Carol for St. Edmund's Day, A

DESCRIPTION: "A newe song I wil behynne, Of kyng Edmund that was so fre, How he deyid [died] withoute synne, And bow[n]dyn his body was to a tree." He is shot with arrows, his hed cut off, but a wolf guards the head, and we should pray to him
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1430 (British Library -- Sloane MS. 2593); printed by Ritson 1790
KEYWORDS: death religious royalty MiddleEnglish
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
869/870 - Death of Edmund of East Anglia during a Viking invasion
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #312, p. 215, "(A newe song I wil begynne)" (1 text)
Ritson-AncientSongsBalladsFromHenrySecondToTheRevolution, pp. 123-124, "A Carol for Saint Edmunds Day" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #80
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #130
MANUSCRIPT: {MSSloane2593}, London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 25
NOTES [1027 words]: Although it doesn't occur in any ballad collections, this is a song, or at least a poem, with the remnants of a plot, and parts of it are in ballad meter (one suspects it was badly damaged over the years by the changes in the English language, and perhaps also by translation from one dialect to another).
And the source is very important. There is only one manuscript copy -- London, British Library MS. Sloane 2593 -- but this is one of the most important sources of Middle English folk poetry. One must be open to the possibility that anything it contains is a folk song or carol. I'm not sure, in this case, but I'm including the song just in case. For more on manuscript Sloane 2593, see the notes to "Robyn and Gandeleyn" [Child 115].
Note that this Edmund should not be confused with Saint Edmund of Abingdon, subject of a life by Matthew Paris, nor with Kings Edmund I and Edmund Ironside of Wessex, long-ago members of the modern royal family
Very little is really known about the life and martyrdom of King Edmund of East Anglia. His death came during one of the many periods of Viking invasion of England. StentonEtAl, p. 248, says, "In the autumn of 868 the invader returned to York, and twelve months later they descended again on East Anglia.... Within a few weeks of their arrival, at or near Hoxne in Suffol, they met and defeated an army led by Edmund, the East Anglian king. Either in battle, or, more probably, as a captive in their hands, Edmund was killed. The contemporary West Saxon author of the [Anglo-Saxon] Chronicle records his death without any sign of interest, but within a quarter century he had come to be honoured as a saint in East Anglia, and the early development of his cult suggests very strongly that a basis of fact underlay the legend of his martyrdom."
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle truly is laconic in recording the event. The Parker Chronicle (A) text records for 869 or 870, "In this year the [Viking] host rode across Mercia into East Anglia ,and took winter-quarters at Thetford; and the same winter King Edmund fought against them, and the Danes won the victory and slew the king and overran the entire kingdom" (Garmonsway, p. 70); two other texts (the Laud Chronicle E and the Canterbury epitome F say much the same, although E calls him "Saint Edmund the King" and adds that the Vikings destroyed monasteries; F simply calls him "the King").
Asser's Life of King Alfred reports of this time, "In the same year, Edmund, king of the East Angles, fought fiercely against that army. But alas, he was killed there with a number of his men, and the Vikings rejoiced triumphantly... and they subjected the entire province to their authority" (AsserEtAl, p. 78, section 33). Asser was alive at the time of the battle, but living in the hinterland of Wales; he probably was not aware of the events at the time. It is likely that, when he wrote two or so decades after the battle, he consulted the Chronicle or its direct source and interpreted it in the sense that Edmund died in the battle.
OxfordCompanion, p. 325, says, "Edmund... known as 'the Martyr.' More famous in legend and because of the grotesque method of his martyrdom than in his life and works, Edmund, the lsat effective king of the East Angles of native stock, was killed by the Danes, probably under their leaders, Ingware and Ubba, on 20 November 870. Stories quickly grew concerning his sanctity, his refusal to forswear Christianity, and the nature of his death (tied to a tree and shot to death by Danish arrows). His burial place at Bury St Edmunds became a shrine of special veneration...."
OxfordSaints, p. 161, states that he was born in 841 and became king before 865, and has more on the method of his death: "He was then killed, whether by being scourges, shot with arrows, and then beheaded, as the traditional account relates, or by being 'spread-eagled' as an offering to the gods in accordance with Viking practice elsewhere.... In c. 915 his body was found to be incorrupt" and was then translated to the town that became known as Bury St. Edmunds. "His most usual emblem is an arrow, the supposed instrument of his passion, or else a wolf, who was believed to have guarded his head after death. It was also claimed that his head and body were miraculously rejoined, but if he was never beheaded there is no extraordinary phenomenon to explain" (OxfordSaints, pp. 161-162).
The first mention of his translation to Bury is apparently from AEtheweard's Chronicle (Swanton, p. 70 n. 2); AEtheweard died in 998. There were earlier coins calling him a saint, though: "From the evidence of his coinage Edmund had reigned for some years. A generation after his death, commemorative coins were being struck to 'Saint' Edmund" (Hindley, p. 188).
It is possible that some of the Danes who slew him were responsible for his cult (Hindley, p. 198) -- although only after Alfred the Great beat them off and caused them to rethink their religion; possibly they were trying to make their English subjects happy.
There were later attempts to translate his body from Bury, but its present location is not certain (OxfordSaints, p. 162); I will spare you the arguments.
There is obviously no evidence of actual virtue in his private life -- although there isn't any evidence against it, either.
Thus our reliable information is very slight -- so slight that editors aren't even sure about the date of his death; Garmonsway, StentonEtAl, Swanton, and OxfordSaints state that the king was killed in 869; OxfordCompanion prefers 870. If you want late, unreliable information, though, there is plenty of that, as well as some noteworthy iconography. In the 980s, Abbo of Fleury wrote a passion tale, allegedly based on a report of St. Dunstan, who had it from Edmund's armor-bearer in his old age; according to it, Edmund chose martyrdom rather than shedding blood (Hindley, p. 188). A manuscript "Life," with illuminations, is in the J. P. Morgan library (MS. 736); John Lydgate wrote another life which was presented to King Henry VI in 1439; he was also one of the saints painted along with Richard II in the "Wilton Diptych" (OxfordSaints, p. 161). - RBW
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