Salutation Carol, The

DESCRIPTION: "Nowell, Nowell,Nowell, Nowell! This is the salutation of the angel Gabriel." "Tidings true there be come new, Sent from the Trinity" by Gabriel to Nazareth. He does homage to Mary. She says she will obey whatever her Lord commands
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1537 (Hill MS., Balliol Coll. Oxf. 354)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (14 citations):
Dearmer/VaughnWilliams/Shaw-OxfordBookOfCarols 36, "The Salutation Carol" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #239, pp. 171-172, "(Tydynges trew ther be cum new, sent from the Trinite") (1 text with variants)
Rickert-AncientEnglishChristmasCarols, pp. 35-36 "Nowell, nowell, nowell, nowell, This is the salutation of Gabriel" (1 text)
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, p. 42, "Christmas Carol" (1 text, 1 tune)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic I, pp. 30-31, "Nowell, Nowell" (1 partial text, 1 tune)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #3736
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #5952
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), #49, pp. 39-40, "[Newell, newell, newell, newell, This ys the salutacion of Gabryell]" (1 text)
Richard Greene, editor, A Selection of English Carols , Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1962, #53, pp. 113-114, "(Nowell, Nowell! This is the salutacion off the aungell Gabriell)" (1 text)
Lady Caroline Kerrison, edited with notes by Lucy Toulmin Smith, _A Common-place Book of the Fifeenth Century: A Religious Play and Poetry, Legal Forms, and Local Accounts_, privately printed, 1886, pp. 122-123, "A Carol of the Annunciation" (1 text)
Rossell Hope Robbins, editor, _Early English Christmas Carols_, Columbia University Press, 1961, #21, pp. 62-63, 'The Salutation of the Angel" (1 text, 1 tune)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSEngPoetE1}, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodley 29734), folio 41 (first copy); folio 52 (second copy)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSRichardHill}, The Richard Hill Manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354, folio 482
MANUSCRIPT: New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library MS. 365 [olim Ipswich County Hall deposit, Hillwood; prior Brome Hall, Suffolk], folio 79
NOTES [622 words]: Loosely based on the story of the Annunciation in Luke 1, although there has been a lot of rephrasing along the way.
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic would date the piece to the reign of Henry VI, which seems not unlikely.
Although no longer found in tradition, this seems to have been popular in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, surviving in three manuscripts. It is in the Hill MS. (Balliol College, Oxford, 354), in Bodleian MS. Eng. poet. e.1 -- twice, in fact, one of them with music (although Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic seems to think this music imperfect, because it cannot be cast in perfect triple time) -- and in one other copy. The Oxford Book of Carols says that this third manuscript is the famous Sloane 2593, but this appears to be an error; Brown/Robbins lists the third as simply "Hamilton [olim Brome]," which is now New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library MS. 365. It is sometimes known as "The Book of Brome." The Yale web page for this manuscript (https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Search/Results?lookfor=%22Beinecke+MS+365%22&type=CallNumber) dates the manuscript to the last quarter of the fifteenth century; it is old enough that it still uses yogh (ȝ) in some pieces. Digitized images are available on the Yale web site; a printed edition of the book is Lady Caroline Kerrison, edited with notes by Lucy Toulmin Smith, A Common-place Book of the Fifeenth Century: A Religious Play and Poetry, Legal Forms, and Local Accounts, privately printed, 1886; it is available on Google Books.
The book is paper, 81 leave of 8x5.5". There were two scribes who worked on the original manuscripts; about a century later, in the reign of Henry VII, one Robert Melton added notes and accounts records; these have some historical but no literary significance. One of the original scribes added a few ornaments. Now heavily stained. Lucy Toulmin Smith, in the book mentioned above (pp. 1-2) says that the book never mentions Brome, having references to Stuson, Suffolk and a few to Scole, Norfolk. At the time Melton wrote in it, it probably belonged to the Cornwallis family; they certainly held it for several centuries afterward, and were lords of the manors of Stuson, Brome, Okely, and Thranson (Smith, p. 6).
The Yale manuscript doesn't have as many poems as the other two manuscripts of this carol (a long section in the middle consists of account books, legal notes, and the like, occupying folios 45-78); among other things, it contains the 466 line Brome play of Isaac and Abraham, beginning "Father of heaven omnipotent," a 341 line version of "Owain Miles" (a story of the knight Owen, said to be based on "St. Patrick's Purgatory"), a Life of Saint Margaret, a poem of the Fifteen Signs of the End Times, and a several-page Legend of Ipotis (Ypotis), a popular instructional dialog. (The DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse lists it as also having the sixteen copies of Chaucer's popular poem "Lak of Steadfastness," but it's not listed by Toulmin Smith in the contents of the manuscript, and the Variorum Chaucer and Riverside Chaucer do not mention the manuscript as a witness to Chaucer.) It also contains what appears to be an ancestor or relative of "The Herring Loves the Moonlight (The Dreg Song)," beginning "The hart loveth the wood the hare loveth the hill." That is the first piece in the book; "The Salutation Carol" is near the end (folio 79 out of 81).
Such wide currency, to me, implies that this belongs in the Index, especially given the presence of a tune (one of very few in the Bodleian manuscript).
For more about the famous anthology Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodleian 29734), see the notes to "The Golden Carol (The Three Kings)." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: MsSalCar

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