Of a Rose, A Lovely Rose

DESCRIPTION: "Of a rose, a lovely rose, And of a rose I sing a song." Listeners are told to hearken "How a rose began to spring." It had (five/six) branches. The branches reach throughout the world and heaven and hell. We, Mary, Jesus, all are blessed by the nativity
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1537 (Richard Hill MS., Balliol Coll. Oxf. 354)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad flowers MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #175, pp. 131-133, "(Mary, the Rose)" (3 texts)
Stevick-OneHundredMiddleEnglishLyrics 84, "(Of a rose, a lovely rose)" (1 text)
Rickert-AncientEnglishChristmasCarols, pp. 9-10, "Of a rose, a lovely rose" (1 text)
Sidgwick/Chambers-EarlyEnglishLyrics LI, pp. 103-104, "(no title)" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1893, #1914
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #3114, 3128
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), #12, pp. 7-8, "(Off a rose, a louely rose)" (1 text, with a second text on p. 170)
Richard Greene, editor, _A Selection of English Carols_, Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1962, #47, p. 108, "(Of a rose, a lovely rose)" (1 text)
Celia and Kenneth Sisam, _The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse_, Oxford University Press, 1970; corrected edition 1973, #185, pp. 429-430, "Of a Rose, a Lovely Rose" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSEngPoetE1}, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodley 29734), folio 21 [IMEV #1914]
MANUSCRIPT: {MSSloane2593}, London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 6 [IMEV #1893]
MANUSCRIPT: {MSRichardHill}, The Richard Hill Manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354, p. 462 [IMEV #1914]
NOTES [162 words]: Although not found in modern tradition, this piece is found in what are probably the three most significant manuscripts of Middle English carols, Richard Hill's manuscript and two others. I am very tentatively including it on that basis.
Greene, p. 389, says unequivocally that this refers to the (five) joys of the Virgin Mary, but only his first text (the MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 version) has five joys. The second text (Hill's) has *six* joys, with Greene explaining that the sixth is a summary of the five. The third text (Sloane) does not give a number of joys, but lists only three; Greene suggests that it has lost two verses. All possible, of course, but I'd allow for the possibility that the original did not define the number explicity.
For more about the famous anthology Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodleian 29734), see the notes to "The Golden Carol (The Three Kings)."
For more on manuscript Sloane 2593, see the notes to "Robyn and Gandeleyn" [Child 115]. - RBW
Bibliography

Greene: Richard Leighton Greene, editor, The Earliest English Carols, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1935

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