The Songs of Godric of Finchale

Godric of Finchale, who died on 21 May 1170, was a merchant-turned-hermit and saint who is also one of the first named English songwriters - at least, his are the first songs in English for which the music survives. He was born at Walpole in Norfolk just after the Norman Conquest (c.1070), to English parents, and he became a successful merchant, trading and sailing to Scotland, Denmark and Rome. He undertook several pilgrimages, but (partly inspired by a visit to St Cuthbert's Farne Islands) he was drawn to the life of a hermit, and eventually settled at Finchale near Durham, where he lived for the last sixty years of his life.

There are four verses attributed to him, preserved in accounts of his life by the monk Reginald of Durham. Here they are on one page from a manuscript in the British Library (Royal 5 F VII, f.85):

The first song here is said in the Life to have come to Godric when he had a vision of his sister Burhcwen, also a solitary at Finchale, being received into heaven. She was singing a song of thanksgiving, in Latin, and Godric renders her song in English thus (bracketed by a Kyrie eleison):

Crist and sainte marie swa on scamel me iledde
þat ic on þis erðe ne silde wid mine bare fote i tredie

'Christ and St Mary so carried me with a crutch
That I never had to tread upon this earth with my bare foot.'

Godric's most famous song also came to him in a vision: the Virgin Mary told him to sing it whenever he was tempted, weary or in pain, and she would come to his aid.

Sainte marie uirgine
moder ihesu cristes nazarene
onfo schild help þin godric
onfang bring heȝilich wið þe in godes riche

Sainte marie xristes bur
maidenes clenhad moderes flur
dilie min sinne rix in min mod
bring me to winne wið þe selfd God

That is:

'Saint Mary, Virgin,
Mother of Jesu Christ of Nazareth,
Receive, shield, help your Godric;
Received, bring him on high with you in God’s kingdom.

Saint Mary, bower of Christ,
Purest of maidens, flower of mothers,
Blot out my sins, reign in my mind,
Bring me to joy with that same God.'

In the first verse, Godric is playing on the meaning of his own name: godes riche, to which he asks Mary to take him, means ‘God’s kingdom’.

And the last of Godric's verses is a prayer to St Nicholas:

Sainte Nicholaes godes druð
tymbre us faire scone hus
At þi burth at þi bare
Sainte nicholaes bring vs wel þare

'Saint Nicholas, God’s beloved,
Build for us a fair bright house;
At the birth, at the bier,
Saint Nicholas, bring us safely there.'

(The interpretation of the third line is disputed, but this is the reading I'd go for - in other words, asking for Nicholas' help from birth to death).

Here are the songs being sung:



Though justly celebrated as among the oldest songs recorded in the English language (depending on your definition of 'song'), these verses are a fascinating mixture of old and new. Like Godric himself, they belong partly to the pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon world and partly to the rapidly changing England of the twelfth century. This man of English birth, with his solidly Anglo-Saxon name, must have absorbed lots of different cultural influences on his travels around Europe before he settled down at last in Norman-ruled England. In the twelfth century short rhyming verses like these are something new in English, developing under the influence of French literature - very much looking ahead to later medieval English poetry rather than back to the Anglo-Saxon past. Also new was the veneration of St Nicholas: although Nicholas had been a popular saint in the eastern church from at least the sixth century, his fame took longer to reach the west. It only spread into northern Europe during the second half of the eleventh century, around the time of Godric's birth. In 1087 St Nicholas' relics were removed from Myra to Bari, and from there knowledge (and relics) of the saint began to spread north into Normandy, France, Germany, the Low Countries, and eventually England. Like rhyming poetry, St Nicholas came to England largely because of the Normans. Nicholas was already known as a protector of sailors, so he was a natural saint for the merchant Godric to turn to.

At the same time, the language of Godric's verses is almost entirely English, with rare exceptions like the French word flur (flower). He puns on his own English name as he asks to go to Godes riche, wordplay any Anglo-Saxon poet would have understood and appreciated. It's claimed that Godric lived for a whole century, from c.1070 to c.1170 - a century which saw huge transformation in the culture of England (Englandes riche). Godric both witnessed and, in his songs, epitomises that change.