I syng of a mayden

Last updated

The Annunciation depicted by Bernardino di Mariotto, c.1514 Anunciacion (Mariotto).jpg
The Annunciation depicted by Bernardino di Mariotto, c.1514

"I syng of a mayden" (sometimes titled "As Dewe in Aprille") is a Middle English lyric poem or carol of the 15th century celebrating the Annunciation and the Virgin Birth of Jesus. It has been described as one of the most admired short vernacular English poems of the late Middle Ages. [1]

Contents

Written by an anonymous hand, the text is now only to be found in British Library Sloane MS 2593, a collection of medieval lyrics now held in the British Library, although contemporary sources suggest it was well known in its day. Originally intended to be sung, no evidence of the work's musical setting survives, and since its rediscovery and popularisation it has formed the basis for a number of modern choral and vocal works.

Analysis

The work has been described by Laura Saetveit Miles, a University of Bergen Professor of medieval literature, as "one of the most admired fifteenth-century Middle English lyrics [which] offers, within a deceptively simple form, an extremely delicate and haunting presentation of Mary (the 'mayden / þat is makeles') and her conception of Christ ('here sone')". [1] Primarily, the text celebrates the Annunciation of Mary as described in Luke 1:26, but also widely references concepts from the Old Testament. [2] Michael Steffes of University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point notes that "'I syng of a mayden' is a very quiet and very beautiful meditation on the inward aspects of the Annunciation, on the immediate consequences of Mary's acceptance of Gabriel's message." [2] The concept of the choice of Mary is an important subtlety in the text. Derek Pearsall writes:

A brain and a subtle ear has gone into the making of this poem...celebrating the mystery of Christ's conception. Dew falling on grass, flower and spray (traditional imagery, deriving from OT texts such as Psalm 72:6) suggests ease, grace and delicacy generally (not progressive stages of insemination). The emphasis on Mary's freedom of choice, at the moment of the annunciation, is theologically strictly proper. [3]

According to Miles, despite a celebratory opening, "Mary's physical stillness as proof of her virginity remains the poet's priority." As a result, the poet repeats the phrase "He cam also stylle" in three of the five verses. "Stylle" had several implications – the stillness of the conception of Mary and of the birth of Jesus Christ. [1]

The poem is written from a first person point of view, and contains five quatrains. Below is the text in both its original Middle English, with spelling intact, and a modern translation. [4]

Middle English original [5] English modernisation [6]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mother and maiden
There was never, ever one but she;
Well may such a lady
God's mother be.

Origin

Single surviving manuscript source of "I syng of a mayden" in Sloane MS 2593. Note how the two-verse structure in the manuscript differs from most transcribed versions. I syng of a mayden.jpg
Single surviving manuscript source of "I syng of a mayden" in Sloane MS 2593. Note how the two-verse structure in the manuscript differs from most transcribed versions.

The manuscript in which the poem is found, (Sloane MS 2593, ff.10v-11) is held by the British Library, who date the work to c.1400 and speculate that the lyrics may have belonged to a wandering minstrel; other poems included in the manuscript include "I have a gentil cok", "Adam lay i-bowndyn" and two riddle songs – "A minstrel's begging song" and "I have a yong suster". [7] The Chaucer scholar Joseph Glaser notes that 2593 contains the only surviving copies of several "indispensable" poems. [8] [9] These include the aforementioned poem "Adam lay i-bowndyn", "A Babe is born al of a may", "Benedicamus Domino" and "Lullay, myn lykyng". [10]

In 1836, Thomas Wright suggested that, although his fellow antiquarian Joseph Ritson had dated the manuscript from the reign of Henry V of England (1387–1422), he personally felt that although "its greatest antiquity must be included within the fifteenth century", some lyrics contained within may be of an earlier origin. [11] Wright speculated, on the basis of the dialect of Middle English, that the lyrics probably originated in Warwickshire, and suggested that a number of the songs were intended for use in mystery plays. [11] More recent analysis of the manuscript places the dialect as being of East Anglian original and more specifically Norfolk; two further carol MSS from the county contain duplicates from Sloane MS 2593. [12] However, "I syng of a mayden" is a unique instance of this lyric.

Although the Sloane Manuscript is the only surviving textual source, the bibliographer and Shakespearean scholar W. W. Greg proposed that the poem's similarity to a much earlier 13th-century poem held at Trinity College, Cambridge (MS. B. 13. 49) was unlikely to be accidental. [13] Alan J. Fletcher, a specialist in Latin liturgical drama and the late Middle Ages, noted in 1978 that a set of contemporary sermons compiled by a writer called Selk (Bodleian MS Barlow 24) quote the final phrases of the poem in such a way to suggest the poem was more widely disseminated and known in its time:

Mayde, Wyff and Moder whas neure but ye
Wel may swych a ladye Goddys modyr be. [8]

Musical setting

As most explicitly noted by the first quatrain, the poem was originally intended to be sung. Indeed, as noted by Stephen Medcalf, Emeritus Reader in English at the University of Sussex, the text itself seems to imply melody and verse. [14] However, due to the oral tradition of the time, the original melody of the song was not notated and over the course of time was forgotten.

Since the rediscovery of the text, many composers have set the text to music, amongst them diverse choral or vocal interpretations by Martin Shaw, [15] Patrick Hadley, [16] Roger Quilter, [17] John Gerrish, [18] Gustav Holst, [19] Arnold Bax [20] Peter Warlock, [21] R. R. Terry, [22] Lennox Berkeley, [23] Benjamin Britten ("As Dewe in Aprille" in his Ceremony of Carols ), [15] [24] Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ronald Corp (1975), Philip Lawson a setting published by Walton Music, John Adams (as the chorus "I Sing of a Maiden" in his opera-oratorio El Niño ), and Bob Chilcott (in his Salisbury Vespers). The work is also regularly performed by the Mediæval Bæbes. The setting composed by Miklós Rózsa is also included in the 1953 Knights of the Round Table film score.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sumer is icumen in</span> Medieval English canon

"Sumer is icumen in" is the incipit of a medieval English round or rota of the mid-13th century; it is also known variously as the Summer Canon and the Cuckoo Song.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hark! The Herald Angels Sing</span> Christmas carol

"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is an English Christmas carol that first appeared in 1739 in the collection Hymns and Sacred Poems. The carol, based on Luke 2:14, tells of an angelic chorus singing praises to God. As it is known in the modern era, it features lyrical contributions from Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, two of the founding ministers of Methodism, with music adapted from "Vaterland, in deinen Gauen" of Felix Mendelssohn's cantata Festgesang.

"The First Nowell", modernised as "The First Noel" ", is a traditional English Christmas carol with Cornish origins, most likely from the early modern period, although possibly earlier. It is listed as number 682 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Holly and the Ivy</span> Traditional British folk Christmas carol

"The Holly and the Ivy" is a traditional British folk Christmas carol, listed as number 514 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The song can be traced only as far as the early nineteenth century, but the lyrics reflect an association between holly and Christmas dating at least as far as medieval times. The lyrics and melody varied significantly in traditional communities, but the song has since become standardised. The version which is now popular was collected in 1909 by the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp in the market town of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, England, from a woman named Mary Clayton.

<i>A Ceremony of Carols</i> Choral composition

A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 is an extended choral composition for Christmas by Benjamin Britten scored for three-part treble chorus, solo voices, and harp. The text, structured in eleven movements, is taken from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, edited by Gerald Bullett. It is principally in Middle English, with some Latin and Early Modern English. It was composed in 1942 on Britten's sea voyage from the United States to England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam lay ybounden</span> 15th-century English Christian text

"Adam lay ybounden", originally titled Adam lay i-bowndyn, is a 15th-century English Christian text of unknown authorship. It relates the Biblical events of Genesis, Chapter 3 on the Fall of Man.

Robyn and Gandeleyn is an English ballad. The poem is in Sloane Manuscript 2593, a document of lyrics and carols which dates from around 1450. It was first printed by Joseph Ritson in his 1790 collection Ancient Songs. It was later republished in the second half of the 19th century in an anthology of traditional English and Scottish ballads by Francis James Child known as the Child Ballads, where it is Child Ballad 115. Child also divided the continuous text into seventeen stanzas.

<i>The Holly Bears the Crown</i> 1995 studio album by The Young Tradition with Shirley and Dolly Collins

The Holly Bears The Crown is an album by The Young Tradition with Shirley and Dolly Collins and other guest musicians. The trio "The Young Tradition" sang a cappella folk songs in a style similar to the Copper Family.

"Angelus ad virginem" is a medieval carol whose text is a poetic version of the Hail Mary and the Annunciation by the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary.

The Pilgrimage of the Soul or The Pylgremage of the Sowle was a late medieval work in English, combining prose and lyric verse, translated from Guillaume de Deguileville's Old French Le Pèlerinage de l'Âme. It circulated in manuscript in fifteenth-century England, and was among the works printed by William Caxton. One manuscript forms part of the Egerton Collection in the British Library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annunciation to the shepherds</span> Scene from the Nativity

The annunciation to the shepherds is an episode in the Nativity of Jesus described in the Bible in Luke 2, in which angels tell a group of shepherds about the birth of Jesus. It is a common subject of Christian art and of Christmas carols.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lullay, mine liking</span>

"Lullay, mine liking" is a Middle English lyric poem or carol of the 15th century which frames a narrative describing an encounter of the Nativity with a song sung by the Virgin Mary to the infant Christ. The refrain is an early example of an English lullaby; the term "lullaby" is thought to originate with the "lu lu" or "la la" sound made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and "by" or "bye bye", another lulling sound.

"This Endris Night" is a 15th-century English Christmas carol. It has also appeared under various other spellings. Two versions from the 15th-century survive, one republished in Thomas Wright, Songs and Carols Now First Printed, From a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, and the other in the possession of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, Scotland, a legal deposit belonging to the Faculty of Advocates, a role which was assumed by the National Library of Scotland from 1925 onwards. All non-legal collections were given to the National Library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trinity Carol Roll</span>

The Trinity Carol Roll is a 15th-century manuscript of thirteen English carols held by the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge. It is the earliest surviving example of polyphonic music written in English. Compiled after 1415, it contains the earliest of two manuscript sources for the Agincourt Carol which tells of Henry V's victory at the Battle of Agincourt, as well as several early Christmas carols. The majority of texts are in Middle English with some of the carols alternating between Latin and Middle English, a common form for carols of the period known as macaronic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music in Medieval England</span>

Music in Medieval England, from the end of Roman rule in the fifth century until the Reformation in the sixteenth century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Selden Carol Book</span> Medieval carol manuscript

The Selden Carol Book is a medieval carol manuscript held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Along with the Trinity Carol Roll, with which it shares five contemporaneous carols and texts, it is one of the main sources for 15th century English carols, and like the Trinity Roll contains the music as the well as the texts. The inclusion of Deo Gracias Anglia referencing Henry V's victory at Agincourt in 1415 gives an indication of the date of composition of the carols.

"Maiden in the mor lay" or "The Maid of the Moor" is a Middle English lyric of the early 14th century, set to a melody which is now lost. The literary historian Richard L. Greene called it "one of the most haunting lyrics of all the Middle Ages", and Edith Sitwell thought it "a miracle of poetry". It is a notoriously enigmatic poem, perhaps devotional, perhaps secular, which depicts a maiden in the wilderness who lives on flowers and spring-water. Critics are divided in their interpretation of her: she may be the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, a water-sprite, or an ordinary human girl. The 14th-century bishop Richard de Ledrede's dissatisfaction with this song led to an alternative lyric for it being written, a Latin religious poem, Peperit virgo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alysoun</span>

"Alysoun" or "Alison", also known as "Bytuene Mersh ant Averil", is a late-13th or early-14th century poem in Middle English dealing with the themes of love and springtime through images familiar from other medieval poems. It forms part of the collection known as the Harley Lyrics, and exemplifies its best qualities. There may once have been music for this poem, but if so it no longer survives. "Alysoun" was included in The Oxford Book of English Verse, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and The Longman Anthology of British Literature. It has been called one of the best lyrics in the language.

"Ich am of Irlaunde", sometimes known as "The Irish Dancer", is a short anonymous Middle English dance-song, possibly fragmentary, dating from the early 14th century, in which an Irish woman issues an invitation to come and daunce wit me in Irlaunde. The original music for this song is now lost. It is historically important as being the earliest documented reference to Irish dance. "Ich am of Irlaunde" is well-known as the source of W. B. Yeats's poem "I Am of Ireland", and it was itself included in The Oxford Book of English Verse, The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Longman Anthology of British Literature.

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16, also known as the Fairfax Manuscript, is a fifteenth-century Middle English poetic anthology which contains one of the finest collections of Chaucerian verse of this period. Owned and commissioned by John Stanley of Hooton, Cheshire, Fairfax 16 was produced in Oxford or London in the mid-fifteenth century. Thomas Fairfax bequeathed it to the Bodleian Library in 1671.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Laura Saetveit Miles, The Annunciation as Model of Meditation: Stillness, Speech and Transformation in Middle English Drama and Lyric Archived 28 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine in Marginalia, Vol. 2 – 2004–2005 Cambridge Yearbook (Cambridge, 2005).
  2. 1 2 Michael Steffes, "As dewe in Aprylle": I syng of a mayden and the liturgy', Medium Aevum, Spring 2002.
  3. ↑ Derek Pearsall, Introductory note to Chaucer to Spenser: An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) ISBN   978-0-631-19839-0, 387.
  4. ↑ For a recent translation, see Richard Utz, "I syng of a Mayden," in: Mother Mary Comes to Me. A Popculture Poetry Anthology, ed. Karen Head and Collin Kelley (Lake Dallas, Texas: Madville, 2020).
  5. ↑ Laura Saetveit Miles, The Annunciation as Model of Meditation: Stillness, Speech and Transformation in Middle English Drama and Lyric Archived 27 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine in Marginalia, Vol. 2 – 2004–2005 Cambridge Yearbook (Cambridge, 2005). Appendix.
  6. ↑ David Breeden, I Sing of a Maiden, Adaptations from Middle English Poetry.
  7. ↑ Medieval lyrics [ permanent dead link ] at the British Library Online, URL accessed 31 December 2009
  8. 1 2 Alan J. Fletcher, "I sing of a maiden": A Fifteenth Century Sermon Reminiscence" in Notes and Queries issue 223, NS 25 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 107–108.
  9. ↑ Joseph Glaser, English poetry in modern verse (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2007) ISBN   978-0-87220-879-7, 5.
  10. ↑ Thomas Wright, Songs and carols from a manuscript in the British Museum of the fifteenth century , (London: T. Richards, 1856), 46-47, 79-80, 94-95.
  11. 1 2 Thomas Wright, Songs and carols printed from a manuscript in the Sloane collection in the British Museum (London: W. Pickering, 1836), vi
  12. ↑ Palti, K. R. (2008) ‘Synge we now alle and sum’: three Fifteenth-Century collections of communal song: a study of British Library, Sloane MS 2593; Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1; and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54 . Doctoral thesis, University College London, 104
  13. ↑ W. W. Greg, "I Sing of a Maiden That Is Makeless" in Modern Philology, October 1909, 1. University of Chicago Press.
  14. ↑ Stephen Medcalf, The Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen & Co., 1981) ISBN   978-0-416-86000-9, 14.
  15. 1 2 William Emmett Studwell, The Christmas Carol Reader (New York: Haworth Press, 1995) ISBN   978-1-56023-872-0, 43
  16. ↑ David Willcocks, Kings College Choir, Cambridge , Argo RG 240 (Mono) ZRG 5240 (stereo)
  17. ↑ Roger Quilter, "An old carol", for voice and piano, Op. 25, No. 3
  18. ↑ John Gerrish website, eohistory.info, 14 August 2010, retrieved 24 August 2010
  19. ↑ Gustav Holst, "I sing of a maiden", Four Songs for Voice and Violin, Op. 35, No. 3 (1916–17)
  20. ↑ Lewis Foreman, Bax: A Composer and His Times, (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007) ISBN   978-1-84383-209-6, 217.
  21. ↑ "As Dew in Aprylle" Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine , The Choral Music of Peter Warlock, vol. 4 (Peter Warlock Society, Thames Publishing)
  22. ↑ Richard R. Terry, "I Sing of a Mayden" in Twelve Christmas Carols. (London: J. Curwen & Sons, 1912) 18.
  23. ↑ A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, Christmas Eve, 2008 (PDF), Provost and Fellows of King's College, Cambridge, 24 December 2008, archived from the original (PDF) on 5 November 2010, retrieved 25 December 2008
  24. ↑ Benjamin Britten, A Ceremony of Carols Op. 28 (1942)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.