'As do mothers all'

BL Stowe 16, f. 120

This yonder night I saw a sight,
A star as bright as any day,
And ever among a maiden sung,
'By by, lully, lullay.'

This maiden hight Mary, she was full mild,
She knelt before her own dear child.
She lulled, she lapped,
She rolled, she wrapped,
She wept, without a nay;
She rolled him, she dressed him,
She lissed him, she blessed him,
She sang, "Dear son, lullay."

She said, "Dear son, lie still and sleep!
What cause hast thou so sore to weep?
With sighing, with sobbing,
With crying and with screeching,
All this long day,
And thus waking, with sore weeping,
With many salt tears dropping?
Lie still, dear son, I thee pray."

"Mother," he said, "for man I weep so sore,
And for his love I shall be torn,
With scourging, with threatening,
With bobbing, with beating,
For truth, mother, I say;
And on a cross full high hanging,
And to my heart full sore sticking
A spear on Good Friday."

This maiden answered with heavy cheer, [great sorrow]
"Shalt thou thus suffer, my sweet son dear?
Now I mourn, now I muse,
I all gladness refuse;
I, ever from this day.
My dear son, I thee pray,
This pain thou put away,
If it possible be may."

Fordwich, Kent

Like the lullaby I posted the other day, this carol about the infancy of Christ seems like appropriate reading for the days and weeks after Christmas. Much of the power of this poignant little poem lies in its swift-moving rhythm and rhyming verbs, which don't entirely come through in translation, so in the above version I've left some words untranslated: she lissed him means 'she comforted him' and bobbing is 'beating, tormenting'. Here's the unmodernised poem, as edited from the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole 189 (SC 6777) by Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford, 1939), pp. 7-8:

Thys yonder ny3th y sawe A sy3te,
A sterre As bry3th As ony daye
& euer A-monge A maydene songe,
'by by, lully, lullaye.'

Thys mayden hy3th mary, she was full mylde,
she knelyde by-fore here oune dere chylde.

She lullyde, She lappyde,
she rullyde, she wrapped,
She weppede wyth-owtyne nay;
She rullyde hym, she dressyde hym,
she lyssyd hym, she blessyd hym,
She sange 'dere sone, lullay'.

She sayde, 'dere sone, ly styll & slepe.
What cause hast þu so sore to wepe,

Wyth sy3hyng, wyth snobbynge,
wyth crying & wyth scrycchynge
All þis londe daye;
And þus wakynge wyth sore wepynge
Wyth many salt terys droppynge?
ly stylle, dere sone, I þe pray.'

'Moder,' he sayde, 'for mane I wepe so sore
& for hys loue I shall be tore

Wyth scorgyng, wyth thretnyng,
wyth bobbyng, wyth betyng
for sothe, moder, I saye;
And one A crosse full hy hanggyng,
And to my herte foll sore styckynge
A spere on good frydaye.'

Thys maydene Aunswerde wyth heuy chere,
'Shalt þy thus sovere, my swete sone dere?
Now y morne, now y muse,
I All gladnes refuse;
I, euer fro thys day.
My dere sone, y þe pray,
thys payne þu put Away,
and yf hyt possybyll be may.'

As a vision of Mary and her baby son, this poem belongs with a group of related poems which also begin 'this yonder (or endris, 'other') night', such as this one I posted last year. But this is perhaps the most insistently heart-tugging example, urgent and restless in tone, and offering no comfort in its final lines. This is not a peaceful scene of a mother lulling her baby to sleep: the piling up of verbs in the first verse suggests her increasingly frantic attempts to find something which will comfort the 'screeching' child (we don't often think of the baby Christ 'screeching'!). Whatever she does the baby won't be soothed, and his mother, too, is weeping - exhausted like many a new mother, we might imagine. When the child speaks he only makes things worse, explaining why he has good cause to weep, and this carol does not end, as some of the poems do, with Christ promising he will make everything right after his death; it closes with his mother's shock and grief at the future foretold for him. (Although the end of the poem may have been lost, of course). In style this carol is reminiscent of 'Suddenly afraid', another poem full of distinctive rhyming verbs and a vision of the Virgin with her son on her lap: but in that poem Christ is dead, and it's his mother who weeps and cannot be comforted.

BL Royal 2 B I, f. 76v

I posted this poem today partly as an excuse to repost the following carol (of which the unmodernised text can be found here):

Lullay, lullay, la, lullay,
My dear mother, lullay.

As I lay upon a night
Alone in my longing
Methought I saw a wondrous sight:
A maid a child rocking.

The maiden wished without a song
Her child asleep to bring;
The child thought she did him wrong,
And bade his mother sing.

"Sing now, mother," said that child,
"What me shall befall
Hereafter, when I come to age,
As do mothers all.

"Every mother, truly,
Who can her cradle keep
Is wont to lullen lovingly
And sing her child asleep.

"Sweet mother, fair and free,
Since that this is so,
I pray thee that thou lullen me,
And sing somewhat thereto."

"Sweet son," said she,
"Whereof should I sing?
I never yet knew more of thee
Than Gabriel's greeting!

"He greeted me well, upon his knee,
And said, 'Hail, Mary,
Full of grace, God is with thee.
Thou shalt bear Messiah.'

"I wondered greatly in my thought
For man knew I never none.
'Mary,' he said, 'fear thee not:
Trust God of Heaven alone.

'The Holy Ghost shall do all this.'
He said it should be done
That I should bear mankind's bliss,
Thee, my sweet son!

"He said, 'Thou shalt bear a king
In King David's city,
In all Jacob's nation
King there shall he be.'

"He said that Elizabeth
Who barren was before,
A child now conceived hath,
'Therefore believe me the more!'

"I answered blithely,
For his words me pleased,
'Lo, God's servant, here am I,
Be it as thou me said.'

"There, as he said, I thee bore
On a mid-winter night,
In maidenhead, without sorrow,
By grace of God almighty.

"The shepherds that waked in the wold
Heard a wondrous mirth
Of angels there, as they told,
At the time of thy birth.

"Sweet son, certainly,
No more can I say;
But if I could I gladly would,
To do all at thy pay." ['everything that would please you']

"Mother," said that sweet thing,
"To sing I shall thee lere [teach]
What I shall endure of suffering,
And do while I am here.

"When the seven days are done
Right as Abraham wished,
Cut shall I be with a stone
In a very tender place.

"When the twelve days are done,
By leading of a star
Three kings shall seek for me then
With gold, incense, and myrrh.

"The fortieth day, to fulfill the law,
We shall to the temple go;
There Simeon shall pronounce a saw
And shall tell you of woe.

"When I am twelve years of age,
Joseph and thou, mourning,
Shall me find, mother mild,
In the temple teaching.

"Til I be thirty at the least
I never shall from thee sever,
But ever, mother, be at thy behest,
Joseph and thee to serve.

"When the thirty years be spent,
I must begin to fulfill
That for which I am hither sent,
Through my Father's will.

"John Baptist, of merit most,
Shall me baptise by name;
Then my Father and the Holy Ghost
Shall witness what I am.

"I shall be tempted by Satan,
Who fallen is in sin;
Just as he tempted Adam,
But I shall it better withstand.

"Disciples I shall gather
And send them out to preach,
The laws of my Father
In all this world to teach.

"I shall be so simple
And yet so all-knowing
That a great part of the people
Shall want to make me king."

"Sweet son," then said she,
"No sorrow could cause me pain,
If I might live to see the day
When you were made a king!"

"No, no, mother," said that sweet,
"For that came I not,
But to be poor, and ease the woe
To which man has been brought.

"Therefore when two and thirty years be done
And a little more,
Mother, thou shalt make great moan
And see me die so sore.

"The sharp sword of Simeon
Shall pierce into thine heart,
For my great grief and dreadful pain
Sorely thee shall smart.

"Shamefully then I shall die
Hanging on the rood,
For man's ransom shall I pay
Mine own heart's blood."

"Alas! son," said that maid,
"Since this will be so,
How can I live to see the day
That will bring thee such woe?"

"Mother," he said, "take it light,
For I shall live again,
In flesh like yours, through my might,
For else I lived in vain.

"To my Father I shall wend
In human flesh to Heaven;
The Holy Ghost I shall thee send,
With his gifts seven.

"I shall thee take, when the time is,
To me at the last,
To be with me, mother, in bliss:
All this have I cast.

"All this world judge I shall,
At the dead's rising;
Sweet mother, this is all
That I will now sing."

Certainly this sight I saw,
This song I heard sing,
As I lay this Yule's day,
Alone in my longing.

This is less unrelentingly painful than the first carol, simpler in form and language, but in other ways considerably more complex. At 37 verses long, it's hard to believe this was ever sung as a carol; the author got a little carried away with the poetic potential of his subject, I think, but he had good reason to. There are many things I like about this poem: the interplay between mother and child is very naturalistic (she hopes to get him to sleep without having to sing a lullaby, but the child insists, as little children often do!), and Mary's reactions are entirely believable (I like her readiness to tell the story of his birth - a subject on which mothers generally need little encouragement to talk - and her delight that her son will be a king). The entwining of voices is beautifully intricate, as Mary repeats what Gabriel said to her and what she said in reply, partly in direct and partly in indirect speech, as if she really is telling the story of her own experiences and trying to comprehend what has been said to her. And then the child takes over the story, and the parent's role of prophesying a baby's future. He's clearly no more than a few days old - even his circumcision, on the eighth day after his birth, is still in his future - but his knowledge is complete, his mother's incomplete; he teaches her to sing. All the familiar story of Christ's life is recast as the past, present, and future of these two people, who are in many ways an ordinary mother and baby (even if this baby isn't 'screeching'). There is even something ordinary about the act of prophecy, though in this case it comes from the child himself. The act of forecasting a baby's future over its cradle is both literary tradition and a natural human impulse; and although this scene is a vision, lit by a miraculous star, its setting in the unearthly lonely silence of a winter's night reminds me of a later parent, baby, and prophecy:

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness...

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself...

(from 'Frost at Midnight')

'Far other lore, and far other scenes' from the medieval poem; but the same impulse, perhaps.

BL Harley 2915, f. 28

'Lullay, little child, rest thee a throwe'

BL Harley 2915 f. 138v

This is an exquisitely sad nativity song, a lullaby addressed to the baby Christ, but full of compassion and pain and regret for the suffering that the child will later undergo. It dates to the fourteenth century and comes from a manuscript compiled by a Franciscan friar, John of Grimestone.

Lullay, lullay, litel child, child, rest thee a throwe,
From heighe hider art thou sent wyth us to wonen lowe;
Poure and litel art thou made, uncouth and unknowe,
Pyne and wo to suffren heer for thyng that nas thyn owe.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, sorwe mythe thou make;
Thou are sent into this world, as thou were forsake.

Lullay, lullay, litel grome, kyng of alle thyng,
What I thenke of thy myschief me listeth wel litel synge;
But caren I may for sorwe, if love were in myn herte,
For swiche peynes as thou shalt dreyen were nevere non so smerte.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, wel myghte thou crie,
For-than thy body is bleik and blak, soon after shal ben drye.

Child, it is a wepyng dale that thou art comen in;
Thy poure cloutes it proven wel, thy bed made in the bynne;
Cold and hunger thou most thoeln, as thou were geten in synne,
And after deyen on the tree for love of all mankynne.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, no wonder thogh thou care,
Thou art comen amonges hem that thy deeth shullen yare.

Lullay, lullay, litel child, for sorwe myghte thou grete;
The anguissh that thou suffren shalt shal don the blood to swete;
Naked, bounden shaltow ben, and sithen sore bete,
No thyng free upon thy body of pyne shal ben lete.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, it is al for thy fo,
The harde bond of love-longyng that thee hath bounden so.

Lullay, lullay, litel child, litel child, thyn ore!
It is al for oure owene gilt that thou art peyned sore.
But wolden we yet kynde ben and lyven after thy lore,
And leten synne for thy love, ne keptest thou no more.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, softe sleep and faste,
In sorwe endeth every love but thyn atte laste.

John of Grimestone seems to have had a fondness for lullaby poems of this kind, since his manuscript also includes this lullaby and this on roughly the same subject. 'Lullay, lullay, little child, child, rest thee a throwe' is also close in style and theme to this poem in the same metre, which is not addressed to Christ but to an ordinary baby. In both cases the central image is of a crying child, innocent and uncomprehending, who weeps for no reason - and yet has a reason to weep, though he doesn't know it, because of the world he has been born into.

Here's a lightly modernised version, preserving the rhymes and some of the rhythm:

Lullay, lullay, little child, child, rest thee a throwe, [a little while]
From on high hither art thou sent, with us to dwell low;
Poor and little art thou made, unrecognised and unknown,
Pain and woe to suffer here for a crime that was not thine own.
Lullay, lullay, little child, sorrow thou mayst well make;
Thou art sent into this world, as if thou were forsaken.

Lullay, lullay, little boy, king of all things!
When I think of thy sad state, I hardly wish to sing;
But I may lament for sorrow, if love be in my heart,
For such pains as thou shalt suffer were never none so sharp.
Lullay, lullay, little child, well mayst thou cry,
Thy body then will grow pale and white, and then it shall grow dry.

Child, it is a weeping world that thou art comen in;
Thy poor rags prove that well, thy bed made in the bin; [manger]
Cold and hunger thou must endure, as one begot in sin,
And after die upon the tree for love of all mankyn. [mankind]
Lullay, lullay, little child, no wonder that thou cry;
Thou art come among those who shall cause thee to die.

Lullay, lullay, little child, for sorrow thou mayst well grete; [cry]
The anguish that thou suffer shalt shall cause thee blood to sweat;
Naked, bound, shalt thou be, and afterwards sorely beat, [beaten]
No part of thy body free of pain shall be lete. [left]
Lullay, lullay, little child, it is all for thy foe,
The hard bond of love-longing that has bound thee so.

Lullay, lullay, little child, little child, thine ore! [mercy]
It is all for our guilt that thou art pained so sore.
But would we yet more loving be, and live after thy lore, [according to your teaching]
And forsake sin for thy love’s sake, ne keptest thou no more. [your suffering would be over]
Lullay, lullay, little child, softly sleep and fast;
In sorrow endeth every love but thine, at the last.

BL Harley 947 f. 170

That last couplet is so memorable. This loving, tender look ahead from the birth of the baby Christ to the suffering and death which awaits him is a sombre theme for Christmastide - perhaps surprisingly so for modern taste, but very much in harmony with medieval attitudes to the season. Many medieval writers about Christmas would have felt it gave only an incomplete picture of the Incarnation to celebrate Christ's birth without remembering too the death he came to suffer; to talk about one and neglect the other can fail to give the magnitude of his birth in a mortal human body its full weight and meaning. In the Middle Ages Christmas was a season of light and shade, not constant full-out festivity. The Twelve Days of Christmas were a time of holiday and celebration, but within that joyous season the feasts which clustered around Christmas Day involved violent stories of martyrdom: the second and fifth days of Christmas were the feasts of St Stephen, Christianity's first martyr, and St Thomas Becket, whose blood stained the stones of Canterbury Cathedral in Christmastide 1170. The eighth day commemorated Christ's Circumcision, the first time (medieval preachers say) that Christ's blood was shed.

And today, the fourth day of Christmas, is the feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating the children slain by Herod as he sought to kill the infant Christ. Since the Anglo-Saxon period this has been known in English as 'Childermas' - the feast of the children. John of Grimestone's grief-filled lullaby finds an echo in the most famous text associated with the Childermas story, the Coventry Carol, a sad, strange medieval lullaby which still exerts a strong power:

Lullay, lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, lullay, thou little tiny child.
By, by, lully, lullay.

O sisters two, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Herod the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

Then woe is me, poor child, for thee,
And ever mourn and may,
For thy parting, neither say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

The Coventry Carol wasn't written for Christmas or Childermas; it's part of the cycle of the Coventry Mystery Plays, which would have been performed in the summer. The Massacre of the Innocents formed a regular part of mystery play cycles, following straight after plays depicting more joyful parts of the Nativity story, such as the visits of the Shepherds and the Magi. Like the Twelve Days of Christmas, mystery play cycles were an experience of juxtaposition and contrast, light and shade, shifting moods and emotions as different aspects of the Christian story were explored in turn.

Mystery plays about the Massacre of the Innocents offer some of the most moving depictions of grief in medieval culture. We see innocent babies killed because of a cruel tyrant's lust for power, and we see their mothers mourn. It's confronting and painful, and it doesn't allow you to look away. At one moment there's the Nativity, Mary and her baby, a happy image of parenthood and infancy; and then there's the other side of parental love, with grief, loss and despair. 'Longe lullynge have I lorn!', says one mother in the N-town Plays, as if remembering all the lullabies she's sung to her baby, all those long hours watching over the cradle, now lost because her child lies dead in her arms. She can see nothing but grief in her future: 'Sorrow I see behind and before / Both midnight, midday and at morn'.

The Coventry Carol is born of this particular story of grief, but over time it has come to speak for other losses. After centuries of suppression and neglect, there was a revival of interest in the mystery plays in the first half of the twentieth century. On Christmas Day 1940, the first Christmas after the terrible bombing of Coventry in the Second World War, the BBC broadcast a message from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral which included the singing of the Coventry Carol. It was a lament, but also a sign of hope and endurance: 'He suffers alongside of us, just as this Cathedral suffered the same fate as the city. He lost everything he had, and won the world. Nothing can destroy Him, any more than, in the words of our ancient Coventry Carol, 'Herod the King in his raging' could slay the Christ Child.'

Of the many hundreds of surviving medieval carols, the Coventry Carol is one of the very small number which have now found their way into the modern Christmas repertoire. It's regularly heard and performed at Christmas, widely known and recognised, both with its original haunting melody and in a diversity of new settings. It's a peculiar journey for a song from a medieval mystery play to take, from the streets of 16th-century Coventry to concert-halls and shopping malls, sung by everyone from Sting to Annie Lennox and the most unlikely performers. The popularity of this deeply sad song at Christmastime is intriguing, and it makes me wonder what draws people to it today in our very different Christmas season. Whatever it is, perhaps it's something akin to what drew John of Grimestone and other medieval readers to lullabies like 'Lullay, little child'. There are in fact a considerable number of medieval lullabies which share the mood of the Coventry Carol: somewhere between lullaby and lament, full of melancholy and pity for the child being comforted, whether it's Herod's victims, the Christ-child, or any baby born into a weeping world. (Here are some more beautiful examples: 'This endris night / about midnight'; 'This maiden hight Mary'; 'As I lay on Yule's night'; 'Learn to love as I love thee'; 'Mary hath borne alone') They use the lullaby form, the genre of song above all others associated with tenderness, vulnerability, comfort and love, to explore deeply poignant and painful ideas of the nature of human sorrow.

I wonder if the popularity of the Coventry Carol today indicates that it expresses something people don't find in the usual run of joyful Christmas carols - this song of grief, of innocence cruelly destroyed. The Feast of the Holy Innocents is not an easy subject for a modern audience to understand, and the images which often accompany it in medieval manuscripts, of children impaled on spears, are truly horrible. But they are meant to be; they are intended to disgust and horrify, and they're horrible because they're not fantasy violence but all too close to the reality of the world we live in. Children do die; the innocent and vulnerable do suffer at the hands of the powerful; and as this carol says, every single form of human love, one way or another, will ultimately end in parting and grief. Every child born into the world - every tiny, innocent, adorable little baby - however loved, however cared for, will grow up to face some kind of sorrow, and the inevitability of death. Of course no one wants to think about such things, especially when they look at a newborn baby; but pretending otherwise, not wanting to think otherwise, doesn't make it any less true.

Medieval writers were honest and clear-eyed about such uncomfortable truths. The idea that thoughts like these are incongruous with the Christmas season (as you often hear people say about the Holy Innocents) is largely a modern scruple, encouraged by the comparatively recent idea that Christmas is primarily a cheery festival for happy children and families. Our images of Christmas joy, both secular and sacred, are all childlike wonder and picture-perfect families gathered round the tree. And this is nice, of course, for those who have children or happy families, but for those who don't - those who have lost children or parents or others dear to them, those who face loneliness or exclusion, those who want but don't have children, family, or home - it can be intensely painful. Not everyone can choose not to think about grief at Christmas; many people will find it intrudes upon them, whether they wish it to or not. 'In sorrow endeth every love but thine, at the last'. The modern version of Christmas tends to sideline and ignore that pain, asking it to at least keep quiet so as not to spoil the 'magic'. But that's not the case with medieval writing about Christmas and the Christ-child. There are, of course, many merry and joyful medieval carols, and the season was celebrated in the Middle Ages with great enthusiasm; but there are also many carols like this which are serious, melancholy, and sad, which acknowledge the fact that the child whose birth is celebrated came to earth to die. Older writings on Christmas, like this lullaby, do not exclude but encompass human pain - because it's that pain, they say, which Christ has come to earth to share. That was what it meant for God to become a human child. The idea is well expressed by John Donne, writing a little later than the medieval period (though only a few decades after the Coventry mystery plays were abolished), in a sermon he preached on Christmas Day 1626:

The whole life of Christ was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for, to his tenderness then, the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after; and the manger as uneasy at first, as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day.

John of Grimestone's poem perfectly illustrates that idea.

BL Arundel 302 f. 152

'þe word is geworden': An Anglo-Saxon Christmas Sermon

Nativity, Benedictional of St Æthelwold (BL Additional 49598, f. 15v)

Here are a few short extracts from one of Ælfric's sermons for Christmas Day, written at the end of the tenth century. The full sermon can be found here; this is one of two sermons he wrote for Christmas Day, and you can read the other here. He begins by translating the story according to Luke's Gospel:

Đa gelamp hit, þaða hi on þære byrig Bethleem wicodon, þæt hire tima wæs gefylled þæt heo cennan sceolde, and acende ða hyre frumcennedan sunu, and mid cild-claðum bewand, and alede þæt cild on heora assena binne, forþan þe ðær næs nan rymet on þam gesthuse.

Do you even need a translation of this?

Then it happened, while they were lodging in the town of Bethlehem, that her time came to give birth; and she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in baby-clothes and laid the child in the asses’ manger, because there was no room in the inn.

He goes on to translate the rest of the Gospel story before interpreting it, but for that you might prefer to read (and listen to) the translations in the West Saxon Gospels, here. Note that Christ is born in a gesthus and laid in a binn - you don't need me to tell you what those words mean!

Mary and Christ (BL Additional 49598, f. 22v)

Maria acende ða hire frumcennedan sunu on ðisum andweardan dæge, and hine mid cild-claðum bewand, and for rymetleaste on anre binne gelede. Næs þæt cild forði gecweden hire frumcennede cild swilce heo oðer siððan acende, ac forði þe Crist is frumcenned of manegum gastlicum gebroðrum. Ealle cristene men sind his gastlican gebroðra, and he is se frumcenneda, on gife and on godcundnysse ancenned of ðam Ælmihtigan Fæder. He wæs mid wacum cild-claðum bewæfed, þæt he us forgeafe ða undeadlican tunecan, þe we forluron on ðæs frumsceapenan mannes forgægednysse. Se Ælmihtiga Godes Sunu, ðe heofenas befon ne mihton, wæs geled on nearuwre binne, to ði þæt he us fram hellicum nyrwette alysde. Maria wæs ða cuma ðær, swa swa þæt godspel us segð; and for ðæs folces geðryle wæs þæt gesthus ðearle genyrwed. Se Godes Sunu wæs on his gesthuse genyrwed, þæt he us rume wununge on heofonan rice forgife, gif we his willan gehyrsumiað. Ne bitt he us nanes ðinges to edleane his geswinces, buton ure sawle hælo, þæt we us sylfe clæne and ungewemmede him gegearcian, to blisse and to ecere myrhðe...

Gelome wurdon englas mannum æteowode on ðære ealdan æ, ac hit nis awriten þæt hi mid leohte comon, ac se wurðmynt wæs þises dæges mærðe gehealden, þæt hi mid heofenlicum leohte hi geswutelodon, ða ða þæt soðe leoht asprang on ðeostrum riht-geþancodum, se mildheorta and se rihtwisa Drihten. Se engel cwæð to þam hyrdum, “Ne beo ge afyrhte; efne ic bodige eow micelne gefean, ðe eallum folce becymð, forðan þe nu todæg is acenned Hælend Crist on Dauides ceastre.” Soðlice he bodade micelne gefean, se ðe næfre ne geendað; forðan þe Cristes acenndenys gegladode heofenwara, and eorðwara, and helwara. Se engel cwæð, “Nu todæg is eow acenned Hælend Crist on Dauides ceastre.” Rihtlice he cwæð ‘on dæge’, and na ‘on nihte’, forðan ðe Crist is se soða dæg, se ðe todræfde mid his tocyme ealle nytennysse þære ealdan nihte, and ealne middangeard mid his gife onlihte...

Þa hyrdas ða spræcon him betweonan, æfter ðæra engla fram-færelde, "Uton gefaran to Bethleem, and geseon þæt word þe geworden is, and God us geswutelode." Eala hu rihtlice hi andetton þone halgan geleafan mid þisum wordum! "On frymðe wæs word, and þæt word wæs mid Gode, and þæt word wæs God". Word bið wisdomes geswutelung, and þæt Word, þæt is se Wisdom, is acenned of ðam Ælmihtigum Fæder, butan anginne; forðan ðe he wæs æfre God of Gode, Wisdom of ðam wisan Fæder. Nis he na geworht, forðan ðe he is God, and na gesceaft; ac se Ælmihtiga Fæder gesceop þurh ðone Wisdom ealle gesceafta, and hi ealle ðurh þone Halgan Gast geliffæste.

'In principio', BL Stowe 944, f. 44

Mary gave birth to her first-born son on this present day and wrapped him in baby-clothes, and because of lack of room she laid him in a manger. That child was not called her first-born because she afterwards had other children, but because Christ is the first-born of many spiritual brothers. All Christians are his spiritual brothers, and he is the first-born in grace and in divinity, born of the Almighty Father. He was wrapped in poor baby-clothes so that he could give us the immortal garment which we lost at the beginning of the world through man’s transgression. The Son of Almighty God, whom the heavens could not encompass, was laid in a narrow manger so that he could save us from the narrow confines of hell. Mary was a stranger there, as the Gospel tells us, and the crowd of people meant the inn was very full [the Old English word is genyrwed, 'narrowed, made crowded']. The Son of God was crowded in his lodging-place, so that he could give us spacious room in the heavenly kingdom, if we obey his will. He asks for nothing from us as reward for his labour, except the salvation of our souls, that we prepare ourselves for him, pure and unstained, for bliss and everlasting joy...

Angels often appeared to men under the old law, but it is not written that they came with light; that honour was reserved for the glory of this day, that they revealed themselves with heavenly light when the true light rose in the darkness for the righteous, the merciful and just Lord. The angel said to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid; behold, I bring you tidings of great joy which has come to all people, because now today for you the Saviour Christ is born in the city of David.” Truly he brought them tidings of great joy which will never end, because the birth of Christ brought gladness to the dwellers in heaven, in earth, and in hell. The angel said, "Now today for you the Saviour Christ is born in the city of David". He rightly said "today" and not "tonight", because Christ is the true day, who by his coming drives away all the dark ignorance of the old night and illuminates the whole world by his grace...

The shepherds then spoke amongst themselves, after the departure of the angels: "Let us go to Bethlehem, and see þæt word þe geworden is, which God has made known to us." O, how rightly they confessed the holy faith with these words! "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." A word is the revealing of wisdom, and the Word, which is the Wisdom, is brought forth from the Almighty Father, without beginning; for he was ever God of God, Wisdom of the Wise Father. He is not created, because he is God, and no created thing; the Almighty God created all created things through that Wisdom, and gave them life through the Holy Ghost.

This last paragraph is just glorious, as Ælfric ties himself up in a joyous knot of language over the phrase þæt word þe geworden is. In Old English word can mean 'message, tidings', and geworden can just mean 'happened', so what the shepherds say to each other is 'let us go to Bethlehem, and see these tidings which have happened'. But because word also means 'word', and geweorþan also means 'to come to be', the shepherds' speech - 'with these words' (mid þisum wordum) - can be interpreted in another way. þe word is geworden: the Word has come to be. There's something similar in the Vulgate, where the shepherds say videamus hoc verbum quod factum est (and the linking of this to the opening of John's Gospel was traditional), but the English is even more intimately linked because word is embedded within geworden. And since words can be mined for meaning in this beautifully complex way, 'a word is the revealing of wisdom' (there's a motto for all students of literature to take to heart!); and this Word is the revealing of Wisdom, God from God, Wisdom from the Wise Father. The Word is not geworht, he is geworden - not 'created', but 'come to be'. This is difficult to convey in translation, but it's a beautiful felicity of language and you can almost feel Ælfric delighting in it, grammarian and translator and lover of language as he was. The things words can do! 'A word is the revealing of wisdom'; and "On frymðe wæs word, and þæt word wæs mid Gode, and þæt word wæs God".

Christmas bids farewell

Feasting in January (BL Royal 2 B VII f. 71v)

If you, like me, are taking down the Christmas decorations today, here's a carol to cheer you on your way. Technically it belongs to the end of the medieval Christmas season, Candlemas (February 2), but by that time Christmas will feel a very long time ago, so I hope you'll forgive me posting it today!

Now have good day, now have good day!
I am Christmas, and now I go my way.

Here have I dwelt with more and less [i.e. everyone]
From Hallowtide till Candlemas,
And now must I from you hence pass;
Now have good day!

I take my leave of king and knight,
And earl, baron, and lady bright;
To wilderness I must me dight; [I must prepare myself to go into the wilderness]
Now have good day!

And of the good lord of this hall
I take my leave, and of guests all;
Methink I hear Lent doth call;
Now have good day!

And from every worthy officer,
Marshall, panetere and butler,
I take my leave as for this year;
Now have good day!

Another year I trust I shall
Make merry in this hall,
If rest and peace in England may fall;
Now have good day!

But oftentimes I have heard say
That he is loath to part away
Who often biddeth 'Have good day!'
Now have good day!

Now fare ye well, all in fere; [together]
Now fare ye well for all this year;
Yet for my sake make ye good cheer;
Now have good day!

This carol comes from a sixteenth-century manuscript, Balliol MS. 354, which you can see here. It forms a nice counterpart to both 'Farewell Advent, Christmas is come!' and 'Good day, Sir Christmas'; having welcomed Christmas, we must now bid him farewell. Unlike the friars' 'Farewell, Advent', however, it imagines a Christmas in an aristocratic hall, with the lord and his guests and servants. The fourth verse takes particular notice of these 'officers', who had doubtless been working especially hard over the Christmas season: a marshall is the person in charge of seating guests in the hall, etc.; a panetere is the one in charge of the pantry; and the butler the one in charge of the drink!

Feasting (BL Harley 2838 f. 45)

This is the text in Richard Greene, A Selection of English Carols (Oxford, 1962), pp. 96-7.

Now have gud day, now have gud day!
I am Crystmas, and now I go my way.

Here have I dwellyd with more and lasse
From Halowtyde till Candylmas,
And now must I from you hens passe;
Now have gud day!

I take my leve of kyng and knyght,
And erle, baron and lady bryght;
To wildernes I must me dyght;
Now have gud day!

And at the gud lord of this hall
I take my leve, and of gestes all;
Me thynke I here, Lent doth call;
Now have gud day!

And at every worthy offycer,
Merchall, panter and butler,
I take my leve as for this yere;
Now have gud day!

Anoder yere I trust I shall
Make mery in thys hall,
Yf rest and pease in Ynglond may fall;
Now have gud day!

But oftyntymes I have hard say
That he is loth to pert away
That oftyn byddyth 'Have gud day!'
Now have gud day!

Now fare ye well, all in fere;
Now fare ye well for all this yere;
Yet for my sake make ye gud cher;
Now have gud day!

'Make we merry as we may!'

Feasting in January (BL Royal 2 B VII, f. 71v)

A boisterous, rollicking medieval carol for the New Year.

Hey, ay, hey, ay,
Make we merry as we may!

Now is Yule come with gentyll cheer; [excellent fun]
In mirth and games he has no peer,
In every land where he comes near
Is mirth and games, I dare well say.

Now is come a messenger
Of your lord, Sir New Year,
Bids us all be merry here
And make us merry as we may.

Therefore every man that is here
Sing a carol in his manner;
If he knows none, we shall him lere [teach]
So that we be merry alway.

Whosoever makes heavy chere, [is solemn and mopey]
Were he never to me so dear,
In a ditch I would he were
To dry his clothes till it were day!

Mend the fire and make good cheer!
Fill the cup, Sir Butler!
Let every man drink to his fere! [companion]
Thus ends my carol: with care away!

Janus drinking, from a calendar for January (BL Yates Thompson 13, f. 1)

This carol comes from British Library Additional 14997, a manuscript which contains poems, charms and medical recipes in Welsh, English and Latin. This carol bears the very precise date '1500'; it's been set to music by John Rutter, and you can listen to his arrangement here. The unmodernised version is:

Hay, ay, hay, ay,
Make we mere as we may!

Now ys Yole comyn with gentyll chere;
Of merthe and gomyn he has no pere,
In euery londe where he comys nere
Is merthe and gomyn, I dar wel say.

Now ys comyn a messyngere
Of yore lorde, Ser Nu Yere,
Byddes us all be mere here
And make us mere as we may.

Therefore euery mon that ys here
Synge a caroll on hys manere;
Yf he con non we schall hym lere
So that we be mere allway.

Whosoeuer makes heve chere
Were he neuer to me dere,
In a dyche I wolde he were
To dry hys clothys tyll hyt were day!

Mende the fyre and make gud chere!
Fyll the cuppe, ser boteler!
Let euery mon drynke to hys fere!
Thys endes my carol with care away.

'Care away!' Good advice. As a more famous medieval carol enjoins, 'be merry and glad this good New Year'! (It's from this manuscript, and the unmodernised text can be found here.)

What cheer? Good cheer! Good cheer! Good cheer!
Be merry and glad this good New Year.

'Lift up your hearts and be glad
In Christ's birth,' the angel bade;
Say each to other, if any be sad:
What cheer? Good cheer! Good cheer! Good cheer!
Be merry and glad this good New Year.

Now the king of heaven his birth hath take,
Joy and mirth we ought to make.
Say each to other, for his sake:
What cheer? Good cheer! Good cheer! Good cheer!
Be merry and glad this good New Year.

I tell you all with heart so free,
Right welcome ye be to me.
Be glad and merry for charity.
What cheer? Good cheer! Good cheer! Good cheer!
Be merry and glad this good New Year.

The goodman of this place in fere [company]
You to be merry he prayeth you here;
And with good heart he doth to you say:
What cheer? Good cheer! Good cheer! Good cheer!
Be merry and glad this good New Year.