cheerful parts; princesses strained their shoulders against the ropes that pulled the huge stone-cart toward the rising cathedral, hymns of praise in stone. There was much of faith and hope and charity. The surging hymns of the Middle Ages were proof of it; they were born of faith and hope and charity and love of light and beauty; they could not so have sounded through hall and hut by the roadsides, down the foot-paths, through fields and pasture-lands, in the churches and the cloisters, without themselves kindling and keeping alive the Christian virtues. Their words and music, sometimes pensive, sometimes hilarious, helped to break the hold of unknown terrors, enchanters, dragons, and fiends; they gave surcease to grief and pain; they called the voices of neighbors into unison and their hearts as well; they kept alive a common zeal for the City of God. The old age was not the golden age, but there was a glow of gold in it which would never have been there but for the great hymns that moved like the winds through Europe. CHAPTER III THE NATIVE ENGLISH HYMN ITH the coming of the Renaissance, Latin WT hymnody became one of the old things that must pass away. Its heavy surges, sounding so powerfully through the age that created it, now began to recede and to become an echo. Its art had finally overdone itself and had become an empty exercise, the expression not of aspiring faith but rather of ingenuity in making words tumble like jugglers' balls in astonishing feats of rhythm and rime. The new classical taste, moreover, rejected its Gothic exuberance of form. The church, under order of the pope, made a sweeping reformation of the words and music of its song. "Hymnody then,” says Clement Blume, S. J., co-editor of the monumental "Analecta Hymnica Medii Evi," "received its death blow, as under the revision of the breviary under Pope Urban VIII the medieval rhythmical hymns were forced into more classical forms by means of so-called corrections. The hymnody of the Middle Ages is now only an historical monument which bears witness to the artistic skill, the joyful singing, and the deep religious life of our forefathers." But the Christian hymn was not to pass away; 90 66 Christianity is a singing religion sprung out of another singing religion whose ancient admonitions said, "Let all the people praise thee," "Praise the Lord with a harp," "Sing unto him a new song," 'Enter into his courts with song," "Sing ye praises with understanding," "Praise him all ye people." The early church rose with singing and made its progress westward with ever increasing sweep of song. And when the mighty harmonies of the Middle Ages died away there was still singing. Native vernacular hymns had always existed in England along with the Latin. The Latin hymns which the first missionary band sang as they landed and marched up the shore of Britain were not long in finding echoes in the language of the island. The first song of her first poet was a hymn. The uppermost spring of the stream of England's literature is a clear-flowing lyric, a hymn of praise to God. This poem of the first known writer of English gives forecast of a sturdy quality of the literature to consider duty and decorum of life, and "to assert eternal Providence." The legend of the shy lad, Cædmon, is not likely to be too often called to mind. As he slept in the hay in the stable at Whitby, one stood by him and said, "Cædmon, sing me something." Cædmon said, "I do not know how to sing; that is why I left the feast and came out here." "Still, you might sing." "What shall I sing?" "Sing the beginnings of all created things." And Cadmon began to sing: Nu scylun hergan Heofonriches Uard is as "Now shall we praise the heaven-kingdom's Keeper." Professor Cook's translation follows: Now must we hymn the Master of heaven, The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father, A roof high upreared, o'er the children of men ; The Venerable Bede (673-735), who was probably a child when Cædmon was an old man, tells in his "Ecclesiastical History" of a good deal of hymn singing; he composed a book of hymns, and himself died singing. St. Patrick and St. Colomba and their followers had cheered their own hearts with psalms and hymns and had charmed many savage hearts with them. King Alfred so loved his hymn-book that he carried it in his bosom and sang as he went to war or traveled among his people or even when he went hunting. Native English hymns flourished along with the Latin hymns. There were many hymns of Latin and English lines alternating and of English verses with Latin refrains. The Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the ancient Latin hymns, the Psalms, and even the Catechism were turned into popular rimes and generally sung. Professor Carleton F. Brown's "Catalogue of Old and Middle English Religious Verse,' in two large volumes, gives an idea of the extent of this kind of poetry. A considerable part of the verse listed is lyrical. Some of the songs are quaint and lovely; some are plodding, earnest, well-intentioned, and dull. Ideas of the Deity are frequently startling in their naïveté. One pious rimer concludes that "God is a clever wight," since he did all his work of creation by word of mouth rather than by hard labor. Here are some examples of the native religious song: Suete iesu, myn huerte gleem Suete iesu loverde myn My lyfe, myn huerte, al is thin. Mary flowr of flowrs all, Hath born a chyld in an ox stall,— By an apull of a tre Bound men all made were we, That chyld was born to make us fre: Puer natus est nobis. 1 Harleian MS. No. 2253. Edited by the Early English Text Society. |