No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Although “I Syng of a Myden” has always been regarded as a superlative lyric, and although it has received detailed discussion by George Kane, John Speirs, and especially Leo Spitzer, there are many features of this extremely complex poem which need to be pointed out: the richness of the imagery, the significance of the puns, and the number symbolism, for example. Nor has anyone singled out the remarkable achievement of our poet in combining the tone of wonder and exultation in Mary's dual role as maiden and mother with an amazing wealth of the natural and theological implications surrounding the event.
1 Kane, Middle English Literature (London, 1951), pp. 161–165; Speirs, Medieval English Poetry (London, 1957), pp. 67–69; Spitzer, “Explication de Texte Applied to Three Great Middle English Poems,” Archivum Linguisticum, iii (1951), 152–163. Both Kane and Spitzer discuss in detail the changes our poet made in utilizing his 13th-century source, “Nu his fuies singet,” printed in Carleton Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century (Oxford, 1932), p. 55.
2 Liber de Virginitale Perpetua Sanctae Mariae, ii, Pat-rologia Latina (abbreviated hereafter as PL), xcvi, 63. Cf. e.g., Richard of St. Victor: “Quantum hoc esse putas? Quam magnum, quam mirum, quam insolitum, quam stupendum quale vel quam magnae rei signum? A saeculo non est audi-tum virginem concepisse, virginem parere, et post partum inviolatam permanere,” De Emmanuele, i, 12, PL, cxcvi, 619. Alan of Lille expresses a popular motif in his Anticlaudi-anus, v, 9: “Hic natura silet, logicae vis exsulat, omnis/ Rhetoricae perit arbitrium, ratioque vacillat.”
3 Middle English Sermons, ed. Woodburn O. Ross, EETS, ccix (London, 1940), 221–222.
4 An exception is William Frost, ed., The Age of Chaucer, in English Masterpieces, ed. Maynard Mack (New York, 1950), p. 336. Frost glosses it as “without a mate; also, ‘matchless’.” Speirs, p. 69, discusses the pun briefly; he would extend it to include a pun on maskelles (spotless) and makeles. Neither commentator discusses the structural importance of the pun, however. The pun could conceivably also appear in our poet's 13th-century source, but the earlier poet does not utilize it structurally, as does our poet.
5 “Wit and Mystery: a Revaluation in Mediaeval Latin Hymnody,” Speculum, xxii (1947), 315.
6 Ed. John Henry Blunt, EETS ES, xix (London, 1905), 94. Among other references may be cited St. Augustine, Enchiridion, i, 38, PL, XL, 251; Aelfric, “Annunciatio S. Mariae,” Sermones Catholici, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (London 1844), i, 196.
7 Peter Cellensis, “In Annuntiatione Dominica” VI, PL, ccii, 721. Discussions of the dew image appear frequently in commentaries upon, and in sermons which allude to, Judges vi. 37–40 and Ps. lxxi. 6 (Vulgate). The qualities of dew mentioned in these passages are those mentioned also iii, e.g., Hugh of St. Victor, De Bestiis el Aliis Rebus, iv, PL, CLXXVII, 158; Vincent of Beauvais, Bibliolheca Mundi (Duaci, 1624), i, 205. Another quality of dew is sweetness, which applies particularly to Jesus; several ME poems are on this subject.
8 Analecta Hymnica (abbreviated hereafter AH), ed. Guido Dreves and Clemens Blume (Leipzig, 1880–1922), liv, viii, 13. Amedeus uses an image which is reminiscent of our poem: “uterus intumescat, gaudeat animus, floreat alms” (italics mine), De Maria Virginea Matri, iii, PL, CLXXXVIII, 1318.
9 AH, LIV, ccliii, 397.
10 The doctrine of the virgin birth had been clearly defined for centuries; this doctrine is sometimes confused with the immaculate conception (Mary's preservation at conception from the least stain of sin), which was the cause of much controversy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
11 An interesting exegesis of this passage is found in Alcuin's sermon on the three silences, found in PL, XLV, 1177, in which he puns on Jesus as the Word of God breaking the second silence.
12 “Hodierna igitur die secundum carnem natus est Do-minus, ita secreto, ita silentio, ut ortum ejus saeculum penitus ignoraret. Ignoravit enim saeculum; quia et extra conscien-tiam patris natus est, et extra ordinem naturae conceptus. . . . Sic igitur natus est Dominus, ut ortum ejus nemo futurum suspicaretur, nemo crederet, nemo sentiret. Quemadmodum crederent hoc futurum, quod posteaquam factum est, factum esse vix credunt?” “De Natali Domini,” iii, PL, xvii, 634.
13 De Vera Contemplatione, xii, quoted by Evelyn Underbill, Mysticism (New York, 1955), p. 37, in a discussion of this point.
14 AH, xxx, lviii, Ad Nonam, 134. The image of the dew (rain) falling on the grass may be found, e.g., in two Latin hymns of the 12th century in AH, XXXII, xix, 35 and L, cccxxvii, 486; in a 14th-century hymn, LIV, cclii, 397; in the office for vespers on the feast of the Annunciation in the Breviarium ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Sarum, ed. Francis Proctor and Christopher Wordsworth (Canterbury, 1886), iii, 234.
15 “Holy Maydyn, Blissid Thou Be,” line 17, in Richard Greene, ed., The Early English Carols (Oxford, 1935), p. 138.
16 “Super Missus Est” i, PL, clxxxiii, 58. The treatise in the reference which follows is pseudo-Bernard, De Statu Virginum, PL, cxxxxiv, 798.
17 Ed. F. J. Furnivall, rev. ed., EETS, xviii (London, 1922), 62. I have normalized some of the spelling.
18 Liber de Nominibus Hebraicis, PL, xxiii, 886.
19 For discussion of the five letters in Maria, see All, xxx, lviii, 129; John Bromyard, Summa Predicanlium, ed. Hiero-nymus Verdussus (Antwerp, 1614), pt. ii, pp. 7–8. Number symbolism, it seems to me, may be divided into three kinds: structural (the three central stanzas of our poem), appropriate (our poem's five stanzas), and arbitrary (such as Walafrid Strabo's choice of 84 lines for one of his poems because that was the age of the prophetess Anna at Christ's birth). For the last example, and for further discussion of the latter two kinds, see Ernst R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle A ges, tr. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1953), pp. 504–509.