O Mary Mother

DESCRIPTION: "Oh, Mary, mother, come and see, Thy son is nailed on a tree." John brings word to Mary of the crucifixion. She cannot rest, but hurries to the execution site. She and Jesus discuss his fate. He prays and prepares to die
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1372 (Commonplace Book of John de Grimestone, National Library of Scotland MS. Advocates 18.7.21)
KEYWORDS: Jesus religious mother MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (14 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #157, pp. 117-119, "(no title)" (4 texts)
Sidgwick/Chambers-EarlyEnglishLyrics LXXX, pp. 146-147, "(no title)" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1219, #2036, #2111, 3575
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2029, #3326, #3424, #5653
ADDITIONAL: Roman Dyboski, _Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems from the Balliol Ms. 354, Richard Hill's Commonplace Book_, Kegan Paul, 1907 (there are now multiple print-on-demand reprints), #24, pp. 13-15, "(Mary moder, cum and se)" (1 text)
Edward Bliss Reed, editor, _Christmas Carols Printed in the Sixteenth Century Including Kele's Christmas carolles newely Inprynted reproduced in facsimile from the copy in the Huntington Library_, Harvard University Press, 1932, pp. 49-51 ([31-33]), "(Gaudeam[us] synge we i(n) hoc sacro tpere(??) Puer nobis natus e(st) ex Maria virgine)" (1 text)
Richard Greene, editor, _A Selection of English Carols_, Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1962, #44, pp. 104-105, "(Mary modyr, cum and se)" (1 text)
Karen Saupe, editor, _Middle English Marian Lyrics_, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1998, #48, pp. 110-111, "(Mayden and mother,cum and see)" (1 text)
Carleton Brown, editor, _English Lyrics of the XIVth Century_, Oxford University Press, 1924, #67, pp. 85-86, "Dialogue between Jesus and the B. V. at the Cross" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSGrimestone}, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS. Advocates 18.7.21, John de Grimestone's Commonplace Book, folio 121 [IMEV #2036]
MANUSCRIPT: {MSEngPoetE1}, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodley 29734), folio 27 [IMEV #1219]
MANUSCRIPT: {MSSloane2593}, London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 23 [IMEV #2111]
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library, MS. Additional 31042 [the London Thornton Manuscript], folio 94 [IMEV #2111]
MANUSCRIPT: {MSRichardHill}, The Richard Hill Manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354, folio 223 [IMEV #3575]
ST Gree044 (Partial)
NOTES [893 words]: This is one of several early carols in Greene that seem to have been sufficiently well-known that I include them in the Index. Note the many different manuscripts with versions -- four is quite a high number, and they include all three of the most important manuscripts of carols that seem to have gone into tradition: The Richard Hill manuscript (Balliol 354), the Sloane Lyrics (British Library, Sloane 2593), and Bodleian Eng. Poet. e.1. There is also a version in Richard Kele's Christmas carolles newely imprinted in the Huntington Library.
The earliest version is in the Commonplace Book of John de Grimestone, of 1372; for more on this book, see the notes to "The Coventry Carol" or Wilson or the Bibliography notes on this manuscript; this song is his #185, with notes (although not the text) on p. 39 of Wilson. The fifth manuscript, the London Thornton Manuscript, is more miscellaneous. Robert Thornton made (at least) two manuscripts, now known as the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts, with romances and poems and odds and ends that struck his fancy. To find a carol like this in it is quite interesting, and is further testimony to its popularity. Any song with this range of attestation surely deserves indexing.
The post-Grimestone versions are all quite different, and have different choruses. Both Greene and the Index of Middle English Verse file them under different numbers. There isn't really much question that they are the same song, though. Greene discusses the matter on pp. cxxxv-cxxxvi; his suggestion on the latter page is that the original resembles the John de Grimestone text, which has no burden, and that several writers converted it to a carol by adding (existing?) refrains. I suspect that there is truth in this, although I am not certain the process was deliberate. Woolf, p. 250, says of the process, "The poem [as found in the Grimestone version] is apparently written in couplets, thouogh, out of thirty-six lines, sixteen could equally well be in mono-rhyming quatrains. In fifteenth century manuscripts it was turned into carol form through rearrangements and additions.
Woolf, pp. 250-251, mentions this as a member of a small genre of "drama[s] in the sense that there is no narrative and three people speak," the three being Jesus, Mary, and John. She mentions as a prototypical example a Latin piece "Qui per viam pergitis" (although the version of this that I find online is actually dated after the Grimestone book).
Wenzel, pp. 156-157, considers this to have three parts, the first being addressed to Mary, the second being Mary's address to Jesus on the cross (asking in particular why he is there), and part three being Jesus's response -- although it isn't a response to her question; he speaks to John, Mary, the Father, and "man's soul." "It makes good sense to see in them an adaptive translation of at least four [of the nominal seven] Words on the Cross: Mulier, ecce fliius tuus [Mother, behold thy son] and ecce hic mater tua [behold thy mother], in reversed order, in lines 15-16; an allusion to Deus meus, Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti? [My father, my father, why hast thou forsaken me?] in 17-20; an expansion of Sitio [I thirst] in 21-26; and a similar expansion of Pater, in manus tuus commendo spiritum meum [Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit] in 27-30, which is then followed by a plea to mankind." That seems like a lot to wring out of the text, but Wenzel does note that the Seven Words were a very big deal in Catholic theology, and that there were other poems about the Seven Words.
The Grimestone text (Greene's D, even though it is the oldest of the four) is unlike the others in having parts assigned in the right margin: As printed by Greene, is has Jesus speak lines 1-8, Mary speak lines 9-14 (in itself implying some damage to the text, since all the other versions have four-line stanzas, but this gives Mary six lines rather than four or eight), then Jesus speak lines 15-36). Most agree that the attribution of lines 1-8 to Jesus is a mistake. But Wenzel, p. 158, says that the assignment to Jesus is a mistake; the text actually reads "Ihōēs" -- certainly not the abbreviation for Jesus, which would typically be IS. On its face, "Ihōēs" is "Ieonens," which is nothing. Wenzel says this is an "unequivocal contraction" of "Iohannes"=John. I don't think it's unequivocal, But I agree that John is probably what is meant.
Thompson, pp. 10-18, lists the contents of the London Thornton Manuscript. This is the tenth item out of 31, quite a few of which are long: an excerpt from the Cursor Mundi, a long poem on the Passion known in many other copies, the Siege of Jerusalem, the Siege of Melayne (Milan), the romance Roland and Otuel, the Virtues of the Mass, The Three Kings of Cologne, the romance of Richard the Conqueror (i.e. Richard I, Richard Yes-and-No, Richard the Lion-Hearted), The Parliament of the Three Ages, Wynnere and Wastoure. According to Thompson, p. 13, this is an addition to the manuscript by a somewhat later hand. Thompson's Plate 17 reproduces the text, which he regards as incomplete.
For more on manuscript Sloane 2593, see the notes to "Robyn and Gandeleyn" [Child 115].
For more about the famous anthology Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodleian 29734), see the notes to "The Golden Carol (The Three Kings)." - RBW
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