Medieval Christmas Poetry (ii)

My favourite medieval poem for Christmas is this Hymn to the Virgin. The trick of inserting rhyming Latin into rhyming English, whilst making the meaning quite clear, really appeals to me.

This is from about 1300.

Of on that is so fayr and bright
Velut maris stella
Brighter than the day is light
Parens et puella
Ic crie to the, thou see to me,
Levedy, preye thi Sone for me,
Tam pia,
That ic mote come to thee,
Maria.

Al this world was for-lore,
Eva peccatrice
Tyl our Lord was y-bore
De te genetrice
With ave it went away
Thuster nyth and comes the day
Salutis
The well springeth ut of the
Virtutis

Levedy, flour of alle thing
Rosa sine spina
Thu bere Jhesu, hevene king,
Gratia divina
Of alle thu ber'st the pris,
Levedy, quene of paradys
Electa
Mayde milde, moder es
Effecta.


Well he knows he is your Son,
Ventre quem portasti
Your prayers to him he will not shun,
Parvem quem lactasti.
So kindly and so good he is
That he has brought us all to bliss
Superni
And shut for ever the foul abyss
Inferni.

What do you mean, it is not obvious?  OK, here are some clues:

on - one; levedy - lady; thuster - dark; pris - prize.

Velut maris stella - like the star of the sea
Parens et puella - mother and maiden
Eva peccatrice - by Eve's sin
Ventre quem portasti - whom you bore in your womb
Parvem quem lactasti - the little one whom you suckled

Ask in the comms box if anything else needs elucidating (and correct all my errors…)

For historic reasons (see last December's posts) the last verse is translated by Brian Stone, unlike the others, (I've forgotten my source for them).

This has been set to music often, with varying success… A quick visit to Youtube will give several examples.

Here is Benjamin Britten's:

Medieval Christmas Poetry (1)

I have decided to re-post some of the Christmas poetry I have posted in the past. I have recently simply re-tweeted links, but realise that many readers come here because they see my latest post displayed in the sidebar of another blog, and so tweeting would not reach them.  I also considered a simple post with lots of links to the poems, but I know how I would react to that - click on one or two at the most.  

So, without further ado, still less apology, here we go again: some Medieval Christmas Poetry.

This first poem is from the early thirteenth century; you may recognise some of the lines, as they are quoted in another, much more famous poem quoted below, which has been set as a Christmas Carol.


Bringing us bliss now, the birds are all singing;
Branches sprout leaves and the grasses are springing.
Of one that is matchless my utterance sings
Chosen as mother by the King of Kings.

Taintless she is, and unspotted by sin,
Descended from Jesse, of kingly kin.
The Lord of mankind from her womb was born,
To save us from sin, who would else be forlorn.

'Hail Mary, full of grace! And may Our Lord
Be with you!' was the Angel Gabriel's word.
The fruit of your womb I declare shall be blest.
You shall carry a child beneath your breast.'

This greeting and word which the angel had brought,
Mary considered and pondered in thought.
She said to the angel, 'How could such thing be?
Of knowledge of man my body is free.'

She was virgin with child and virgin before,
And still virgin yet when her Baby she bore.
Never was maiden a mother but she;
Well might she the bearer of God's Son be!

Blest be the Child, and the Mother, too, blest,
And where her Son suckled, blest the sweet breast!
Praised be the time such child was born,
Who saved us from sin, who would else be forlorn!

[Trans: Brian Stone]


This second verse is from a minstrel manuscript from the early fifteenth century, and clearly draws on the earlier one.  Dew is a long standing literary figure for virginity: here the conception of the Son is seen as enhancing, rather than ending Our Lady's virginity.

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless,
King of all kings
To her son she chose.

He came as still
Where his mother was
As dew in April
That falls on the grass.

He came as still
To his mother's bower
As dew in April
That falls on the flower.

He came as still
Where his mother lay
As dew in April
That falls on the spray.

Mother and maiden
There was never none but she;
Well may such a lady
God's mother be.

(For those who like such things, here is the original:

I syng of a mayden
þat is makeles,
kyng of alle kynges
to here sone che ches.

He came also stylle
þer his moder was
as dew in aprylle,
þat fallyt on þe gras.

He cam also stylle
to his moderes bowr
as dew in aprille,
þat fallyt on þe flour.

He cam also stylle
þer his moder lay
as dew in Aprille,
þat fallyt on þe spray.;

Moder & mayden
was neuer non but che –
wel may swych a lady
Godes moder be.)

Our God Within a Manger Lies

I wrote this carol a few of years ago.   It can be sung to any suitable long metre (8888) tune.

Our mighty Father's timeless Word,

Creator of the earth and skies,

Of man and mountain, beast and bird:

Our God within a manger lies.

To undo evil wrought by hate

In paradise, by Satan's lies,

When Adam of the apple ate:

Our God within a manger lies.

He left his high celestial throne

Remaining hidden from the wise

And calls the shepherd-folk his own:

Our God within a manger lies.

The mighty One whose power made

All things, now powerless He cries,

He's hungry, cold, and e'en afraid: 

Our God within a manger lies.

The stars He set to rule the night

Are dimmed by Mary's tender eyes

Alight with love as in her sight

Her God within the manger lies.

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost 

The Angels sing in their surprise,

And we rejoice with Heaven's host:

Our God within a manger lies.

Aunty Pippa's Christmas Carols

I am sometimes overwhelmed by my own inattentiveness. I must have looked at the authors' index in the University Carol Book (ed Erik Routley, see posts passim) many times, but only the other day did I notice that as well as my Mother's carols (see here and here), there were two by her sister.

That sister is my late aunt Pippa, pictured here (attentive readers will remember that I have referred to this picture in a previous post...)

So here they are.

The Sun in the Morning (Sung to a Sussex folk tune)

O I sing of a simple stable in an inn-yard so small

Where the oxen and the asses they are watching by a stall,

Where lies the maiden Mary by a manger of hay

And the sun in the morning shall rise on Christmas day.

And I sing of some shepherd watching o’er their sheep by night

When there came an angel to tell them all clothèd in light.

Glad tidings of great joy did he unto them say

And the sun in the morning shall rise on Christmas day.

And I sing of God’s love to his own created earth,

As for us poor men of sin was his own Son given birth,

Let us all sing and rejoice in his love and be gay,

For the sun in the morning shall rise on Christmas day.

Shepherds Are Singing (sung to the tune Hirtenlied)

Shepherds are singing, laughing and dancing round.

Sheep bells are ringing, flowers cover the ground.

Birds sing and twitter gaily round the little hill,

Yet the snows glitter, winter wraps all the land still.

‘Tell me your story, wondrous things that have been. 

All the land hoary here, tho’ the spring is green.’ 

Bitter the night was as we watched our sleeping sheep,

Sudden the light was, banishing darkness deep.

‘Standing before us, saw we an angel bright, 

Shining and glorious filled with heavenly light.

God in his pity for the sin-enslavèd earth

Hath in yon city come to redeem by his birth.

More and more straightway angels in countless throng,

From heaven’s gateway sang their glorious song. 

With fear unladen ran we leaving our sheep, 

There lay the maiden, there the babe asleep.

‘Naught brought we for him, nothing but loving heart,

There to adore him, then in great glee to depart. 

God in a stable! God and man in flesh made one!

So were we able new times to see begun.

Singing his glory, laughing homeward we came. 

This is our story, Praise to Jesus’ name.

So we are singing, dancing on this little hill,

And our hearts ringing with glad tidings still.

--

I conclude that she was not such a gifted lyricist as her big sister (but I may be biased).

And let not the idea of nepotism even cross your mind!

Remember her in your prayers. Requiescat in pace.

A 21st Century Carol

Here is a carol I wrote last year. It can be sung to any suitable long metre (8888) tune.


Our mighty Father's timeless Word,

Creator of the earth and skies,

Of man and mountain, beast and bird:

Our God within a manger lies.

To undo evil wrought by hate

In paradise, by Satan's lies,

When Adam of the apple ate:

Our God within a manger lies.

He left his high celestial throne

Remaining hidden from the wise

And calls the shepherd-folk his own:

Our God within a manger lies.

The mighty One whose power made

All things, now powerless He cries,

He's hungry, cold, and e'en afraid: 

Our God within a manger lies.

The stars He set to rule the night

Are dimmed by Mary's tender eyes

Alight with love as in her sight

Her God within the manger lies.

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost 

The Angels sing in their surprise,

And we rejoice with Heaven's host:

Our God within a manger lies.

BT

Another Carol by my Mother

Here is another of my mother's carols.  This was also written at the request of the hymnologist Erik Routley for the University Carol Book (1961) of which he was the editor. It is sung to an Irish Carol tune, whose name I don't recall (and I can't remember what other words I have sung to it, though I know that I have. It begins Doh Doh Mi Doh Mi So with syncopation on the mi-so [ie the mi is half a beat] Do any of my learned readers know the name of the tune?)

1. Come, ye thankful people, and welcome Christ to earth

With songs of joy and gladness at this amazing birth.
For now within the manger the new-born Baby lies;
For him the angels' music is ringing through the skies,

They hail with adoration the one eternal Word

That has to earth descended to be by all men heard.
They hail with adoration the one eternal Word
That has to earth descended to be by all men heard.

2. A maiden and a baby, a stable cold and bare,
Yet never was there palace that could with this compare,
For here the Queen of angels her son and God adores
While he his heavenly Father for all mankind implores.

He comes from highest heaven to end our woe and strife,

That we may live for ever with his celestial life.
He comes from highest heaven to end our woe and strife,
That we may live for ever with his celestial life.

3. "Holy, Holy, Holy" the glorious angels cry,
And "Holy, Holy, Holy" let Christians now reply.
Gold and myrrh and incense are gifts from Eastern kings,
But prayer and adoration the poorest of us brings,

As singing with the angels "Nowell, nowell, nowell",

We worship the manger our Lord, Emmanuel.
As singing with the angels "Nowell, nowell, nowell",
We worship the manger our Lord, Emmanuel.

All of which reminds me... My father met Erik for the first time at breakfast at Magdalen College. Erik was studying theology (he went on to be a United Reformed minister) and was being ragged by some juvenile undergraduates. He was getting heated, and one of his tormentors jibed: 'I thought you Christians were meant to suffer fools gladly.' Erik replied: 'Fools, yes. Congenital bloody idiots, no!' My father instantly recognised him as a soul-mate, and they were firm friends until my father's death in 1978. Erik married my father's sister, Margaret, who was a fine violinist.

All four of them (my father, mother, and Uncle Erik and Aunt Margaret) are now dead; so please say a prayer for them.

Requiescant in pace.

My Mother's Carol

It is eighteen years since my mother died. Needless to say, I still miss her, and particularly at Christmas. The way we celebrate Christmas (and Advent, too) is very much according to her design.

Here is a verse she wrote as a Christmas carol.  It is sung to the tune of Let all mortal flesh keep silence, but without the repeat of the first line of melody.  That apparently is how it was originally written (a Picardy carol tune) and the hymnologist Erik Routley commissioned my mother to write a lyric that honoured that. (In the book, Routley notes: The association of this tune with a solemn eucharistic hymn in English hymn books should not prejudice its interpretation here: it is a French peasant carol and should be sung simply and more or less in speech rhythm).  

For myself, I find it almost impossible to sing the tune without the repeated first line.

Anyway, here is my mother's lyric: 

God in highest heaven seeing 

All man's bitter grief and shame

Laid aside his power, his majesty, his bliss, 

To the rescue swiftly came.

God the Son, the Word eternal

Made himself a man on earth,

Entering a world that he himself had made

Through the lowly gate of birth.

There the baby lay in a manger

For his mother had no bed

Thirty years went by, and still the Son of God

Had no place to lay his head.

Yet he did not rest till, testing

Every depth of utter loss,

He, the Lord, was hanging, nailed through hands and feet

Stripped and dead upon a cross.

Jesus, Master, King of glory, 

Teach us loving you alone,

With a joyous will to follow you in peace

By the road that you have shown.

--

Requiescat in pace

Meditation on the Nativity

Because you can never have too much of Elizabeth Jennings' poetry...


All gods and goddesses, all looked up to
And argued with and threatened. All that fear
Which man shows to the very old and new -
All this, all these have gone. They disappear
In fables coming true.

In acts so simple that we are amazed -
A woman and a child. He trusts, she soothes.
Men see serenity and they are pleased.
Placating prophets talked but here are truths
All men have only praised

Before in dreams. Lost legends here are pressed
Not on to paper but in flesh and blood,
A promise kept. Her modesties divest
Our guilt of shame as she hands him her food
And he smiles on her breast.

Painters' perceptions, visionaries' long
Torments and silence, blossom here and speak.
Listen, our murmurs are a cradle-song,
Look, we are found who seldom dared to seek -
A maid, a child, God young.

Elizabeth Jennings

Christmas Suite in Five Movements

1 The Fear

So simple, very few
Can be so bare, be open to the wide
Dark, the starless night, the day’s persistent
Wearing away of time. See, men cast off
Their finery and lay it on the floor,

Here, of a stable. What do they wait for?
Answers to learned questions? No, they have
Been steeped in books and wear the dust of them.

Philosophy breaks all its definitions,
Logic is lost, and here
The Word is silent. This God fears the night,
A child so terrified he asks for us.  
God is the cry we thought came from our own 
Perpetual sense of loss.
Can God be frightened to be so alone?
Does that child dream of the Cross?

2 The Child

Blood on a berry.
Night of frost,
Some make merry, 
Some are lost.

Footsteps crack
On a pool of ice.
Hope is back.  
This baby lies

Wrapped in rags, 
Is fed by a girl. 
O if God begs, 
Then we all hold

Him in our Power. 
We catch our breath. 
This is the hour
For the terrible truth.

Terrible, yes, 
But sweet also.
God needs us.
Now, through snow,

Tomorrow through heat
We carry him
And hear his heart
And bring him home.

3 A Litany

Mary of solace, take our hope,
Girl untouched, take our hands,
Lady of Heaven, come to our homes,
You bring Heaven down.

Mary of mercy, learn our laws,
Lady of care, take impulse to
Your heart, give us grace, 
More than enough
And a relish for
The renewal of love.

Queen of formal gardens, reach our forests, 
Girl of the fountains, come into our desert.
Mary of broken hearts, help us to keep
Promises. Lady of wakefulness, take our sleep.
You hold God in your arms, and he may weep.

4 The Despair

All night you fought the dream and when you woke
Lay exhausted, blinded by the sun. 
How could you face the day which had begun?
As we do, Christ, but worse for you.  You broke
Into our history. History drives you on.

Love before this was dust, but it was dust
You took upon yourself.  Your empty hands
Have scars upon them. You have made amends
For all wrong acts, for love brought down to lust. 
God, the world is crying and man stands

Upon the brink of worse than tragedy.
That was noble. Now there’s something more
Than careful scenes and acts. Some men make war
On you and we feel helpless, are not free
To struggle for you. God, we’ve seen you poor

And cold. Are stars dispensing light that you
Should find the universe turned... can it be
Away from you? No, no, we cannot see
Far or fully. Christ just born, you go
Back to the blighted, on to the thriving Tree.

5 The Victory

Down to that littleness, down to all that
Crying and hunger, all that tiny flesh
And flickering spirit - down the great stars fall, 
Here the huge kings bow.
Here the farmer sees his fragile lambs,
Here the wise man throws his books away.

This manger is the universe’s cradle,
This singing mother has the words of truth.
Here the ox and ass and sparrow stop, 
Here the hopeless man breaks into trust.
God, you have made a victory for the lost.
Give us this daily Bread, this little Host.

Elizabeth Jennings

More Christmas Poetry

There may be somewhere some poor benighted fools, who complain that I am just  re-posting poems that I have posted before. But I protest that if a poem was worth posting last year, it is surely worth posting this. However, I have by no means exhausted the stock of verse worth reading over Christmas, and just to prove how ill-informed such critics are, here are two poems, which I have never cited before, and which (I think) are previously unposted on the Web.

The first has been set to music, so may be familiar to those who sing.

For The Nativity

Shepherds, I sing you, this winter's night
Our Hope new-planted, the womb'd, the buried Seed:
For a strange Star has fallen, to blossom from a tomb,
And infinite Godhead circumscribed, hangs helpless at the breast.

Now the cold airs are musical, and all the ways of the sky
Vivid with moving fires, above the hills where tread
The feet - how beautiful - of them that publish peace.

The sacrifice, which is not made for them,
The angels comprehend, and bend to earth
Their worshipping way. Material kind Earth
Gives Him a Mother's breast, and needful food. 

A Love, shepherds, most poor,
And yet most royal, kings,
Begins this winter's night;
But oh, cast forth, and with no proper place,
Out in the cold He lies!

John Heath-Stubbs


The second is by a local, Cumbrian poet, Norman Nicholson:

Poem for Epiphany

Three Kings stepped out of my body
Walked across the sand by the wild sea
From December into January

A King stepped out of my head
And before him the sand was red
And the sea gold,
And he beheld
The landscape like an empire and found in
Even a sycamore leaf the plan of his domain.
And he offered the gold of his sight
The regimen of his thought
To the Child born that night.

A King stepped out of my breast
Who had the bearing of a priest.
To him the moon's movement
Was a sacrament,
And the taste of water and of wine,
The touch of bread and the weight of a stone.
And he offered the frankincense of the heart
Prayer swung in the censor on the charcoal alight,
To the Child born that night.

A King stepped out of my loins,
And black as grapes were his skin and his veins.
In him was the anger of sex
Where the blood like a sea on the shingle breaks,
The pride of living, the longing for further birth
Because of the presentiment of death.
And he offered the myrrh of tiredness, the untight'ning of the fingers from the nerve's root
To the Child born that night.

Three Kings stepped out of my body

But only my two eyes between the three - 

Only my two eyes, and the wild skies to see.

Norman Nicholson

A Favourite Poem

This is still one of my favourite Christmas Poems. I am not quite sure why. But it has that haunting quality - hanging around in the back of your mind and leaping out at you occasionally and surprising you -  that marks the very best poetry, in my opinion.

The Journey of the Magi 

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

T S Eliot

When I published this last year, Ttony, of The Muniment Room, commented:

Were you aware that the start of the poem was inspired by a couple of sentences in a sermon originally preached to the Royal Household on Christmas Day 1620 by Lancelot Andrewes, who had led the team of translators which produced the King James Bible? 

"A cold comming they had of it, at this time of the yeare: just, the worst time of the yeare, to take a iourney, and specially a long iourney, in. The waies deep, the weather sharp, the daies short, the sunn farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter."

To which I replied:

I think I have known that: it resonates with some vestigial memory deep in the recesses of my brain. But I could not have told you, if asked. Yet I do vaguely recall investigating those quotation marks. On the other hand there is no footnote or reference in my Eliot, and I can't believe in pre-internet days that I would have looked much further.

To which Ttony replied: 

And guess what: I've never noticed the quotation marks before! 

With Betjeman for Christmas and this for the Epiphany I have more theology of the Incarnation that I have had in many, many, years of sermons.