The Poetry of William Herebert: 'Thou wommon boute fere'

I've written a piece for this week's Catholic Herald on the medieval poet William Herebert:

In early 14th-century Oxford, surrounded by some of the foremost theologians of medieval Europe, a Franciscan friar named William Herebert was writing a precious little collection of poems.

Herebert’s name is not well known today, but his poems, beautiful and distinctive in their own right, also represent an important milestone for English Catholicism: he was one of the first people to turn the Latin hymns of the Church into English poetry.

Read the rest here. I've posted a number of William Herebert's poems on this blog before, and they can be found under this tag - I particularly recommend 'The kynges baneres beth forth ylad', 'Wele, herying and worshipe', and 'Hail, Lady, sea-star bright'.

As I was writing this piece it occurred to me that 2017 happens to be the closest we can get to an anniversary for Herebert: we don't know his exact dates of birth or death (c.1270 to c.1333 is the usual guess), but we do know that he became master of the Franciscan house in Oxford around 1317. This 700-year anniversary seems as good a date to mark as any - and as regular readers will know, I enjoy a good anniversary. So I've decided that over the course of this year I'll post the rest of Herebert's poems here, with translations, and maybe a few audio recordings too - like many Middle English poets, his verses are often better heard than read on the page. A few of Herebert's poems can be found in anthologies of Middle English verse, and there's one edition of his English poems which is available online, but that edition (while very useful) contains no translations or glossing to help the reader unfamiliar with Herebert's rather tricky dialect. I'll do my best to make his poems more accessible, and to highlight some of the qualities which make them so appealing.

Virgin and Child (All Souls, Oxford)

To get us started, here's one of Herebert's longer poems, one of the few which has no known source.

Thou wommon boute fere
Thin owne fader bere!
Gret wonder this was
That on wommon was moder
To fader and hire brother,
So never other nas.

Thou my suster and moder
And thy sone my brother,
Who shulde thenne drede?
Whoso haveth the king to broder
And eek the quene to moder
Well aughte for to spede.

Dame, suster and moder,
Say thy sone, my brother,
That is domesmon,
That for thee that him bere,
To me be debonere;
My robe he haveth opon.

Sethe he my robe tok,
Also ich finde in bok,
He is to me ibounde;
And helpe he wole, ich wot,
For love the chartre wrot,
The enke orn of his wounde.

Ich take to witnessinge
The spere and the crowninge,
The nailes and the rode,
That he that is so cunde
This ever haveth in munde,
That boughte us with his blode.

When thou yeve him my wede,
Dame, help at the nede;
Ich wot thou might fol well,
That for no wreched gult
Ich be to helle ipult,
To thee ich make apel.

Now, Dame, ich thee biseche,
At thilke day of wreche
Be by thy sones trone,
When sunne shall ben sought
In werk, in word, in thought,
And spek for me thou one.

When ich mot nede apere
For mine gultes here
Tofore the domesmon,
Suster, be ther my fere
And make him debonere
That my robe haveth opon.

For habbe ich thee and him
That markes berth with him,
That charite him tok,
The woundes all blody,
The toknes of mercy,
Ase techeth Holy Bok,
Tharf me nothing drede;
Sathan shall nout spede
With wrenches ne with crok.
Amen.

Here's a translation of the poem (but I like Herebert's use of 'dame' for 'lady', so I've kept that...):

Thou woman without compare,
[Who didst] thine own father bear!
Great wonder this was,
That one woman was mother
To father and her brother,
Such another never was.

Thou my sister and mother,
And thy son my brother;
Who then should dread?
Whoever has the king for brother
And the queen for mother
Well ought to succeed.

Dame, sister and mother,
Say to thy son, my brother,
Who is domesman, [judge]
That for thee who him did bear
To me be debonair; [merciful and gracious]
My robe he hath upon.

Since he my robe took,
As I find in book, [i.e. the Bible]
He is to me bound.
And help he will, I wot, [I know]
For love the charter wrote,
The ink ran from his wounds.

I take to witnessing
The spear and the crowning, [i.e. with thorns]
The nails and the rood,
That he that is so kind [benevolent in nature]
Have ever this in mind,
Who bought us with his blood.

Since thou gave him my weed, [clothing]
Dame, help at the need.
I know thou may full well,
That for no wretched guilt
I may be to hell ypult; [thrust]
To thee I make appeal.

Now, Dame, I thee beseech,
At that day of wreche [Judgement Day]
Be by thy son's throne,
When sins shall be sought [searched through]
In work, in word, in thought,
And speak for me, thou alone.

When I must needs appear
For mine sins here
Before the domesman,
Sister, be there my fere [companion]
And make him debonair
That my robe hath upon.

For if I have thee and him
Whom the marks beareth on him,
Which charity him took - [the marks which love gave him]
The wounds all bloody,
The tokens of mercy,
As teacheth Holy Book,
Nothing need I dread;
Satan shall not succeed
With wrenches nor with crook. [with tricks or guile]
Amen.

This is a fairly simple poem - deliberately simple, I think, perhaps because it's not a translation of a hymn. It aims to be direct, intimate and devotional, a private and meditative kind of prayer, and so it depends for its effect on repetition and more straightforward diction than Herebert tends to use in his hymn translations. This seems appropriate for a poem which so tenderly explores intimate family relationships, leaning on the kinship created when Mary gave her son 'my robe', the clothing of human flesh. Christ is our brother, he wears our clothes, and so how can he not be 'bound' by the bond of love?

The images here are ones traditional in medieval spirituality, including that striking idea that Christ wrote the 'charter' of human liberation with the ink of his own blood. His sufferings are called to be 'witnesses' to the transaction written upon his body. This is a legal image (fitting for a poem where Christ is not only a brother but domesman, 'judge'), but it's also part of a wider tradition of images drawn from books and book-making, common in medieval devotional writing; these speak, for instance, of Christ writing upon the book of the heart, or compare his body stretched upon the cross to stretched-out parchment on which a message of love is written. It's an image drawn from a literate, documentary, book-filled culture, perhaps inspired by the very ink which flowed from the poet's hands as he wrote these words in his manuscript.

It's a metaphor which would have resonated in early fourteenth-century Oxford. This picture, which the Catholic Herald chose to illustrate my piece, is very appropriate for Herebert, though none of the buildings visible here had been built when he lived in Oxford. This is the view from the tower of St Mary's church in the centre of the city, looking over what's now called Radcliffe Square. In Herebert's day, looking out from St Mary's, you would have seen not the elegant towers and spacious quadrangles of All Souls' but a cluster of small, closely-packed residential halls populated by students and teachers, the forerunners of Oxford's colleges. This street was the centre of the book trade in medieval Oxford, where you would have found the scribes, parchment-makers, bookbinders and copyists, all the people making the books and writing implements which the university relied on.

Various places might claim to be the heart of the University of Oxford, but St Mary's has a particularly good right to that title: it was in this church that the first university library was established (around 1320, during Herebert's time in Oxford, and more than 150 years before the founding of the Bodleian) and in the early days of the university lectures, ceremonies, and graduations took place here. We know that Herebert preached at St Mary's on at least one occasion, since his manuscript of his works contains a sermon to be given there on 9 June 1314, the translation feast of St Edmund of Abingdon.

St Edmund, scholar and Archbishop of Canterbury, grew up in Oxford about a century before Herebert was born, and had a strong connection to St Mary's. As a boy St Edmund was educated in a school attached to the church, where he had three miraculous experiences during his childhood (read about them here). On one occasion, a ghostly voice prevented him from running out of the church to play with other boys during Mass. Another time, a stone fell off the church tower while he was listening to a lecture in the churchyard, but Edmund was saved from harm. At twelve years old, Edmund made a vow of chastity which he confirmed by a mystical marriage with the Virgin Mary: he placed a ring on the finger of a statue of the Virgin in St Mary's, from which he then found it could not be removed, and wore another ring himself as a token of his vow. These stories associate Oxford's local saint with the physical spaces inside and outside this church, which you can still walk through today even if most of the buildings around them have changed.

By the west door of St Mary's, where St Edmund was nearly hit by a stone...

As a Franciscan, William Herebert's home in Oxford was not here in the heart of the city but on its outskirts, in the parish of St Ebbe's. The Franciscan house there had been founded in 1224, two years before St Francis' death; it was, of course, demolished at the Reformation, and the site now lies underneath a supermarket. (The area is currently being redeveloped, bringing to light some fascinating glimpses into life at medieval Greyfriars.)

For such a deeply traditional university, Oxford has often been uncomfortable with its medieval roots - for a long time after the Reformation, acknowledging any continuity between the university and the scholarly communities of the monks and friars of medieval Oxford was all too dangerously Catholic. The university's humanist origin myth was established at the expense of people like Edmund of Abingdon and William Herebert, and this attitude has not entirely died out; in official publications it's not uncommon to see something like this short piece which makes the 'history of books in Oxford' begin only in 1478, with the first book printed in the city. Books and their readers and writers go back a long way before that, of course. For Herebert in the early fourteenth century, Edmund of Abingdon was already part of Oxford's history; at St Mary's he might have thought, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of Herebert's Oxford contemporary Duns Scotus, 'this air I gather and I release / He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what / He haunted'...

Edmund of Abingdon too has a place in the history of English poetry, since one of the earliest and most popular devotional poems in Middle English survives embedded in one of his Latin works:

Nou goth sonne under wod,
Me reweth, Marie, thi faire rode.
Nou goth sonne under tre,
Me reweth, Marie, thi sone and thee.

[Now goes the sun under the wood,
I grieve, Mary, for your fair face;
Now goes the sun under the tree,
I grieve, Mary, for thy son and thee.]

We don't know who wrote this (it's just possible it was St Edmund himself) but it dates to the early thirteenth century, and is a reminder that Herebert, though an innovator in some ways, was following in a very well-established tradition of devotional English poetry. Herebert's poems to the Virgin, including 'Thou wommon boute fere', are very much in that tradition.

St Mary's (source)

The Oxford context for Herebert's work appeals to me for obvious reasons, but it's actually an important one: it challenges several popular stereotypes about the medieval period to find a trained theologian in a university city, in the early fourteenth century, spending his time translating Latin hymns into English verse. Firstly, it's a good example of how seriously medieval preachers took their pastoral duties - forget your lazy dark-ages myths about clerics gabbling away in Latin to maliciously hide religion from the unlearned. (I hope no one who reads this blog believes that nonsense, but it's still regularly promulgated to the public by people who should know better.) Part of Herebert's motivation was evidently that he wanted his congregation to understand the hymns of the church in the vernacular, in their language - which was his language too, though he was also thoroughly conversant in Latin and French. That doesn't even make him particularly unusual or controversial for his day; he was part of a very long tradition of pastoral and homiletic writing in the vernacular going back to the Anglo-Saxon period, representing perhaps the longest unbroken strand of continuity in English literature. And since people still go around saying that Chaucer was the 'Father of English poetry', 'one of the first people to write in English', and all that, it's always good to remember that no, he really wasn't...

I emphasise the Englishness of Herebert's verse in part because there's been a little flurry of writing about 'Englishness' lately. In the rather frantic journalistic search for historical analogies for Brexit, Norman Conquest parallels are all very last year - it's all about the Reformation now. Witness this, and this, and this, all of which depend on the idea that 'English identity' is absolutely and inextricably Protestant, constituted in large part by opposition to the medieval, Catholic, pre-Reformation past. This is hardly a new argument (far from it!) but it's a pretty awful one for all kinds of reasons. Quite apart from the dangers inherent in declaring any particular minority religion or denomination to be not English, it involves repeating popular myths about medieval England and its relationship to the rest of Catholic Europe which most historians stopped even bothering to refute decades ago, so simplistic and caricatured are they. Imagine thinking that for the nine hundred years (!) between the Synod of Whitby and the Reformation, England was 'subservient to Rome' and tied to the 'conformist Continent', only capable of innovation, liberty and creativity once free of those wicked foreigners and their Catholic shackles. It's such an ignorant and old-fashioned view - and a very limited and (ironically) constricting way of talking about how other people might understand their own overlapping ethnic, national and religious identities.

So now seems a good time to celebrate someone like Herebert and his very English Catholicism - his very Catholic Englishness - which was perfectly compatible for him with both scholarly Latin learning and fluency in French and Anglo-Norman literature. His manuscript is trilingual, representing a very catholic (with a small c) range of interests, and revealing the thoughtful creativity of his poetry and the sensitivity of his pastoral care. These make him appealing, but not at all unique; he was a man of his time. He was a product of the lively and dynamic culture of medieval England and Catholic Europe, which educated and nurtured Herebert and many more like him - and which deserves to be taken seriously in its own right, and not just as a prop in a lazy rhetorical argument.

Audi, benigne Conditor, 'Lustne, mylde Wrouhte'

Gregory the Great, from a late 12th/early 13th-century English manuscript (BL Royal 6 B II, f. 1)

This is a Middle English translation of the Lent hymn 'Audi, benigne Conditor', by the Franciscan friar William Herebert (c.1270-1333):

Lustne, mylde Wrouhte, oure bones wyth wepinge
In þys holy uastinge, vourti dawes lestynge.
Holy secher of monnes þouht, þou wost oure brotelnesse;
To hem þat beth yturnd to þe graunte vorȝyfnesse.
Meche, vorsoht, we habbeht agult; vorȝyf hem þat knoulecheth.
To worshype of þyn oune nome, to sunvol mon be leche.
Graunte ous pyne wyþouteuorth þe body wyth vastinge,
Þat oure gost wyþynneuorth veste vrom sunnynge.
Graunte ous, Holy Trinite, þat in Godhede art on,
Þat þe ȝyft of leyntes vast notfol boe to mon. Amen.

That is:

Hear, merciful Creator, our prayers with weeping
In this holy fasting, forty days lasting.
Holy searcher of man’s thought, thou knowest our brittleness; [frailty]
To them who are turned towards thee, grant forgiveness.
Much, truly, we have sinned; forgive them that acknowledge it.
For the honour of thine own name, be physician to sinful man.
Grant us so to mortify the body outwardly with fasting
That our souls inwardly may fast from sinning.
Grant us, Holy Trinity, who in Godhead art one,
That the gift of Lent’s fast may be beneficial to man. Amen.

William Herebert was a prolific translator of Latin hymns into English verse, and the purpose of his translations was probably to aid in his preaching, making Latin hymns available to an English-speaking audience. To this end, his translations are often dramatic and memorable - once heard, they would stay in your head. This translation makes particularly skillful use of rhyme, both between and within lines: 'this holy fasting, forty days lasting' is my favourite example. It works much better read aloud than seen on the page; in lines 7-8, for instance, Herebert produces a very nice parallelism between fasting outwardly (wyþouteuorth) and inwardly (wyþynneuorth), the echo between the words underlining the point that one kind of fasting supports the other.

As for vocabulary, Herebert's language is always interesting as evidence of how extensive, flexible and creative Early Middle English religious vocabulary was. It's a vocabulary largely derived from Old English, and much of it is still recognisable today, although archaic: examples in this poem include mild ('merciful'), bones ('prayers' - as in 'boon'), leche ('physician'), ghost ('spirit, soul'), and brittleness ('frailty') - the last an especially poetic touch. In the opening phrase of the hymn, 'Lustne, mylde Wrouhte', Herebert translates Latin conditor, 'maker, builder' with a version of the noun wright (from Old English wyrhta), which gave us the second element in words like wheelwright and playwright. Herebert also uses this word in his translation of 'Conditor Alme Siderum' ('Holy wrouhte of sterres bryht'), whereas in his version of 'Veni Creator Spiritus' ('Com, Shuppere, Holy Gost') he translates creator with shuppere, from Old English scyppend, 'creator, one who shapes'. It's interesting to see Herebert making a deliberate choice about which word to use, and preserving the distinction between the Latin terms with the English vocabulary available to him.

Here's the Latin text of the hymn, which is attributed to Gregory the Great:

Audi, benigne Conditor,
nostras preces cum fletibus,
sacrata in abstinentia
fusas quadragenaria.

Scrutator alme cordium,
infirma tu scis virium;
ad te reversis exhibe
remissionis gratiam.

Multum quidem peccavimus,
sed parce confitentibus,
tuique laude nominis
confer medelam languidis.

Sic corpus extra conteri
dona per abstinentiam,
ieiunet ut mens sobria
a labe prorsus criminum.

Praesta, beata Trinitas,
concede, simplex Unitas,
ut fructuosa sint tuis
haec parcitatis munera. Amen.



For comparison, here's a later English translation, from Hymns Ancient and Modern (translated by the compilers):

O Maker of the world, give ear
In pitying love vouchsafe to hear
The prayers our contrite spirits raise
In this our fast of forty days.

All hearts are open unto thee,
Thou knowest each infirmity;
Now, as we turn to seek thy face,
Pour down on us thy pardoning grace.

Help us to grow in self-control,
To make the body serve the soul:
So may thy loving-kindness bless
Our fast with fruits of holiness.

'Wyle New Year watz so yep that hit watz newe cummen...'

For this New Year, three medieval texts which play on three words appropriate for the season: nowell, new, Yule.

'Christe redemptor omnium' in an Anglo-Saxon hymnal
(BL Cotton Vespasian D XII, f. 33)

First, William Herebert's 14th-century version of the Christmas hymn, 'Christe redemptor omnium' (for the Latin text see this page).

Cryst, buggere of alle ycoren, the Fadres olpy Sone,
On toforen ey gynnyng boren over alle speche and wone.
Thou lyht, thou Fadres bryhtnesse, thou trust and hope of alle,
Lust what thy folk thorouout the world to thee byddeth and kalle.
Wrouhte of oure hele, nou have in thyne munde
That of o mayde wemles thou toke oure kunde.
Thys day berth wytnesse, that neweth uche yer,
That on alyhtest from the Fader, of sunne make ous sker.
Hym hevene and erthe and wylde se and al that ys theron,
Wrouhte, of thy comynge, hereth wyth blisfol ron.
And we, nomliche, that beth bouht wyth thyn holy blod
For thys day singeth a neowe song and maketh blisfol mod.
Weole, Louerd, beo wyth thee, yboren of o may,
Wyth Fader and the Holy Gost withouten endeday. Amen.

(Christ, buyer of all chosen, the Father's only Son,
One before the beginning born, above all speech and wone.
Thou light, thou Father's brightness, thou trust and hope of all,
Hear what thy folk throughout the world to thee pray and call.
Author of our salvation, have now in thy mind
That of a maid sinless thou took our kind. [nature]
This day bears witness, which renews every year,
That one alights from the Father, from sin to make us sker. [clean, pure, bright]
Him heaven and earth and wild sea and all that is therein,
Author of thy coming, praise with joyful song.
And we, especially, who are bought with thy holy blood
For this day sing a new song and make joyful mod. [celebrate with glad hearts]
Glory, Lord, be with thee, born of a may, [maid]
With Father and the Holy Ghost, without an ending day. Amen.)

A few highlights of the language: 'olpy' in the first line might look like a mistake for 'only' but is in fact a distinct word, descended from Old English 'anlipig', which means 'single, sole, unique', a good way of translating the Latin unice. I always like Herebert's translation of auctor, 'creator, maker', into English as 'wright' (as in 'playwright'); and sker is also a nice word, from Old Norse skærr, 'bright, pure'; hence the old name for Maundy Thursday, Sheer Thursday.

This is a particularly fluent and confident translation, with a lovely swing in the rhyme and rhythm. It's also a poem which neatly manages to describe its own beauties, because song and singing and the delight they express are central to this hymn. It says that at Christmas all creation expresses its pleasure at Christ's coming in joyful song ('wyth blisfol ron'); heaven and earth and the wild sea sing ('wild' is Herebert's addition - isn't it great?) and we sing, too: 'singeth a neowe song and maketh blisfol mod'. The allusion here is to the psalm sung on Christmas Day: 'Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth'.

The song is 'new' because Christ's coming gives new life and new meaning to everything in the universe; but Herebert's song is 'new', too, because it's a new rendering of an old hymn (already at least six hundred years old by Herebert's day). A translation is always a process of renewal, of adding something new. The Latin hymn has some beautiful lines about the recurring observance of the Christmas feast, which returns every year to call the mind back to Christ's entrance into the world:

Hic praesens testatur dies,
currens per anni circulum,
quod a solus sede Patris
mundi salus adveneris.

(This the present day testifies,
turning in the circle of the year,
that one alone from the Father's seat
comes forth for the salvation of the world.)

Herebert renders this:

Thys day berth wytnesse, that neweth uche yer,
That on alyhtest from the Fader, of sunne make ous sker.

(This day bears witness, which renews every year,
That one alights from the Father, from sin to make us sker.)

Herebert translates the verb testatur ('bears witness'), and he retains the important tense of the verse ('alights', not 'alighted'), the present tense which suggests that Christ's coming is not only an event which happened far back in the past but something which recurs each year, in the eternal now of liturgical time. But Herebert adds a new idea, too: the day, he says, neweth every year, and this word suggests not only the newness and nowness of the Christmas feast - that every year it happens now, anew - but also its rejuvenating power, because in Middle English newen suggests renewal, new growth, rebirth, regeneration. Just as Christ's entry into human time brought a new kind of life, once and for all, so Christmas, recurring each year with the turning cycle of nature and the liturgy, brings a renewal of that life - a fresh start, a time of new beginnings.

'Christe redemptor omnium', with Old English gloss

(BL Cotton Vespasian D XII, f. 34)

This idea of renewal and the cycle of the year is linked, of course, with the fact that Christmas and the New Year fall so close together. In the north the cusp of December and January is a time of seasonal and cosmic rebirth; with the solstice we passed the darkest midpoint of winter, and now spring is in sight. Although historically there have been various ways of reckoning when the New Year began - different kinds of legal, liturgical, and bureaucratic calendars had their own dates, from the first Sunday of Advent to Lady Day in March - the idea that Christmas or 1 January was the beginning of the new year was always around somewhere throughout the medieval period, and the hymn's reference to the cycle of the year (per anni circulum) might have suggested to Herebert this wider context of the day which neweth - which brings renewal and new birth.

I think there may be a further play on words here, too, because to a fourteenth-century ear neweth might also have suggested the word 'Nowell'. In medieval England Nowell was both a name for Christmas and a greeting used to acknowledge the season (as in 'The first 'Nowell!' the angels did say...'). It was common in Anglo-Norman in Herebert's day, though it isn't recorded in English until the end of the fourteenth century; Herebert certainly knew Anglo-Norman, and this might have added a little something extra to his choice of word here. The etymology of nowell is ultimately from Latin natalis, via French (noël, of course), but once it became a Christmas greeting English poets liked to play with some of the cross-linguistic possibilities offered by this word. It was very common in the refrains of carols, and so, for instance, one fifteenth-century carol has some punning fun with Nowell and the phrase 'Now is well':

Now is well and all things aright
And Christ is come as a true knight,
For our brother is king of might,
The fiend to fleme and all his. [to put to flight the devil and everything belonging to him]
Thus the fiend is put to flight,
And all his boast abated is.

Since it is well, well we do,
For there is none but one of two: [no choice but one of these two]
Heaven to get or heaven forgo;
Other means none there is.
I counsel you, since it is so,
That ye well do to win you bliss.

Now is well and all is well,
And right well, so have I bliss;
And since all thing is so well,
I rede we do no more amiss. [I advise we sin no more]

(This is a version in modern spelling; here's the Middle English from E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics (London, 1921), p. 177. The source is Oxford, Bodleian Library Eng. poet. e.1.)

William Herebert would have liked that image of Christ as a 'true knight'. In the one surviving manuscript this carol doesn't have a refrain, but we could imagine it being sung with a lively 'Nowell!' refrain like this medieval carol, or perhaps this one:



With such a refrain the repeated cry of 'Nowell!' would pick up the verses' emphatic assertion that Christ's coming means that 'now is well', and the only possible response therefore is strive to live virtuously, to 'do well'. It's funny what associations a little word like 'well' can conjure up: you might think of Julian of Norwich, and 'all shall be well', or of Piers Plowman and the quest to find out what it means to 'do well' - a kind of perpetual New Year's resolution.

More kinds of wordplay on Nowell are possible too. Other carols pun on the echo between Nowell and news, which is a resonant word in the context of Christmas with its repeated stories of annunciation (to Mary, to Joseph, to the shepherds, to the magi...), the delivery of the 'good news' of Christ's birth. The carol in the video above uses both 'nowell' and 'tidings' to describe the message of the angel to Mary, and both might also be called news. I talked about 'tidings' and the idea of Christ's birth as brand-new and surprising 'news' in carols here.

And then there's that link between nowell and new, emphasising the idea of Christmas as a time of renewal. Early in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, when Arthur's court are feasting at Yuletide, there's a delicate bit of wordplay on new/Nowell:

Wyle Nw Yer watz so yep that hit watz nwe cummen,
That day doubble on the dece watz the douth serued.
Fro the kyng watz cummen with knyghtes into the halle,
The chauntré of the chapel cheved to an ende,
Loude crye watz ther kest of clerkez and other,
Nowel nayted onewe, nevened ful ofte.

(When the New Year was so young that it was newly come,
That day the company were served double portions on the dais.
When the king was come with knights into the hall,
The chanting in the chapel having come to an end,
Loud cries were uttered there by clerks and others,
'Nowell' repeated anew, named again and again.)

Nowell is echoed in onewe, suggesting a scene of busy, cheerful noise: everyone is calling out 'Nowell!' to each other in celebration of the season. It's Christmas they've gathered to celebrate, but by the time of this feast - which is about to be dramatically disrupted by the Green Knight - it's apparently New Year's Day. We're told that the New Year is still very new, in its first youth and freshness - the year is described as yep (pronounced 'yeap'), a lovely word for someone young, lively and energetic. A few lines later the same word is used to characterise the youthful King Arthur himself:

Bot Arthure wolde not ete til al were served,
He watz so joly of his joyfnes, and sumquat childgered:
His lif liked hym lyght, he loved the lasse
Auther to longe lye or to longe sitte,
So bisied him his yonge blod and his brayn wylde...
Therfore of face so fere
He stightlez stif in stalle,
Ful yep in that Nw Yere
Much mirthe he mas withalle.

(But Arthur would not eat until all were served;
He was so merry in his youthfulness, and somewhat boyish.
He liked to take life lightly; he loved the less
Either to lie around or sit still too long,
He was so stirred up by his young blood and his wild brain...
So with a proud countenance
He stands masterful in the hall,
Very yep in that New Year,
Much mirth he makes withal.)

It's the youth of the year, and at the time of the poem Arthur's court too are in the flower of their youth - we're told that 'all was this fair folk in their first age'. Every reader of this poem would know what a tragic end that court would have, how its flower would fade and the fellowship of the Round Table would fall; but the poem captures them all when they're young and yep, beautiful and merry and a little wild. All the important things in Gawain happen during the Christmas season, and the Yuletide setting of the poem is vividly brought to life throughout - in the bleakness of Gawain's winter journey, the jollity of the court's celebrations, the warmth and intimacy of fireside feasting. Somewhere behind this, although difficult to pin down, is probably a myth of seasonal rebirth - a ritual death of the old year, perhaps, like the Green Knight who springs back to life when his head is cut off.

Gawain and Arthur at the feast (BL Cotton Nero A X, f. 94v)

But as poor Gawain learns, the promises you gaily make in the first flush of Yuletide celebrations eventually have to be put to the test as the year runs on in its course:

This hanselle hatz Arthur of aventurus on fyrst
In yonge yer, for he yerned yelpyng to here...
Gawan watz glad to begynne those gomnez in halle,
Bot thagh the ende be hevy haf ye no wonder;
For thagh men ben mery in mynde quen thay han mayn drynk,
A yere yernes ful yerne, and yeldez never lyke,
The forme to the fynisment foldez ful selden.
Forthi this Yol overyede, and the yere after,
And vche sesoun serlepes sued after other...

(This pledge of adventures Arthur had at the beginning
Of the young year, for he ever yearned to hear bold words...
Gawain was glad to begin that game in the hall,
But if the end be sorrowful, do not wonder at it:
For though men be merry in mind when they have drunk well,
A year runs very swiftly, and yields never the same again;
The beginning and the end rarely accord.
So this Yule passed, and the year that followed,
And every season in its turn succeeded one after another...)

The year goes round, and Gawain has to fulfil his promise to the Green Knight when Yuletide comes again. Young Gawain grows wiser through testing and temptation, and learns more from failure than from success - there's a comforting thought, if you find making New Year's resolutions as daunting as I do!

January (BL Royal 1 D X, f. 9)

In our own times New Year is a stand-alone secular celebration, so distinct from Christmas that some people go back to work in between the two dates and pack their decorations away before New Year's Eve; but that wasn't the case in the Middle Ages, where both were part of Yuletide and the Christmas season was a more organic whole. In the world of Gawain, the words Nowell and Yule and New Year are all very closely linked (a kind of alliterative concatenation, almost). When the Green Knight enters he brings Christmas, Yule, and New Year - and yep - all together as the occasion for his challenge to the court:

I crave in this court a Crystemas gomen,
For hit is Yol and Nwe Yer, and here ar yep mony.

(I demand in this court a Christmas game,
For it is Yule and New Year, and here are many yep men.)

Some medieval carols, similarly, treat Yule and New Year as essentially synonymous:

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.

Since the late 20th century it's become common to invert the traditional relationship between fasting and feasting in the Christmas season. The ancient custom was to fast in Advent in preparation for the feast, and then to celebrate for at least twelve days after Christmas (and to some degree, all through January). Now we do it the other way around; for many people the feast is followed by a penitential fast, in the form of 'Dry January' or New Year's resolutions about eating less and going to the gym. As a manifestation of the desire for a fresh start, this 'New Year, new you' impulse is natural enough, but it does strike me as strange that it's so often framed in negative terms. There's an odd sense, encouraged mostly perhaps by journalists and advertisers, that the indulgence of Christmas is a 'sin' which has to be atoned for - as if eating and drinking with friends and family, to celebrate the turn of the year from darkness to light, is a moral lapse for which one must subsequently make amends by privation and self-punishment. We are much less kind to ourselves in these weeks after Christmas than the strictest confessor would have been in the Middle Ages. Feasting at Christmas is not something to atone for, but a proper observance due to the season; and that feasting is also the sustenance we need to carry us into the New Year with energy and strength. The renewal of Nowell in these medieval poems is not a repudiation of Christmas feasting, but the power and life with which Christmas endows us as the new year begins. Find something new in the New Year, certainly, but don't punish yourself for enjoying Christmas first! Sing a new song, seek new adventures; it's true that 'a yere yernes ful yerne, and yeldez never lyke', and we don't know what it will bring. But nevertheless: 'Now is well and all is well'.

BL Add. 54179, f. 6v

Conditor Alme Siderum: William Herebert's 'Holy wrouhte of sterres brryht'

For the first Sunday of Advent (already!) here is William Herebert's translation of the Latin hymn 'Conditor alme siderum'. This hymn is from the seventh century, and the translation by Herebert is from the beginning of the fourteenth (Herebert, who was a Franciscan friar and lecturer in Theology at Oxford, lived c.1270-1333).

I've given an inter-stanzaic modern 'translation' of Herebert's translation, so you can see how his version works. The rhyme-scheme is pretty variable and, for reasons not clear to me, he switched to a six-line stanza for verses 3 and 4, before going back to the four-line stanza.

By the way, Herebert's four-line verses can, just about, be sung to the tune above! (With some creative pronunciation...)


1. Holy wrouhte of sterres brryht,
Of ryht byleue ay-lastyng lyht,
Crist, that bouhtest mon wyth fyht,
Her the bone of meke wyht.

[Holy Creator of the stars bright, the everlasting light of right belief, Christ, who ransomed mankind by force, hear the prayer of humble creatures.]

2. Thou hedest ruthe of world vorlore
Thorou deth of sunfol rote;
Thou sauuedest monkun, theruore
To gulty yeue bote.

[You had pity on a world lost to death through sinful conduct; you saved mankind, give remedy to the guilty.]

3. Toward the wordles ende
Thy wylle was t'alende
In on maydenes bour.
Ase spouse of chaumbre alone,
Out of that clene wone
Thou come t'oure honour.

[As the world drew to its end, your will was to dwell in a maiden's bower. As a bridegroom coming forth alone out of his chamber, you came from that pure dwelling-place for our salvation.]

4. To whas stronge myhte
Kneen of alle wyhtes
Bendeth hem ymone,
Of heuene and ek of eorthe,
And knoulecheth hym wourthe
Vor bouwen to hym one.

[To his great power the knees of all creatures bow together, of heaven and of earth also, and acknowledge that he alone is worthy to be honoured.]

5. Holy God, we byddeth the,
That shalt thys wordle deme,
Vrom oure fykel fohes spere
Thou thylke tyme ous yeme.

[Holy God, we pray to you who shall judge this world, spare us from our wicked foes, save us at that time.]

6. Herying, worshype, myhte, and weole,
to Uader and the Sone,
And also to the Holy Gost,
and euer myd heom wone.

[Praise, worship, power and glory to the Father and the Son, and to the Holy Ghost who ever dwells with them.]

A medieval 'starry height' on the ceiling of the church at Southwold, Suffolk.

Now here's the Latin hymn (Herebert, obviously, used this older form of the hymn, before it was revised to this in 1632. For a comparison of the two versions, go here.):


1. Conditor alme siderum,
aeterna lux credentium,
Christe, redemptor omnium,
exaudi preces supplicum.

2. Qui condolens interitu
mortis perire saeculum,
salvasti mundum languidum,
donans reis remedium,

3. Vergente mundi vespere,
uti sponsus de thalamo,
egressus honestissima
Virginis matris clausula.

4. Cuius forti potentiae
genu curvantur omnia;
caelestia, terrestria
nutu fatentur subdita.

5. Te, Sancte, fide quaesumus,
venture iudex saeculi,
conserva nos in tempore
hostis a telo perfidi.

6. Sit, Christe, rex piissime,
tibi Patrique gloria
cum Spiritu Paraclito,
in sempiterna saecula.

'Conditor alme siderum' in a 14th-century English hymnal (BL Harley 2951, f. 1)

And here is J. M. Neale's translation:


1. Creator of the starry height,
Thy people's everlasting Light,
Jesu, Redeemer of us all,
Hear thou thy servants when they call.

2. Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
Should doom to death a universe,
Hast found the medicine, full of grace,
To save and heal a ruined race.

3. Thou cam’st, the Bridegroom of the bride,
As drew the world to evening-tide;
Proceeding from a virgin shrine,
The spotless Victim all divine.


[These two verses are sometimes found as:

2. Thou, sorrowing at the helpless cry
Of all creation doomed to die,
Didst come to save our fallen race
By healing gifts of heavenly grace.

3. When earth was near its evening hour,
Thou didst, in love's redeeming power,
Like bridegroom from his chamber, come
Forth from a Virgin-mother's womb.]


4. At thy great name, exalted now,
All knees in lowly homage bow;
All things in heaven and earth adore,
and own thee King for evermore.

5. To thee, O Holy One, we pray,
Our Judge in that tremendous day,
Ward off, while yet we dwell below,
The weapons of our crafty foe.

6. To God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Spirit, Three in One,
laud, honor, might and glory be
from age to age eternally.

I can't ascertain whether those alternate verses are also by Neale or are the work of the editors of Hymns Ancient and Modern, which is where I got them from. Four points struck me about Herebert's translation:

- When I posted Herebert's translation of 'Veni Creator Spiritus' I talked about his choice of shuppere to translate the Latin creator. Here he's translating conditor, 'builder, establisher, constructor', and he chooses wrouht. This is the noun wright (from Old English wyrhta), which just about exists in Modern English as the second element in words like wheelwright, playwright, i.e. '-maker'. It no longer exists as a noun in its own right (as it were...). It's also related to the verb which is only now found in the past participle wrought, 'made' (and then only in archaic contexts; my mind goes to 'stablish the thing, O God, that thou hast wrought in us'). So this is a word connected with craftmanship, creation in the most literal, physical, hands-on sense; as far as I can tell this makes it a very good equivalent of the Latin conditor, more exact than Neale's creator.

- likewise, in verse 2 bote is a spot-on translation of remedium. The Middle English word bote has a range of meanings which include 'cure' or 'remedy' in the medical sense (cf. Neale's medicine), but also 'salvation, rescue', and, further, 'amends, redress, atonement'. The Old English word for 'penance' is 'daed-bote', literally 'amendment made by action'. So there is a triple sense here: medicine for the sick, salvation for the guilty, and redemption of the lost.

- Herebert translates sponsus de thalamo as spouse of chaumbre (of = from). Neale has bridegroom from his chamber, which I assume he chose in order to emphasise the parallel with Psalm 19, which contains the line, in what would have been the translation most familiar to him, "In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber". Bridegroom derives from an Old English word meaning literally 'young man about to be married' (groom is from OE guma, 'man') and it's fairly common in Middle English, including with application to Christ. The alternative spouse, which came into English from French, did not mean, as it does today, only someone who is already married, but anyone 'espoused' to marry. Like bridegroom, this is often applied to Christ in Middle English religious writing.

- verse 5 asks God to deliver us from "oure fykel foh", i.e. the devil. Fickle had a much stronger meaning in Middle English than it does today; though it had the meaning of 'unstable, untrustworthy', the older and more prevalent meaning was 'wicked, false, treacherous'.


And that concludes today's lesson on historical linguistics.

A Medieval English Hymn: 'Thou king of joy and bliss'

This is a medieval English metrical translation of a section from the 'Te Deum', 'Tu Rex gloriae, Christe'.  It was written in the early fourteenth century by William Herebert, Francisan friar and lecturer in Theology at Oxford; I've posted a number of his many translations of Latin hymns before.

I'm not sure if my posts on Herebert's hymns have successfully conveyed this fact to people who aren't familiar with Middle English, but as well as being a prolific translator Herebert was a highly skilled one: in most cases, he was translating Latin hymns whose structure does not lend itself naturally to English verse, but he makes effective use of rhyme, metrical regularity, and English vocabulary to express concepts which are not always easily condensed - and he does this while being accurate and faithful to the sense of the original.  Because of their poetic qualities, his translations have a way of getting into your head and being simply unforgettable, much more so (for me) than the Latin texts they're based on.  His 'What is he, this lordling?', for example, has a insistent, demanding, raw power that sends shivers down the spine.  "Ich it am, ich it am..."

Translation into verse is an extremely hard skill to master, and good hymn translators rarely get enough credit - people who've never tried it tend to think that anyone can do it!  But Herebert was not only one of the first people to turn Latin hymns into English poetry; he still ranks among the best.  Ask a hundred people who was the first English hymn-writer, and I bet a good proportion of them would say Isaac Watts, or maybe one of the Wesleys; poor Herebert is quite forgotten. But he spoke the English you speak (if you're reading this!) and he wrote so that people could understand the hymns of the Church, and commit them to memory, and pray with them. And he did it well.

I find it particularly interesting that in this case, even though he's translating a part of the 'Te Deum' - which, in Latin, is rhythmical prose, with varying line-lengths - he chooses to make it into regular, rhyming couplets.  This makes it attractively ordered and controlled, as well as memorable.  Personally I find the Latin 'Te Deum' just a tiny bit (am I allowed to say this?) boring from a poetic point of view, and English translations of it which go along with that are equally unmemorable.  Herebert has made poetry of it; his version charges along, triumphant and exulting, full of praise.

Some of his vocabulary is interesting, too, because he never simply borrows the Latin word he's translating - like most English translators of his period, he pays serious attention to the question of how to render a particular concept in his native language (if only some modern translators had half Herebert's understanding of that!).  I've talked about this before with regard to his subtle, intelligent translations of Conditor Alme Siderum and Veni Creator Spiritus.  Here I'm especially struck by the line in the third couplet, "Thou openedest heuene-ryche to ryth byleues thrunchg".  This is what is now often rendered into English as 'thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers'.  Herebert's wonderful addition - not quite a new idea, but a new shade of imagery and meaning on the existing idea - is thrunchg, which means 'crowd, host' - think of throng.  It's here partly to rhyme with stunchg, 'sting' (as in death), but more importantly, I think, to conjure up the idea of a crowd of the faithful, thronging eagerly into the opened gates of heaven.  Throng (very strongly in Middle English, and perhaps even today) denotes an unpredictable, moving, jostling crowd, not a well-behaved procession.  Herebert has given us not just the accurate but rather pale phrase 'all believers'; he's encouraged us to imagine a great crowd of them, living and breathing people, thrusting forward into heaven as they sing their hymns of praise.  It's especially appropriate because the 'Te Deum' is all about collective praise - 'the company of the apostles', 'the fellowship of the prophets', 'the army of the martyrs', and so on.  Herebert has responded to that and enhanced it; he's done what only a good translator can.

And so, here's Herebert.  Or rather, here's the Latin first, just for comparison:


Tu Rex gloriae, Christe.
Tu Patris sempiternus es Filius.
Tu ad liberandum suscepturus hominem,
non horruisti Virginis uterum.
Tu, devicto mortis aculeo,
aperuisti credentibus regna caelorum.
Tu ad dexteram Dei sedes, in gloria Patris.
Iudex crederis esse venturus.
Te ergo quaesumus, tuis famulis subveni:
quos pretioso sanguine redemisti.



Thou kyng of wele and blisse, Louerd Iesu Crist,
Thou Vaderes Sone of heuene, þat neuer ende bist:
Thou, uor to sauue monkunne that thou haddest whrout,
A meke maydes wombe thou ne shonedest nouht.
Thou that ouercome the bitter dethes stunchg,
Thou openedest heuene-ryche to ryth byleues thrunchg.
Thou sist in Godes ryth hond in thy Vaderes blisse;
Thou shalt comen to demen ous, we leueth al-to wysse.
Thee, thenne, we byddeth, help ous, wham thou hauest ywrouth,
Whom wyth thy doerewourthe blod on rode hauest ybouth.

[And there's an alternative last couplet:
Thee, thenne, we bysecheth: help ous, thyn oune hyne,
Whom wyth thy derewourthe blod hast bouth vrom helle pyne. Amen.]



Here's a literal version of what Herebert has:

Thou king of joy and bliss, Lord Jesu Christ,
Thou Father's Son of heaven, who never-ending art:
Thou, to save mankind whom thou hadst wrought,
A meek maid's womb hast shunned not.
Thou who overcame the bitter sting of death,
Thou didst open heaven's realm to the throng of faithful believers.
Thou sittest at God's right hand in thy Father's bliss;
Thou shalt come to judge us; we believe this to be true.
Thee, then, we pray to help us, whom thou hast wrought,
Whom with thy precious blood on rood thou hast bought.

[Alternative:
Thee, then, we beseech: help us, thine own servants,
Whom with thy precious blood thou hast saved from the torments of hell.]



Isn't Herebert's phrase 'a meek maid's womb' a thousand times lovelier than 'Virginis uterum' (ugh)?  Isn't his 'dearworthy' ('priceless, valuable, beloved') more real, somehow, than 'pretioso'?  Just me?  Fine...

Herebert's 'Holy moder, that bere Cryst'

The Virgin in glory (from a fourteenth-century manuscript, BL Royal MS 6 E VII Part 2, f. 479)

It's a while since we've had any poetry on this blog, and it seems time to correct that. This year I've been paying particular attention to the works of the early fourteenth-century English poet William Herebert, and especially his sensitive, thoughtful versions of Latin hymns; and since we're in Advent, let's take a look at his version of 'Alma Redemptoris Mater', the Compline antiphon for this season. (For another Middle English poetic response to the same text, see this post.) It's a short text; the Latin is:

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

Listen to it here. This is Herebert's version:

Holy moder, that bere Cryst, buggere of monkunde,
Thou art ȝat of hevene blisse that prest wey ȝyfst and bunde.
Thou sterre of se, rer op the folk that rysing haveth in munde.
In thee thou bere thyn holy fader,
That mayden were after and rather,
Wharof so wondreth kunde.
Of Gabrieles mouthe thou fonge thylke "Ave";
Lesne ous of sunne nouthe, so we bisecheth thee. Amen.

Which is:

Holy mother, who bore Christ, buyer of mankind,
You are gate of heaven's bliss, who gives the near and ready way.
You, star of the sea, raise up the folk who intend to rise.
Within you you bore your holy father,
Who maiden were before and after,
At which nature wonders.
From Gabriel's mouth you received the 'Ave';
Release us from sins now, we beseech you. Amen.

That gives you the sense of Herebert's version, but not the poetry. Herebert is a faithful translator but he always adds something to his sources, and close attention to his choice of language is immensely rewarding. I've been thinking recently about how approaching familiar texts through Old and Middle English translations brings to life certain aspects of religious language which have become, in Modern English, so conventional and familiar as to be almost dead metaphors. There's a perfect example here in Herebert's version of redemptor, which is buggere, to be pronounced (I promise!) as buyer - the sense being that Christ has 'bought back' (i.e. redeemed) mankind from the slavery of sin. It's a fairly common Middle English translation of redemptor, giving an English equivalent rather than adopting, as we do now, the Latin word; redeemer turned up late in English, in the fifteenth century, and Herebert's far from the only one to use buyer or again-buyer. (The Wycliffe Bible says: 'I wot that myn aȝeenbiere liueth, and in the laste dai I am to rise fro the erthe...')

The financial metaphor is there in the Latin redemptor, of course - emptor is buyer, as in 'caveat emptor' - but it's probably not alive to most people today who use the word 'redeemer'. (Though other poets have made use of it; compare, perhaps, 'Redemption' by Herebert's namesake, George Herbert...) But it was alive to Herebert, and must have been to a medieval reader of this poem. Herebert's whole first line is only translating three words of the Latin, the opening phrase of the hymn - alma redemptoris mater - and yet he has space not only for that metaphor but also for aural play on buyer and bear, a similarity of sound which links Mary's action ('bearing') to Christ's action ('buying'), and thus underlines the fundamental link between them which motivates the whole poem: the role that Mary plays in salvation, through her choice to become Christ's entry into the world and her acts of love to mankind.

The hymn imagines Mary as the open door to heaven, a road by which Christ enters the world and by which mankind can travel to joy. Herebert's description of that road is again a little more expansive than the Latin, and he plays with a beautiful ambiguity in his language which is not present (I think) in his source. He says that Mary the 'prest wey ȝyfst and bunde'; I translated this above as 'gives the near and ready way', but it's not quite as simple as that. Both prest and bunde mean something like 'ready, prepared, near at hand', and the sense is that the road to heaven is accessible and open (pervia is the Latin word he's building on). However, both words mean a good deal more than 'open'. Both also connote energy, readiness, and eagerness, and in other Middle English texts are more often used of people than of objects or roads: of an army preparing for battle, a servant promptly attending on his lord, a lover eager to do his lady's bidding - of anyone quick, lively, spirited, attentive, ready to spring into action. They're incredibly life-filled words.

And so, perhaps, they suggest the eager, life-bearing, near-at-hand person in an Advent context: Christ, who stands ready to spring into the world through the gate opened by Mary. Herebert's verb ȝyfst offers more than the Latin, too: Mary 'gives' (not only 'remains') the way to heaven, and of course, she gives Christ to the world. The way in this poem is primarily the road to heaven but Christ, too, is 'the way', and the adjectives used to describe the way here could apply equally well - if not rather better - to him.

Herebert's Christ is always an energetic figure, active, determined, and forceful, brimming with physical as well as spiritual vitality. I talked about this earlier in the year in reference to Herebert's poems for Easter and the Ascension, which have Christ climbing onto the cross and then into the skies, and it's most obvious of all in his poem 'What is he, this lordling, that cometh from the fight?' In that poem he imagines Christ as a young knight coming bloodied from battle, who through his strength and douhtynesse has won a hard struggle against evil. This is the Christ whom the medieval church saw in the young man of the Song of Songs, who comes seeking his beloved:

Look, he comes leaping on the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle, or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me, 'Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. For now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone... Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.'

As Gregory the Great wrote (and an Anglo-Saxon poet turned into poetry):

Hence it is that Solomon has put into the mouth of the Church the words: 'Behold, He cometh! leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.' These hills are his lofty and noble achievements. 'Behold, He cometh leaping upon the mountains.'

When He came to redeem us, He came, if I may so say, in leaps. My dearly beloved brethren, would you know what His leaps were? From heaven he leapt into the womb of the Virgin, from the womb into the manger, from the manger on to the Cross, from the Cross into the grave, and from the grave up to heaven.

Lo, how the Truth made manifest in the Flesh did leap for our sakes, that He might draw us to run after Him for this end did He rejoice, as a strong man to run a race.

This isn't the passive, suffering Christ of most medieval poetry about the Crucifixion, nor the grave gentle Jesus of later imaginings; it's something immensely vital, virile and alive, a shape-shifting force of pure energy. Herebert's word prest exactly describes this Christ.

But Christ is only hinted at here; the focus of the hymn is Mary, and her intermediary role. The images of her as 'gate of heaven' and 'star of the sea' are familiar ones, which Herebert also translates in his version of another Marian hymn, 'Ave maris stella'. I'll come back to the 'gate' image in another post this Advent (if I get around to it!) because there's a wonderful Anglo-Saxon poem which does even more, brilliantly, with that image of Mary as the door between the worlds. Here it's only one aspect of her role as mediator. She is implored 'rer op the folk that rysing haveth in munde' ('raise up the folk who want to rise', with a nice alliterative touch), and 'lesne ous of sunne', a more specific petition than the Latin's peccatorum miserere - asking to be 'released' from sin loops back to the opening idea of Christ as 'redeemer'. So the poem comes full circle, and returns to the link between Mary's action and Christ's - the one who bought us and the one who bore him.

'Highest of all kings'

'Aeterne rex altissime', with English gloss, in an Anglo-Saxon hymnal

(BL Cotton Vespasian D XII, f. 78)

On the subject of the Ascension, here's a fourteenth-century English version of the Ascension hymn 'Aeterne rex altissime', by the Franciscan friar William Herebert.

Kyng hexst of alle kynges, that havest non endynge,
Buggere of Cristenemen that beth of ryth levynge,
Thorou thee deth ys fordon and brouth to th'endinge,
And gyven ys ous the overe hond of graces findinge.
Thou styinge op to trone in thy Fadres ryhthond,
Havest, Jesu, fonge mythte that never shaft ne fond.
For hevene and erthe and helle, and al that thrinne ben,
To thee shullen bouwen hem and benden here knen.
Aungles that in hevene beth quaketh for wondringe,
That abouten dedlich mon seth so gret chaunginge,
For flesh sunneth and flesh beteth and flesh ys God regninge.
Thou, Crist, be oure blisse and oure glading,
That wythoute misse in hevene hast wonyng,
That al thys ylke myddelerd havest to yemyng,
And al thys wordles joye hast in forhowyng.
Therefore we byddeth thee oure gultes thou deface,
And oure hertes rer to thee thorouh thy grete grace.
That when thou shalt ferlich comen ous to deme,
Comen yne cloude bryth wyth blowinde beme,
From the pyne of helle, Jesu, thou ous yeme.
And yeld the lorene crounes, God we to thee reme.
Loverd that bove the sterre steye, to thee be wele and blisse,
Wyth the Fader and Holy Gost, ever boute misse. Amen.

That is:

King highest of all kings, who hast no ending,
Redeemer of Christians who are of right living,
Through thee death is destroyed and brought to its ending,
And given to us is the upper hand of grace's finding. [i.e. 'the triumph of grace'!]
Thou, rising up to the throne at thy Father's right hand,
Hast, Jesu, received power such as created things never had.
For heaven and earth and hell, and all that therein be,
To thee shall bow and bend the knee.
Angels in heaven quake for wondering,
Who in mortal man see such great changing:
For flesh sins and flesh atones and flesh is God reigning.
Thou, Christ, be our bliss and our gladdening,
Who without doubt in heaven hast dwelling,
Who all this middle-earth hast in keeping,
And all this world's joy hast in thy guarding.
Therefore we pray thee our sins to deface, [blot out, obliterate]
And our hearts raise up to thee through thy great grace.
So that when thou shalt come wondrously to judge us,
Come in clouds bright with trumpets blowing,
From the pains of hell, Jesu, thou wilt protect us,
And restore our lost crowns, God, we cry to thee.
Lord who rose above the stars, to thee be joy and bliss,
With the Father and Holy Ghost, ever without end. Amen.

The original Latin hymn is anonymous, first recorded in the ninth century, and its best-known modern English translation is probably J. M. Neale's 'Eternal Monarch, king most high'. William Herebert, as usual, stays closer to the Latin than modern translators tend to do, though it's interesting to compare his version of the memorable fourth verse to Neale's:

Yea, angels tremble when they see
how changed is our humanity;
that flesh hath purged what flesh had stained,
and God, the flesh of God, hath reigned.

Aungles that in hevene beth quaketh for wondringe,
That abouten dedlich mon seth so gret chaunginge,
For flesh sunneth and flesh beteth and flesh ys God regninge.

Herebert has added to his source a lovely phrase in the second-to-last line: 'Loverd that bove the sterre steye...' I discussed the verb steye in my last post about Herebert, where I talked about it meaning 'ascend' but with connotations of active, powerful movement (like mounting horses and climbing trees), and I said it's a verb which connects Good Friday (when Christ 'steye' upon the cross) and the Ascension. And so it does here, alliteratively: Christ steye above the stars.

The end of the Latin hymn gives a vivid picture of Christ, who ascended into the heavens, returning at Doomsday in a sunset sky: 'when you come to shine forth from your reddening cloud of judgement...' Herebert renders this:

when thou shalt ferlich comen ous to deme,
Comen yne cloudebryth wyth blowinde beme...

'ferlich' is a difficult word to translate into Modern English; it suggests something marvellous and wonderful (in the literal sense of 'causing wonder'), but also terrible and strange. 'Blowing beme' literally refers to blasting trumpets but also evokes rushing winds and beams of light - a world-shaking image of an apocalyptic sky.

Like this, maybe

The imagery in this hymn is cosmic, majestic, mythic: angels quake, the heavens open, and a god who wore human flesh manifests a power beyond any that created things could ever attain ('mythte that never shaft ne fond'). It's impressive stuff. Ascension Day seems to be one of those feasts which the modern imagination struggles to deal with: preachers get embarrassed (I heard a few this week!), and feel the need to start their sermons with an apologetic disclaimer to demonstrate how modern and sophisticated they are: 'well, of course we know that heaven isn't 'up in the sky', and so of course we (unlike childish people in the olden days) know it's silly to talk about Jesus going up. It makes him sound like a rocket, haha!'

This seems to me pretty unimaginative (and, as always, unfair to people in the 'olden days', by which they usually mean the bad old Middle Ages). It's a bit sad, really, for a preacher to have so little poetry in their soul that when they think of the heavens they can only think 'rocket, haha!' As if the skies offer no other objects of mystery and wonder, no images and themes to feed the imagination. Are the starry heights and thunderous clouds of this hymn, for instance, really any less potent symbols of power and majesty for us than they were for William Herebert or the ninth-century author? Here last night, after a week of heat, the clouds amassed for a summer storm, and broke in a sudden torrent of drenching rain which was breathtaking in its force. However modern and sophisticated you imagine yourself to be, at such moments you're still subject to the power of the heavens. And as for the stars - well, if you stop feeling wonder at the stars I can't really imagine what would amaze you...

I wrote on Thursday about two more powerful 'skyey influences' which medieval writers connected with the Ascension: the sun which climbs high in the summer sky (the Ascension is 'the sun rising', as this twelfth-century image has it); and Christ as a bird, as imagined by an Anglo-Saxon poet. This isn't just a nice pretty image - it's one of majesty, liberty, and command. Gerard Manley Hopkins put it even better than Cynewulf, in his poem addressed 'to Christ our Lord':

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume...

'The achieve of, the mastery of the thing.' On Ascension Day, I happened to find myself reading about another legendary hero who 'took to flight': Weland, the great smith of Anglo-Saxon and Norse legend. The story of Weland seems to have been widely known in Anglo-Saxon England, and he is referenced in several Old English poems. He is a fierce, frightening figure, but one of great skill and power, the forger of legendary swords and armour. One of the most famous moments in his legend tells how he was captured and imprisoned on an island, forced to work for his captor, but escaped by making for himself a suit of wings and flying away to freedom. A number of stone carvings from northern England, probably dating from the ninth to tenth centuries, appear to show Weland in his feather-suit.

An example from York Minster (Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture)

In some ways Weland, though a hero, is very far from being a Christ figure: he murders his captor's sons and fashions goblets from their skulls, and he rapes his captor's daughter before he flies away. His power of flight comes from his skill as a smith, his ingenuity in being able to engineer wings (he doesn't transform himself into a bird, as some of the Norse gods, for instance, do - he remains human, though with magical skill). And yet, on the Franks Casket, made in Anglo-Saxon England in the early eighth century, a scene from Weland's story is placed next to one of Christ being adored by the Magi:

There are birds in both scenes; on the left-hand side, birds are being strangled so that Weland can make his wings from their feathers. Does this juxtaposition suggest a contrast or a parallel between Weland and Christ, a focus on how they are alike, or how they are different? No one can answer that for sure, though it's often noted that in Old English Christ, like Weland, is sometimes called a 'smith' or a 'smith's son' (because he was a carpenter). The juxtaposition brings out the common mythic element in both stories - the man human and yet more than human, skilful and of fearsome power, a creature of the skies as well as of the earth. To a modern eye, seeing a very well-known Biblical story in the context of Weland's strange and disturbing tale makes the familiar suddenly unfamiliar, marvellous, in the sense of something too powerful and terrible to comprehend - what Herebert calls ferlich.

The idea that gods dwell in the heights, in the sky and on the mountains, is one of the most ancient religious impulses. It's hardly difficult to see a connection between that and Christ's Ascension, and going on about 'rockets, haha!' feels like a deliberate attempt not to see it. Those silly people of the olden days found poetry in the feast rather more easily than their clever modern descendants do: in Ascension Day folklore there was 'a strong connection between the day and all things pertaining to the sky, such as clouds, rain, and birds' (Roud). Rain which fell on Ascension Day was said to be blessed - 'neither eaves' drip nor tree-drip, but straight from the sky'. The day was connected with holy water in other ways, including the custom of well-dressing and visiting sacred springs. This expresses a sense that the heavens and the earth are interconnected at the most essential level - as of course they are, whether you think of that power as physical or spiritual or both. The kind of preacher who apologises for Ascension Day is likely to call that faith superstitious, but it's infinitely grander, really, than a worldview which finds no wonder in the heavens. We are earthbound, tied to this sublunary world and its many sorrows - but this is one day when the imagination can soar to the sky.

Anglo-Saxon carving of the Ascension (Wirksworth, Derbyshire)