'Tidings, tidings that be true: Sorrow is past and joy doth renew'

BL Sloane 2321, f. 125

By this point in January, Christmas can feel like a distant memory. But in the Middle Ages the Christmas season lasted forty days, ending with the Feast of the Presentation on February 2, and medieval carols enjoin us to keep singing Christmas songs, and exploring Christmas themes, all through the season - 'Sing we Yule til Candlemas!', we are encouraged. According to the carols it's not until Candlemas that Christmas bids farewell, or that we bid farewell to him:

Farewell, Christmas fair and free!
Farewell, New Year's Day with thee!
Farewell, the holy Epiphany!
And to Mary now sing we:
Revertere, revertere,
The queen of bliss and of beauty.

The idea of celebrating Christmas for a month afterwards (rather than a month beforehand, as people generally do today) appeals to me, and seems somehow healthier than the modern desire to celebrate early and then purge as soon as January brings the return of workday routine. I don't know about you, but for me January is a much harder month to get through than December - colder and greyer, without anything in particular to look forward to - and if the thought of Christmas offers hope and comfort in the darkness, those are more welcome in January than at any other time. So I won't apologise for posting another medieval Christmas carol today; these carols are so full of wit, creativity and imagination that I can't resist sharing just one more out of the ample supply. (If you read a medieval Christmas carol a day for the forty days of the Christmas season, you wouldn't run out for years!). There are three of the forty days remaining, so here's a fifteenth-century carol which doesn't feel too out of place for the end of January; it looks both backward and forward.

Tidinges, tidinges that be true,
Sorowe is paste and joye dothe renue.

Qwereas Adam caused be sinne
Oure nature thus to be mortall,
A maiden sone dothe nowe begin
For to repaire us from that fall.
And that is true;
The name of him is Criste Jesu.

Sume of oure kinde hathe hadd such grase
That sin his birthe they did him se
Bothe sonne and mother fase to fase
In the chefe cite calde Jure.
And that is true;
Bothe kinges and schepardes they it knue.

The prophettes thereof ware nothing dismaide,
Of that tidinges before that they hadde tolde;
For nowe it is full righte as they saide,
A clene maide hathe borne a king in folde.
And that is true;
For he is borne to ware the purpull hue.

E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics (London, 1921), p. 133. In the third verse, 'in folde' is the editors' suggestion to complete a defective line.

The language of this carol is fairly straightforward, but here's a translation all the same:

Tidings, tidings that be true,
Sorrow is past and joy doth renew.

Whereas Adam caused by sin
Our nature thus to be mortal,
A maiden's son doth now begin
For to repair us from that fall.
And that is true;
The name of him is Christ Jesu.

Some of our kind hath had such grace
That since his birth they did him see,
Both son and mother face to face
In the chief city called Jure. [i.e. Judea]
And that is true;
Both kings and shepherds they it knew.

The prophets thereof were nothing dismayed
Of the tidings before that they had told;
For now it is full right as they said,
A clean maid hath born a king in folde. [on earth]
And that is true;
For he is born to wear the purple hue.

The point of the last verse is that the prophets found their own 'tidings' proved true, so they were not dismaide ('confounded'). 'The purple hue' is a royal robe, purple being the traditional colour of kings and emperors; but it's also the colour of blood and of mourning, and so a reminder that Christ is born to die.

BL Sloane 2321, f. 54

This carol forms a natural bookend to one I posted in Advent, 'A marvellous thing I have mused in my mind'. It comes from the same manuscript, in which these two are the only carols among a disparate range of other texts (the manuscript is British Library, Lansdowne 379, whose contents are described in that link). But it's not only their manuscript context which makes these carols seem like twins. 'A marvellous thing' draws on the language and imagery of the Old Testament prophecies referenced in the third verse of 'Tidings':

A marvellous thing I have mused in my mind:
How that Veritas sprang out of the ground,
And Justicia for all mankind,
From heaven to earth he came down.

The mention of Veritas also finds an echo in this carol, with its refrain 'tidings that be true' and repeated line 'And that is true'. The more times I read this carol, the more I think its insistent repetition of the word true is significant. These refrains work on two levels: they don't just assert the verity of the 'tidings', but (thanks to the flexible nature of Middle English grammar) can also be read as a reminder that the tidings themselves are Truth, that is, Christ, truth incarnate. In Modern English we tend to restrict the relative pronoun that to inanimate things, but in Middle English it was regularly used for people; so if you wanted, you could read every instance in this carol of 'And that is true' not just as a general comment on the truth of the statement which has just been made, but as a reinforcement of the reference to Christ in the preceding verse. It works each time, I think:

'A maiden's son doth now begin / For to repair us from that fall; And he is true'
'Since his birth they did him see, / Both son and mother... And he is true'
'A clean maid hath born a king in folde, / And he is true'

You don't have to read it that way, but you could if you chose, and it adds an extra layer to the carol's focus on what is 'true'.

The refrain's exclamation 'Tidings!' means 'News!', but the word's an interesting one and worth a little exploration. It appears in the refrain of a number of carols, and in some cases seems to suggest a dramatic context - a person playing the character of a messenger who comes with news. But since the word runs the gamut from respectable, important news (the gospels, or prophecies) all the way down to gossip, rumour and slander, it's a slippery concept. Ultimately all 'tidings' are only words, and there's no guarantee of their truthfulness. This is an idea explored by Chaucer through his House of Fame, which is "full of tydynges... of fals and soth compouned" - rumour and gossip which spread like wildfire whether true or not. (Chaucer's House of Fame is Twitter, basically.) Maybe 'tidings which are true' is meant to be a little bit paradoxical, or at least to cause some surprise. We could compare the 'wonder tidings' in the carol 'What tidings bringest thou, messenger?', where the suggestion is that the messenger's tidings, the paradoxes of Christ's birth, are almost too radical and strange to be believed: a new-born baby who has always existed, a virgin bearing a child, a daughter who is her own father's mother. Who would believe such bizarre rumours, hearing them for the first time? And yet - 'that is true', the carols claim. In my post on 'A marvellous thing' I mused on the extraordinary power some medieval carols have for 'making strange', turning a well-known story (within what might seem to be the very simplest of poetic forms) into something new and fresh and wonderful, allowing you to hear it as if for the first time. In its exploration of the paradoxes of the Incarnation, 'What tidings bringest thou, messenger?' delights in a world turned upside down, and perhaps 'Tidings' does too, in a quieter way. (We could ask why the prophets might be 'dismayed' of their tidings, if it weren't the case that those tidings seemed too strange to be believed.) In these carols the familiar becomes strange, the strange becomes familiar, the impossible becomes true - something worth musing about for all forty days of the Christmas season, and beyond.