Iesu, swete sone dere!
On porful bed list þou here,
And þat me greusþ sore;
For þi cradel is asa a bere,
Oxe and asse beth þi fere;
Weope ich mai þar-fore.
Iesu, swete, beo noþ wroþ
þou ich nabbe clout me cloþ
þe on for to folde,
þe on to folde ne to wrappe;
For ich nabbe clout ne lappe;
Bote ley þou þi fet to my pappe,
And wite þe from the colde.
Did that make any sense to you? Try pronouncing those funny little "þ" characters like a "th" and see if it makes better sense. I found I could decipher most of it, but still, I feel like I'm almost reading a foreign language. This was probably written sometime in the fourteenth century, which would be around the time of John Wycliffe, one of the first scholars to question the Catholic way and the first of the English reformers.
You may be saying, "Well that's great, but why did I need to know all that?"(This is for those of you who do not, like myself, possess an innate and inexplicable love for anything old, especially if it's European).
I'll tell you why, because seeing this is like a window into past imaginations. When scholars sat back and dreamed about Jesus's birth(and it would have had to have been some sort of scholar who wrote this, very probably a monk), this is what came to mind. A poor mother who loved her son dearly and was mourning the fact that she could not give him the finest to be had. In a climate such as England's with the feast of St. Michaelmas happening during the coldest portion of the year, one's thoughts naturally turned to the bitterness of the season, the cold, the gray, the snow, note the lines, I'll translate:
Jesu, sweet son dear,
On poorful bed liest thou here,
And that me grieveth sore;
For thy cradle is as a bier,
Ox and ass beith thy fear,
Weep I may therefore.
Jesu, sweet, be not wroth,
Though I have no cloth to clothe,
Thee on for to fold
For I have cloth nor lap,
But lay thou thy feet to my breast,
And ward thee from the cold.
I hope this is accurate. I had to guess at a couple of the words. Anyhow, this tender little imaginative couplet, probably jotted down by some dreamy monk somewhere, wasn't completely forgotten. It managed to get carried down in various forms up to a volume in 1866 full of collected medieval manuscripts where it was written thus:
Jesu, son most sweet and dear,
Mean the bed you lie on here,
And that afflicts me sore,
For your cradle's like a bier,
Ox and ass are with you here,
And I must weep therefore.
Jesu, sweet one, show no wrath.
I have not the poorest cloth
To wrap you in its fold.
Not a rag in which to wrap,
Hold you safe upon my lap,
(So put your feet against my pap)
And shield you from the cold.
The line in parentheses is found in some later manuscripts and not in others because it disrupts the symmetry of the verses...now I'm starting to sound like the cross references in a Bible: early mss do not contain this vs.
We'll stop there. The above set of verses, minus the parenthetical line, was discovered in the aforementioned 1866 collection by an Australian composer, Dr. Colin Brumby, in 1977 and set to music. Now, my initial reaction may have been something like yours. "Can anything good come out of Australia?" Was the first thing that flashed into my mind when I learned of the man, but, it seems that it can, indeed, and what follows is definitive proof. I would invite you skeptics in the voice of Philip, "Come and hear." ;)
This haunting music was arranged for choir, solo mezzo-soprano, and harp by Jackson Berkey and has become pretty much the only version of this carol performed today. It really captures the medieval feel while not sounding like something cut directly from that era. It's truly timeless which is the hallmark of a great piece of music.
I have one confession to make before I post this. I have grown up with this piece. I listened to it from a time before I can remember which would predate my first birthday at least. I am ashamed to say that from a young age I relegated it to that list of songs "I didn't like" along with I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day and others, because it made me cry and I didn't know why. I pulled out the CD a couple days ago and listened to it again, and new that I had missed out horribly, yet again. I understand now why it made me cry; I cried because it was beautiful.
May this dolourous piece of music quiet your heart today. Amid the flurry, jingling, and noise of the commercial Christmas season, may this still the air about you and cause you to stop and meditate on what it is we're celebrating. I don't really want to argue the theological implications of this poetry. It's clear that it was an imaginative verse intended to consider the feelings of Mary who, while she did have cloths to wrap her son in, had to lay him in a feeding trough on his first night which was probably less than ideal. I imagine she had wanted something more than those circumstances for the baby whom she knew to be the Son of God.
Her nice little home in Nazareth all set up for the new baby, and here she was stuck in a stall in Bethlehem all because of some stupid census. We look at it in retrospect and say, "but of course He had to be born in Bethlehem."
Of course! Hindsight is always 20/20. In the moment, I imagine Mary simply had to trust that God knew best, but every mother weeps sometimes if circumstances do not permit her to give the very best to her child. And now her tears have been turned to joy. Now she is in the presence of the God she trusted then amidst all of that trouble.
And so, as we listen to this moving peace, even as we remember Mary's tears, we can rejoice with her now. A quiet joy born of thought, tears, and prayer, the kind of joy that supersedes human understanding.
What are your thoughts on this lovely piece?
Until tomorrow,
~ Christianna
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1 comments:
Bridgette
said...
The changes in the English language are so interesting. There is Lovely song, the music is like a lullaby! I think also about Simeon’s prophecy about “a sword piercing through her heart”. Mary didn’t have an easy life. Soon she would have to flee to Egypt and she was likely widowed early. So the mixture of joy and sadness was a very real possibility.
1 comments:
The changes in the English language are so interesting. There is Lovely song, the music is like a lullaby! I think also about Simeon’s prophecy about “a sword piercing through her heart”. Mary didn’t have an easy life. Soon she would have to flee to Egypt and she was likely widowed early. So the mixture of joy and sadness was a very real possibility.
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