Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan Part 7

'He neither shall be born In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of Paradise, But in an ox's stall.

'He neither shall be clothed In purple nor in pall, But all in fair linen As wear babies all.

'He neither shall be rocked In silver nor in gold, But in a wooden cradle That rocks on the mould.

'He neither shall be christened In white wine nor red, But with fair spring water With which we were christened.'"

The old carols sung by country folk have often not much to do with the Nativity; they are sometimes rhymed lives of Christ or legends of the Holy Childhood. Of the latter cla.s.s the strangest is "The Bitter Withy,"

discovered in Herefordshire by Mr. Frank Sidgwick. It tells how the little Jesus asked three lads to play with Him at ball. But they refused:--

"'O we are lords' and ladies' sons, Born in bower or in hall; And you are but a poor maid's child, Born in an oxen's stall.' 79

'If I am but a poor maid's child, Born in an oxen's stall, I will let you know at the very latter end That I am above you all.'

So he built him a bridge with the beams of the sun, And over the sea went he, And after followed the three jolly jerdins, And drowned they were all three.

Then Mary mild called home her child, And laid him across her knee, And with a handful of green withy twigs She gave him slashes three.

'O the withy, O the withy, O bitter withy That causes me to smart!

O the withy shall be the very first tree That perishes at the heart.'"

From these popular ballads, mediaeval memories in the rustic mind, we must return to the devotional verse of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Two of the greatest poets of the Nativity, the Roman priests Southwell and Crashaw, are deeply affected by the wave of mysticism which pa.s.sed over Europe in their time. Familiar as is Southwell's "The Burning Babe," few will be sorry to find it here:--

"As I in h.o.a.ry winter's night Stood shivering in the snow, Surprised I was with sudden heat, Which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye To view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright Did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat, Such floods of tears did shed, As though His floods should quench His flames Which with His tears were fed. 80 'Alas!' quoth He, 'but newly born, In fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts Or feel my fire, but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, The fuel, wounding thorns; Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, The ashes, shame and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, And Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought Are men's defiled souls, For which, as now on fire I am, To work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath, To wash them in my blood.'

With this he vanished out of sight, And swiftly shrunk away: And straight I called unto mind That it was Christmas Day."{38}

As for Crashaw,

"That the great angel-blinding light should shrink His blaze to shine in a poor shepherd's eye, That the unmeasured G.o.d so low should sink As Pris'ner in a few poor rags to lie, That from His mother's breast He milk should drink Who feeds with nectar heaven's fair family, That a vile manger His low bed should prove Who in a throne of stars thunders above:

That He, whom the sun serves, should faintly peep Through clouds of infant flesh; that He the old Eternal Word should be a Child and weep, That He who made the fire should fear the cold: That heaven's high majesty His court should keep In a clay cottage, by each blast controll'd: That glory's self should serve our griefs and fears, And free Eternity submit to years--"{39}

such are the wondrous paradoxes celebrated in his glowing imagery. The contrast of the winter snow with the burning 81 heat of Incarnate Love, of the blinding light of Divinity with the night's darkness, indeed the whole paradox of the Incarnation--Infinity in extremest limitation--is nowhere realized with such intensity as by him. Yet, magnificent as are his best lines, his verse sometimes becomes too like the seventeenth-century Jesuit churches, with walls overladen with decoration, with great languorous pictures and air heavy with incense; and then we long for the dewy freshness of the early carols.

The representative Anglican poets of the seventeenth century, Herbert and Vaughan, scarcely rise to their greatest heights in their treatment of Christmas, but with them as with the Romanists it is the mystical note that is dominant. Herbert sings:--

"O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted, light, Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger; Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right, To man, of all beasts, be not Thou a stranger.

Furnish and deck my soul, that thou may'st have A better lodging than a rack or grave."{40}

And Vaughan:--

"I would I had in my best part Fit rooms for Thee! or that my heart Were so clean as Thy manger was!

But I am all filth, and obscene: Yet, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make clean.

Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more This leper haunt and soil thy door!

Cure him, ease him, O release him!

And let once more, by mystic birth, The Lord of life be born in earth."{41}

In Herrick--how different a country parson from Herbert!--we find a sort of pagan piety towards the Divine Infant which, 82 though purely English in its expression, makes us think of some French _Noeliste_ or some present-day Italian worshipper of the _Bambino_:--

"Instead of neat enclosures Of interwoven osiers, Instead of fragrant posies Of daffodils and roses, Thy cradle, kingly Stranger, As gospel tells, Was nothing else But here a homely manger.

But we with silks not crewels, With sundry precious jewels, And lily work will dress Thee; And, as we dispossess Thee Of clouts, we'll make a chamber, Sweet Babe, for Thee, Of ivory, And plaster'd round with amber."{42}

Poems such as Herrick's to the Babe of Bethlehem reveal in their writers a certain childlikeness, an _insouciance_ without irreverence, the spirit indeed of a child which turns to its G.o.d quite simply and naturally, which makes Him after its own child-image, and sees Him as a friend who can be pleased with trifles--almost, in fact, as a glorious playmate.

Such a nature has no intense feeling of sin, but can ask for forgiveness and then forget; religion for it is rather an outward ritual to be duly and gracefully performed than an inward transforming power. Herrick is a strange exception among the Anglican singers of Christmas.

Milton's great Nativity hymn, with its wondrous blending of pastoral simplicity and cla.s.sical conceits, is too familiar for quotation here; it may be suggested, however, that this work of the poet's youth is far more Anglican than Puritan in its spirit.

Sweet and solemn Spenserian echoes are these verses from Giles Fletcher's "Christ's Victory in Heaven":-- 83

"Who can forget--never to be forgot-- The time, that all the world in slumber lies, When, like the stars, the singing angels shot To earth, and heaven awaked all his eyes To see another sun at midnight rise On earth? Was never sight of pareil fame, For G.o.d before man like Himself did frame, But G.o.d Himself now like a mortal man became.

A Child He was, and had not learnt to speak, That with His word the world before did make; His mother's arms Him bore, He was so weak, That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake, See how small room my infant Lord doth take, Whom all the world is not enough to hold!

Who of His years, or of His age hath told?

Never such age so young, never a child so old."{43}

The old lullaby tradition is continued by Wither, though the infant in the cradle is an ordinary human child, who is rocked to sleep with the story of his Lord:--

"A little Infant once was He, And strength in weakness then was laid Upon His virgin-mother's knee, That power to thee might be conveyed.

Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

Within a manger lodged thy Lord, Where oxen lay and a.s.ses fed; Warm rooms we do to thee afford, An easy cradle or a bed.

Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep."{44}

When we come to the eighteenth century we find, where we might least expect it, among the moral verses of Dr. Watts, a charming cradle-song conceived in just the same way:-- 84

"Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed!

Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head.

Soft and easy is thy cradle; Coa.r.s.e and hard thy Saviour lay.

When His birthplace was a stable, And His softest bed was hay.

Lo He slumbers in His manger Where the horned oxen fed; --Peace, my darling, here's no danger; Here's no ox a-near thy bed."{45}

It is to the eighteenth century that the three most popular of English Christmas hymns belong. Nahum Tate's "While shepherds watched their flocks by night"--one of the very few hymns (apart from metrical psalms) in common use in the Anglican Church before the nineteenth century--is a bald and apparently artless paraphrase of St. Luke which, by some accident, has attained dignity, and is aided greatly by the simple and n.o.ble tune now attached to it. Charles Wesley's "Hark, the herald angels sing," or--as it should be--"Hark, how all the welkin rings," is much admired by some, but to the present writer seems a mere piece of theological rhetoric. Byrom's "Christians, awake, salute the happy morn,"

has the stiffness and formality or its period, but it is not without a certain quaintness and dignity. One could hardly expect fine Christmas poetry of an age whose religion was on the one hand staid, rational, unimaginative, and on the other "Evangelical" in the narrow sense, finding its centre in the Atonement rather than the Incarnation.

The revived mediaevalism, religious and aesthetic, of the nineteenth century, produced a number of Christmas carols. Some, like Swinburne's "Three damsels in the queen's chamber," with 85 its exquisite verbal music and delightful colour, and William Morris's less successful "Masters, in this hall," and "Outlanders, whence come ye last?" are the work of unbelievers and bear witness only to the aesthetic charm of the Christmas story; but there are others, mostly from Roman or Anglo-Catholic sources, of real religious inspiration.[34] The most spontaneous are Christina Rossetti's, whose haunting rhythms and delicate feeling are shown at their best in her songs of the Christ Child. More studied and self-conscious are the austere Christmas verses of Lionel Johnson and the graceful carols of Professor Selwyn Image. In one poem Mr. Image strikes a deeper and stronger note than elsewhere; its solemn music takes us back to an earlier century:--