As I Went Through a Garden Green (Verbum Caro Factum Est)

DESCRIPTION: "As I went through a garden green, I found an arbor made full new," with doves singing in every tree. A woman there sings, "Verbum caro factum est." She bore "the prince that is without a peer." The shepherds and kings came to see God made flesh
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1430 (British Library -- Sloane MS. 2593)
KEYWORDS: religious MiddleEnglish music | garden
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REFERENCES (9 citations):
Rickert-AncientEnglishChristmasCarols, pp. 174-176, "As I Went through a Garden Green" (1 text)
Stevick-OneHundredMiddleEnglishLyrics 80, "(no title)" (1 text, from the Heege manuscript)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #378
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #637
ADDITIONAL: Carleton Brown, editor, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century_, Oxford University Press, 1939, #78, pp. 115-117, "Verbum Caro Factum Est" (1 text, from the Heege manuscript)
Karen Saupe, editor, _Middle English Marian Lyrics_, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1998, #28, pp. 78-80, "(I passed thoru a garden grene)" (1 text, mostly from Heege)
Thomas G. Duncan, editor, _Late Medieval English Lyrics and Carols 1400-1530_, Penguin Books, 2000, #63, p. 70, "I passëd thoru a garden grene" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSSloane2593}, London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 18
MANUSCRIPT: {MSHeege}, The Heege Manuscript, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS. Advocates 19.3.1, folio 94
NOTES [279 words]: The attestation of this is a little thin -- just two manuscripts. But both are important sources, and their texts are significantly different, and it has a nice folky title. So I'm indexing it.
Brown's notes observe a heavy measure of alliteration, better preserved in Heege -- e.g. in the first four lines, "I passed through a GARDEN GREEN, I FOUND a herbere (arbor) made FULL new, A SEEMLIER SIGHT I have not SEEN, of every TREE sang a TURTLE TRUE."
The Heege manuscript of this is signed by the secondary scribe, John Hawghton, not Richard Heege. The text is hard enough to read that Saupe notes 22 places where editors have read it differently (although several of these look to me to be unconscious corrections by Turnbull, who first edited the piece).
The refrain "Verbum caro factum est" is taken verbatim from the Vulgate Latin translation of John 1:14, "Et verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis," rendering Greek και ο λογος σαρξ εγενετο και εσκηνωσεν εν ημιν, almost always translated "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us"; the Latin would literally be rendered "[the] Word flesh become is." This is of course the key and core basis for the doctrine of the Incarnation, which is the core of Christian theology.
The shepherds who came to the nativity are mentioned in Luke 2:8-20; there is no reason to think there were three of them.
The three magi (wise men, here called "kings") are told of in Matthew 2:1-10; here again, there is no warrant for thinking there were three of them, or that they were kings; for background on this, see "The Golden Carol (The Three Kings)."
Despite these quibbles, this is quite a beautiful and effective poem. - RBW
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