Blessed Be That Maid Mary

DESCRIPTION: "Blessed be that maid Mary, Born he was of her body," "Eia, Iesus hodie Natus est de virgine." Jesus is born in a manger. Kings come from "diverse lands." "To that child we sing, Gloria tibi, Domine."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1430 (British Library -- Sloane MS. 2593)
KEYWORDS: nonballad Jesus childbirth religious foreignlanguage MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #24, p. 18, "Blyssid be that mayde Mary" (1 text)
Rickert-AncientEnglishChristmasCarols, pp. 45-46, "(Eia Jesus hodie)" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #527
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #859
MANUSCRIPT: {MSSloane2593}, London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 4
NOTES [214 words]: There is, to my knowledge, no evidence whatsoever that this song was ever in tradition. It is found in the Sloane Manuscript, which seems to contain several traditional pieces, but I would not ordinarily index anything from Sloane if it were not found in another manuscript or source to indicate oral tradition.
However, the song is now well known because of a modern arrangement. I'm including it on that basis even though it is not traditional. David Willcocks around 1960 took the words, modernized the spelling (and maybe some other aspects), and set them to a tune that is reported to be from William Ballet's Lute Book of c. 1590 (Trinity College, Dublin. It is a popular tune book that also has melodies for "Greensleeves" and "There Was A Lover and His Lass" and the so-called "Lute-Book Lullaby"). I do not know how Willcocks chose that tune, but the result has been borrowed, adapted, rearranged, and reworked so many times that it is probably more popular than the vast majority of traditional songs. It should be repeated, however, that although both components of the result are old (at least before they were modernized), there is no reason to think they passed through tradition.
For more on manuscript Sloane 2593, see the notes to "Robyn and Gandeleyn" [Child 115]. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: MSBlBMM

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