Seven Joys of Mary, The

DESCRIPTION: The carol relates the (five, seven, nine) joys that Mary had: bearing Jesus, raising him, seeing his success and miracles, observing his crucifixion and resurrection, etc.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1833 (Sandys)
KEYWORDS: carol Jesus religious
FOUND IN: US(Ap,NE) Canada(Mar) Britain(England(South,West)) Ireland
REFERENCES (22 citations):
Palmer-FolkSongsCollectedBy-Ralph-VaughanWilliams, #8, "The Nine Joys of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Palmer-SongsOfTheMidlands, pp. 17-18, "The Seven Joys of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud/Bishop-NewPenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs #148, "The Joys of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Flanders/Olney-BalladsMigrantInNewEngland, pp. 211-213, "The Seven Joys of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Flanders/Ballard/Brown/Barry-NewGreenMountainSongster, pp. 185-18, "The Joys of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior-TraditionalSongsOfNovaScotia, pp.275-278 , "The Joys of Mary"; "The Blessings of Mary" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Creighton-MaritimeFolkSongs, pp. 172-173, "The Blessings of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 105, "The Twelve Good Joys" (1 text)
Dearmer/VaughnWilliams/Shaw-OxfordBookOfCarols 70, "Joys Seven" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wells-TheBalladTree, pp. 200-201 "(no title)", pp. 201-202, "The Joys of Mary" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Burton/Manning-EastTennesseeStateCollectionVol1, pp. 31-32, "The Seven Joys of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cox-FolkSongsSouth 135, "The Twelve Joys" (1 text)
Roberts/Agey-InThePine #117, "Seven Blessings of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 51, "The Twelve Blessings of Mary" (1 text)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore4 51, "The Twelve Blessings of Mary" (2 excerpts, 2 tunes)
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 123, "The Seven Blessings of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fireside-Book-of-Folk-Songs, p. 262, "The Seven Joys of Mary" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 363, "The Seven Blessings of Mary" (1 text)
DT, SEVNJOYS* SEVNJOY2
ADDITIONAL: Jon Raven, _The Urban and Industrial Songs of the Black Country and Birmingham_, Broadside, 1977, pp. 171-172, "The Seven Joys of Mary" (1 text)
Bell/O Conchubhair, Traditional Songs of the North of Ireland, pp. 107-110, "Seacht Suailci Na Maighdine Muire" ("The Seven Beatitudes of the Virgin Mary") [Gaelic and English]
Ian Bradley, _The Penguin Book of Carols_ (1999), #76, "The First Good Joy that Mary Had" (1 text)
Roud #278
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Douce adds. 137(19), "The Seven Joys," T. Bloomer (Birmingham), 1817-1827; also Harding B 7(34), Johnson Ballads 2833, Douce adds. 137(61), Harding B 7(28), Harding B 7(7), Harding B 7(66), Firth b.27(211), "The Seven Joys"; Harding B 7(65), Harding B 7(63), Harding B 7(30), "The Joys"
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Joys Seven
NOTES [1873 words]: The cult of Mary was very old in the Catholic church; Woolf, p. 115, quotes some of the early writers whose works gave rise to the notion -- e.g. Augustine of Hippo wrote, "Eve by her disobedience merited punishment; Mary by obeying obtained glory," while Jerome, translator of the Vulgate that was the Bible of the Latin church, wrote, "Death by Eve, life by Mary."
What's more, it appears that some aspects of the cult, such as the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, were largely of English origin and were promoted by Englishmen (Woolf, p. 117).
The notion of Mary's joys goes back at least to the thirteenth (although the term "joys" was not then fixed; BrownXIII, pp. 65-67, has a poem that refers to her "five blisses"), and the notion of counting those joys apparently goes back to at least the fourteenth century. Praising Mary "through an enumeration of her five joys [was] one of the earliest of formalized meditative exercises, and probably the first to be embodied in the Middle English lyric" (Woolf, p. 134). There is a prayer on the Five Joys in the "Ancrene Wisse" -- the rules for anchoresses -- of the thirteenth century (Woolf, p. 117). The topic forms a major part of Woolf's book on religious poetry; she has two chapters "On the Virgin and her Joys": pp. 114-158 cover lyrics from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; pp. 274-308 deal with those of the fifteenth. Woolf, p. 114, considers lyrics on the Virgin's joys to be one of three major categories of Marian poetry, and calls them "semi-liturgical." Some examples of these pieces:
In the metrical tale "How the Psalter of Our Lady Was Made" (first found in MS. Digby 86, dated 1272-1283, and also in the Auchinleck manuscript of c. 1335), a monk was told to pray 150 aves a day; "The first fifty Aves were for joy at the annunciation that she should bear God-in-Man; the second fifty, that she should bear Christ; the third, that she should go to Him for bliss" (Wells, pp. 168-169).
The fullest collection of poems on Mary's joys known to me is Saupe's; on pp. 137-146, she has six pieces, although many of them clearly had no place in tradition. Ironically, none seems to be linked with this piece, or even to derive from similar sources.
BrownXIV also has several, scattered through the work: #11, pp. 13-14, from MS. Harley 2253, "Ase y me rod þis ender day" ("As I me rode this other day," Index of Middle English Verse #359); #31, pp. 44-46, from Göttingen MS. theol. 107 (a manuscript of the Cursor Mundi), "Haile be þu, mari maiden bright!" ("Hail to you, Mary maiden bright," Index #1029).
The idea clearly penetrated into popular culture. Robert Thornton, for instance, collected romances and advice and religious works in two great fifteenth century manuscripts, and there are several Joys of Mary references interspersed with the longer works, such as a couplet, "Lady for thy Ioyes Fyve, Wysse me the ways of Rightwys lyffe" -- "Lady, for your joys five, Teach me the ways of righteous life" (Fein/Johnston, p. 31).
As far as counting the joys goes, in the liturgical poem "Marie Moder, Wel Thee Be!" we find a reference to Mary's "joyes five" (poem known from some fifty texts. For full text see MS. Rawlinson liturgical g.2, the printing as #46 in Stevick-OneHundredMiddleEnglishLyrics, or Carleton Brown, editor, English Lyrics of the XIVth Century, Oxford University Press, 1924, #122, pp. 216-217, "A Prayer by the Five Joys"). From the same manuscript as "Judas" [Child 23] comes a piece beginning "Seinte marie, leuedi brist, Moder þov art of muchel mist" ("Saint Mary, lady bright, Mother thou art of much might") which has five joys (BrownXIII, p. 27). MS. Cotton Caligula A.ii (fifteenth century) has a "Quinque Gaudia" piece with first line "Heyl! Gloryous virgyne, ground of all our grace, Heyl! modere of crist in pure virginite"; see Carleton Brown, editor, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, Oxford University Press, 1939, #30, pp. 53-54.
In the fifteenth century, there is a carol, "Of a rose, a lively rose, Of a rose I syng a song," which speaks of "five branchis of that rose"; see Greene, #47, pp. 108. Again, the poem "Hail be though, Mary, maiden bright" (Gottingen University MS theol. 107r, folio 169a; cf. Sisam, #82, p. 190) lists five joys. (Saupe, p. 27, suggests this is based on the five letters of the name "MARIA." We see an explicit example of this in Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, #30, pp. 55-56, which has sections starting M-A-R-I-A, the first opening "Myldyste of moode & mekyst of maydyns alle."
The five joys are found in many other places. On p. 1747 of Severs/Hartung, Greene affirms that every medieval Joys carol has five joys. Greene, in his own book, p. 221, quotes Brown as saying "English tradition down to the end of the fourteenth century uniformly recognized Five Joys of the Virgin, viz.: the Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension, and [Mary's] Assumption, whereas on the Continent the number of Joys is regularly seven, through the addition of Epiphany and the Purification." (The same list is on p. 179 of BrownXIII.) Wells, p. 536 (entry on "The Five Joys of the Virgin") says that "The Joys vary in number, 5, 7, 8, 12, 15. In Middle English poetry (except in Harley 2253) they are five" (and goes on to list the same five as in Greene and Brown). He then lists eleven poems from the Middle Ages dealing with the Joys of Mary. His exceptional case, Harley 2253, still has five joys, but they are the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Epiphany, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Mary (not of Jesus).
The Harley 2253 text has significant similarities to this poem; after four stanzas of introduction, it introduces the first joy by saying, "þe furst ioie of þat wymman" ("The first joy of that woman") -- but displays an interesting pattern of calling Mary by different titles: "þat oþer ioie of þat mai" ("that other joy of that may/maid"), "þe þridde ioie of þat leuedy" ("the third joy of that lady"), etc.
Although Middle English texts fixed on five Joys, the variety in number of joys is quite large. Even in the Middle Ages, we see a number of *mentions* of seven joys (BrownXV, #32, #34-36, pp. 56-65, offer "An Orison to Our Lady by the Seven Joys" and "The Seven Joys of the Virgin in Heaven I, II, III"; it's just that the actual joys aren't listed.) Post-medieval traditional texts have numbers as high as twelve, and French Books of Hours reportedly standardized on fifteen (see WEuropeanMSS, p. 100), I suspect the original of most of these songs had about seven -- not five and certainly not more. There are two reasons for this. We know that there were mentions of seven joys at least by the fifteenth century; a stained glass window of the reign of Edward IV (1461-1470 and 1471-1483) mentioned seven joys, although the window has now been destroyed and we do not know details. Mirk's Festial (c. 1400) and Fabyan's Chronicle also have seven joys, although two pieces perhaps by Lydgate and from the fifteenth century mention fifteen (Wells, p. 538; Woolf, p. 139, says that he managed this by pulling in legendary material other English writers avoided). It would be frankly typical of Lydgate to take an old idea and puff it up badly (for Lydgate, who probably holds the world record for droning on, see the notes to "The London Lackpenny").
Another possible origin for the number seven is that there were considered to be seven woes of the Virgin Mary, to match her seven joys; these were mentioned in the Latin hymn "Summae, Deus, clementiae, Septem Dolores Virginia," and eventually even became part of a required canonical office.
The other reason I suspect the original of this song had no more than seven joys is that so many of the joys in the long texts are forced, even unbiblical. Nor do they match the somewhat abstract theological joys listed above. We can demonstrate this point by marching down the joys compiled in Brown and Cox:
One -- To think that her son Jesus Was God's eternal son: Luke 1:15
Two -- Could read the Bible through. Luke 2:46-47 shows Jesus, as a boy, discussing scripture, but it doesn't say he read it. It's likely enough that he could read, though; most Jewish children could, and Luke 4:17fff. shows him reading from Isaiah.
Three -- Could make the blind to see. Repeated references to this; the most primitive is perhaps in Mark 8:22-30.
Four -- Could turn the rich to poor. No known Biblical evidence of this. James 5:1 says "Your riches have rotted," and Jesus has warnings for the rich (e.g. the Wise Fool, Luke 12:16-21), but we don't see Jesus doing anything about it, unless it's a reference to cleansing the Temple (Mark 11:15-17, etc.)
Five -- Could make the dead alive. See, e.g., the raising of Lazarus, John 11.
Six: -- Brown (cf. Cox) "Heal the lame and sick." Numerous examples. But we also see "bear the crucifix," which is complicated. John says he bore his own cross (John 19:17), but the other gospels say Simon of Cyrene bore it (Mark 15:21, etc.)
Seven -- Carried the keys of heaven. Not biblical, and of course the issue of who will be saved is a controversial one. Peter eventually was regarded as having the keys of heaven.
Eight -- Brown: "Make the crooked straight. Cox: "Open the gates of heaven." Obviously an attempt to force an explanation
Nine -- Turn water to wine. The wedding at Cana, John 2.
Ten -- Brown: "Was a friend to sinful men." Compare the sinner washing Jesus's feet, Luke 7:37-50, etc. Cox: "Could write without a pen." Perhaps a reference to John 8:6 (a passage not found in the earliest manuscripts), but singularly inept in any case.
Eleven -- Could open the gates of heaven. Haven't we been here before?
Twelve -- Brown: "Came down to earth to dwell." Basic doctrine. Cox: "Done all things well." Allusion to Mark 7:37 or parallel.
It is interesting and difficult to decide how old this song is. The modern form clearly goes back at least to Sandys. That there were medieval songs of joys is also clear. What is tricky is a fifteenth century carol found in Bodleian, MS. Eng. Poet e.1 and reprinted in Greene (#51, pp. 111-112), with a similar text in the Richard Hill manuscript, Bodleian MS. 354, and at least one other.
The burden is Latin ("A, a, a, a, Gaude celi domina"), as are the tags at the ends of the verses ("Tua quinque gaudia," "Ave, plena gracia," "Enixa est puerpera," etc.). The first verse begins, "Mary for the love of the(e)." But then it goes off into a five joys format: "The fyrste joy that came to the, Was whan the aungel greted the(e) And sayd, 'Mary, ful of charyte....'" Same song? Hard to tell unless we find some intermediate versions.... I eventually decided that it was significant enough to index, and since I'm not sure it's the same, I've filed it as "Mary for the Love of Thee (Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay)." - RBW
The Bell/O Conchubhair melody is not the one I know but O Conchubhair's notes make the connection. Here the seven joys are (1) That she bore Him in a lowly byre (2) That she travelled with Him along the road (3) That He'd gone by reading His book (4) When he turned the water into wine (5) When He made the dead to live (6) When He redeemed the world with his blood (7) When He raised her to heaven alive. - BS
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