The Appeal of Indeterminacy in the Corpus Christi Carol

 

I append the text of the carol in the form printed in Greene’s anthology A Selection of English Carols.  This is the same version recorded in Richard Hill’s early sixteenth century commonplace book.

  

     Whereas non-aesthetic discourse most often aims at clarity and monosemy, poetry commonly cultivates multiple meanings and, in some cases, glories in obscurity.  Cultivated at times by the Troubadours of trobar clus and the French Symbolists, indeterminate meaning plays a role in all aesthetic texts. In the “Corpus Christi Carol” semantic uncertainty is foregrounded.  R. L. Greene, the editor of the Oxford book of carols noted of it "This carol has been subject to more discussion than any other in the whole canon." [1]  It is hardly necessary to review the scholarly literature to come to this conclusion.  Virtually all who comment on the poem describe it as enigmatic and mysterious, and critics generally make the observation in an appreciative tone.  

     Shorn of allusive associations, the Corpus Christi Carol sketches a melancholy scene portraying types of human suffering.  The chorus, to be sung with each verse, opens with the standard baby-soothing line “lully, lullay” (the source of the word “lullaby”), though no infant is to appear.  Instead the soothing, satisfied sound of the first line is succeeded by a harsh plaint over lost love: “The faucon hath borne my make away.”  The sense of loss and longing is then suddenly transferred to a mysterious tableau: in a hall there is a bed upon which a knight lies bleeding while a woman kneeling at his bedside weeps for him.  It is unclear what relation this pair might have to the persona whose lover had been carried away.  On the poems’ purely emotional register the potential joy of a child evoked in the first line is interrupted, overturned even, by suffering such as love-longing and the pains of mortality both for the dying and for those whom survive.  As such the poem achieves a grand sort of pathos with its elegantly understated yet powerfully suggestive image.  Anyone might be either the suffering knight or the grieving maiden and indeed everyone is both.

     The song, however, concludes with a final couplet which, though it adds what looks like definitive information, in fact only complicates the interpretive challenges of the poem as a whole.  

 

    And by that beddes side ther standeth a stoon: 
    Corpus Christi writen theron.

 One might suspect that the explicit Christianity of this conclusion might privilege a reading of the poem as straightforward orthodox piety.  Christ is then figured in the bleeding knight, [2] while the “may” in mourning is Mary.  The nonsense syllables of the chorus “lully, lullay” associate the implied dramatic moment with Christmas (rather than the summertime Corpus Christi) at the outset.  The virgin is rocking the baby Jesus while envisioning the passion with which his life must end.  To some the image signifies not the body of Christ per se but rather the presence of Christ in the eucharistic bread “bleeding” from being dipped in wine.  Of course, the host (derived from hostia = sacrificial victim) is symbolically identical to Christ.

     As though in a palimpsest, behind the Christian images of the song are discernable the patterns of the Fisher King and the Grail Legend, themselves ultimately derived from Celtic mythology.  Meaning has drifted and eroded during the centuries-long transmission of these stories through the adoption of Christianity and the leading actors’ demotion from deities to heroes to supporting actors in a Christian story.  This semantic evolution has caused the Grail theme to acquire a reputation – well-justified in many cases including the Corpus Christi Carol -- for haunting mystery.  The elliptical narrative and the grandly portentous atmosphere of spirituality suggest the aesthetic occult, like Masonic paraphernalia. 

     In R. L. Greene’s ingenious historical interpretation [2] the associations with the Eucharist are the basis for the argument that the carol is a partisan song in which Catherine of Aragon laments the accession of Anne Boleyn and the introduction of the Anglican Church.  Whether this reflects an early sixteenth century understanding is irrelevant to the poem’s reception by most modern readers. 

     The ambiguities are part of the design of the text as it exists today, some the result of the evolution from earlier forms, some as elements of theme, some for style.  The identity of the speaker who has lost a mate is unclear.  Why is the orchard brown?  Why is the knight bleeding?  What is the relation of the knight and the grieving lady?  Many readers have suspected that the final line mentioning Corpus Christi is a late addition aimed at establishing the poem’s orthodoxy.  To what extent does it suggest a Christian antidote to suffering?  And what else might bring an end to the sadness?  How could the speaker regain a lover?  Why does the tense change from past to present continuous with the line “And in that bed ther lith a knight”?

     The effect of this catalogue of questions, which might be might be lengthened almost indefinitely, pointing in a variety of hermeneutic directions, is most prominently to convey a tone of haunting mystery.  As the practice of cults has shown from Pythagoreans and Orphic initiates to Theosophists and present-day adherents of QAnon, the very uncertainty of interpretation enhances a sense of deep if unfathomable significance.   Rather like a grand passage of Beethoven it seems to convey meaning beyond words, but nonetheless of vital importance. 

     The indeterminate meaning has at least one clear implication: there is much we do not know.  If nothing else, the mysterious scene the poem sketches for its hearers represents the ineffable spectacle of that most familiar and unknown of things, everyday reality.  The echoes of Celtic and Christian myth agree in their fundamental paradigm: each presents a convincing picture of a world of suffering familiar to all, embodied in the Fisher King’s wounded father, the bleeding knight and in Christ on the cross.  Each offer as well a solution, figured in Bran’s magic cauldron, the gallantry of Percival and Galahad, the divine person of Jesus, and the eucharistic host in which the god lurks.

     Yet why is the knight suffering?  We know no answer, just as we are baffled by the origin and the meaning of the Holocaust or of our myriad pettier complaints.  What is the outcome for the knight and maid?  For the reader?  Who can say?  A more determinate theme would be a false one.  It is the reader’s own nescience about everyday life reflected on the page and colored with the resonance of the deepest human emotions, given comely form and the pleasing accompaniment of sweet music.  Yet in the end the grace of the poem, the beauty of its melody, seems redemptive, the composed response soothing all souls.  Everyone is the infant being lulled to rest, “lully, lullay.”  If we have nothing else, we have yet beauty.  Here is the source of the song’s charm. 

 

1.     1.  Richard Greene, editor, A Selection of English Carols, Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1962, 230.  Significant variations including additions occur in later versions, including the addition of a thorn at the foot of the bed and a hound lapping the C.  Benjamin Britten’s setting is often featured in holiday concerts.

2.      2.  See R. L. Greene, “The Meaning of the Corpus Christi Carol,” Medium Aevum 29 (1960): 10–21.

3.      3.  Christ is often depicted as a knight in medieval art and literature, in, for instance, the Ancrene Riwle, William Herebert, and Piers Ploughman.  Ephesians 6:13-16 describes the arming of God’s soldier.

 

 

 Lully, lullay, lully, lullay,
The faucon hath borne my make away.
 
He bare him up, he bare him down,
He bare him into an orchard brown.
 
In that orchard ther was an hall
That was hanged with purple and pall.
 
And in that hall there was a bed:
It was hanged with gold so red.
 
And in that bed ther lith a knight,
His woundes bleeding by day and night.
 
By that beddes side ther kneeleth a may,
And she weepeth both night and day.
 
And by that beddes side ther standeth a stoon:
Corpus Christi writen theron.