‘Blessed be the time that apple taken was!’

A contribution to a virtual Advent Calendar of art, music and poetry compiled by members of Deo Gratias, a circle of Catholics in their twenties & thirties meeting fortnightly in London to discuss artistic and cultural expressions of the Christian faith.

Adam lay ybounden,
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long.

And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took.
As clerkës finden 
Written in their book.

Ne had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Ne had never our ladie
Abeen heav’ne queen.

Blessed be the time
That apple taken was:
Therefore we moun singen
Deo gratias.

This carol is one of several medieval lyrics, sacred and secular, that are preserved in a remarkable and unique fifteenth-century manuscript, possibly originating from Bury St. Edmunds, and now held at the British Library (Sloane MS 2593).  Like many medieval verses it is macaronic, combining Latin and the vernacular, and, as well as offering an aching glimpse into medieval Catholic England, it expresses in a nutshell one of Christianity’s great theological paradoxes, the ‘felix culpa’ or ‘happy fault’ — the realisation that, in so far as Adam’s sin led to our redemption by Christ, we may actually rejoice that the sin occurred, so wonderful is that redemption.  We hear it in the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil: ‘O happy fault; O necessary sin of Adam, which won for us so great a Redeemer!’

Wearing its learning lightly, and with (I think) a particularly English humour, this carol expresses the same idea, but this time with respect to Mary.  The carol begins with Adam ‘bounden in a bond’, an allusion to the medieval idea that he lay in limbo until Christ’s Harrowing of Hell on Holy Saturday.  I love the wry humour of the lines ‘Four thousand winter / Thought he not too long,’ which strike me almost as brotherly teasing; the same with ‘And all was for an apple, / An apple that he took’.  It is an acknowledgement of a kind of solidarity with Adam; an admission that he and we are all in the same pickle.

And yet — the poet says — if the apple had never been taken, if Adam had not sinned, Mary would never have been Queen of Heaven (since, implicitly, we would have had no need for Christ to save us).  Hence, strange to say,  ‘Blessed be the time / That apple taken was!’  This is the ‘felix culpa’, and a (surely deliberate) echo of the Exsultet.  And so, one senses to his own amazement, the catechist declares, ‘Therefore we moun singen [may sing] / Deo gratias.’  It is one of the most marvellous paradoxes of Christianity, and here is expressed concisely and with winsome humour, and also with the Marian devotion for which medieval England was renowned.

Several composers have set the carol to music. The best-known setting is probably Boris Ord’s, which has regular outings at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge.  Benjamin Britten also included a version in his Ceremony of Carols.  But I think my favourite is the setting by Philip Ledger, with the words ‘Deo Gratias’ as a haunting refrain.

Three Carols from Old England

Along with their ten favourite pieces of music and a luxury, castaways on the B.B.C.’s programme Desert Island Discs are given three books: the Bible, the Complete Works of Shakespeare and a volume of their choice.  Unlikely though it is that I will suffer that fate (either to be cast away on a desert island or to be interviewed on Radio 4), I have been thinking that my choice might be Sloane manuscript 2593, a collection of fifteenth-century English carols and poems held in the British Library.  A (smallish) digitised image can be seen here.

These manuscripts have preserved something quite precious of medieval England’s character.  Sacred lyrics are mixed with profane in the manuscript, which alone tells us something about faith and life in those days, but it is the carols that I find the most spine-tingling.  I think the best-known are Lullay, myn lyking, Adam lay ybounden and I sing of a maiden, which have each been set to music by various composers.  Not only the meaning of these three texts have survived, and their noteworthy Marian spirituality, but also (as I hear it) their mood, something altogether more fragile.  The lyricist sets off with a catechetical aim but succeeds in amazing himself with his own catechesis.  This amazement is expressed in a restrained, a mild — and dare I say even an English — way.  For instance, I find very moving this depiction of the Adam’s ‘happy fault’ in Adam lay ybounden:

Ne had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Ne had never our ladie
Abeen heav’ne queen.

Or, in I sing of a mayden, there is the quiet awe of the line 

Well may such a lady
Goddes mother be.

which leaves nothing else to be said.  With closing lines like this, the middle three verses can afford to be duplicates (but beautiful duplicates!) of each other.

Or there is the detail of the line ‘as clerkes finden written in their book’, an image which for the original listeners linked the everyday and familiar seamlessly to the song’s spiritual subject-matter, and which for us transmits a flicker of the flavour of their life and worship. (We marvel that clerics had to read Sacred Scripture on behalf of laypeople; these words were written by someone for whom this was normal).  As an Englishman, certainly as an English speaker, I cannot read them as a neutral observer or objective student: I feel I have inherited these carols in a certain way.  This only magnifies the flash of elation that comes with reading any good poem.  Centuries separate the England I know from the England that produced these words, but the feeling that that I know what they meant, or that I think exactly what they thought — which is also an assurance of the unchanging nature of the Christian faith — is, in my view, very precious indeed.

Here are some musical settings which to my mind have captured the words’ mood: Lullay, myn lyking — Richard Runciman Terry:

Adam lay ybounden — Philip Ledger:

or https://play.spotify.com/track/1hDflwTiGeSXvD2hHqLRii

I sing of a maiden —Patrick Hadley: