Hail Be Thou Mary the Mother of Christ (Ave regina celorum, Hail Queen of Heaven)

DESCRIPTION: Marian hymn with Latin final lines of verses. "Hail be thou, Mary mother of Christ, Hail be thou blessed, that bore a child... Ave, regina celorum." Each verse hails Mary, "Comforter of care," fairest of women, "Granter of grace," "Virgin of virgins"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1480 (Heege Manuscript)
KEYWORDS: religious foreignlanguage MiddleEnglish | macaronic Latin Virgin Mary
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1032
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #1691
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), #66b, pp. 59-60, "[Hail, Mary]" (1 text)
Frederick J. Furnival, _Hymns to the Virgin and Christ, The Parliament of Devils, and other Religious Poems, chiefly from The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lambeth MS. #853_, Early English Text Society, Tuebner & Co., 1867, pp. 4-5, "Hail, Blessed Mary" (1 text, from the Lambeth manuscript)
Carleton Brown, editor, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century_, Oxford University Press, 1939, #23, pp. 41-42, "Ave Regina Celorum, I" (1 text, from the Dublin manuscript)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSRichardHill}, The Richard Hill Manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354, leaf 146
MANUSCRIPT: {MSHeege}, The Heege Manuscript, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS. Advocates 19.3.1, folio 91
MANUSCRIPT: Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R.4.20 (Trinity 652), folio 172
MANUSCRIPT: Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 516, folio 25
MANUSCRIPT: London, Lambeth Palace Library MS. 853, pp. 24-26

NOTES [41 words]: As usual with Middle English verse, we have no proof this is traditional. But with five manuscript copies, including the Hill and Heege manuscripts, I thought it worth including, particularly since there are differences between the versions. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: MEHBTMMC

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