Saint Stephen, God's Knight (I shall you tell this ylke night)

DESCRIPTION: "Of Saint Stephen, God's knight, That preached the faith day and night, He told the Jews, as it was right, That Christ was born of a may." The Jews reject his claim; he argues. They stone him to death; dying,he forgives them and commend his soul to heaven
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1550 (Richard Kele's Christmas Carolles Newly Inprynted)
KEYWORDS: death religious
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #101, pp. 64-65, "(no title)" (2 texts)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1363.5
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2276
ADDITIONAL: Edward Bliss Reed, editor, _Christmas Carols Printed in the Sixteenth Century Including Kele's Christmas carolles newely Inprynted reproduced in facsimile from the copy in the Huntington Library_, Harvard University Press, 1932, pp. 51-53 ([33-35]), "Of saynt Steyen"; p. 60 [42], "(no title)" (2 texts)
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library, MS. Egerton 3307, folio 54
ST MSSSGK (Partial)
NOTES [380 words]: This is a curiosity: Richard Kele printed a volume of "Christmas Carols" c. 1545. This is not the earliest printed carol book in English -- Wynkyn de Worde had printed the first some decades earlier -- but it is the earliest to survive relatively intact. Kele's publication has two texts on Saint Stephen. They are clearly the same song (except that the second page of the second copy has been lost, so we don't know how it ended). But although clearly the same item, they are extremely different in detail:
* The one that appears earlier in the book has the burden, "To Saynt Steuen wyl we pray, To pray for vs bothe nyght and day"; the later one has the chorus "Blessyd Stephan, we the pray, Pro nobis preces funde."
* The first one opens "Of Saynt Steuen, Goddes knyght, That preched the fayth day and nyght"; the second, "I shall you tell this ylke nyght Of Saynt Stephan, Goddes knyght."
* The second verse of the earlier text has Stephen proclaim the Virgin Birth; this is omitted in the second.
* There are other differences in verse order, which might be more marked if we had all of both texts
It is evident that Kele had two quite distinct source for his two texts. How could such dramatic differences have arisen? Given the possibility that it was by oral tradition, I have indexed the song, despite the lack of field collections.
It should be noted that the longer version has the story of Stephen largely wrong. Yes, he was tried by the Jews for his Christianity, and stoned as a result; this story occupies Acts, Chapter 7. But Stephen never said a word about the Virgin Birth, at least in the account in Acts; the Virgin Birth is found only in the Gospel of Matthew. He did argue with his judges, but not in the way described here. And while Stephen forgave his murderers, he did not say "Forgyve the Jewes theyr trespace And gyue theym grace to se thy face" (though one hopes he would have agreed with the sentiment); what he actually said was, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." This is another indirect hint that this song went through oral tradition; this is a big enough divergence from the Biblical facts that one must suspect the song was written before the Bible was available in English to let the carol writer get it right. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: MSSSGK

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