“A ship comes sailing onwards
With a precious freight on board;
It bears the only Son of God,
It bears the Eternal Word.”
The doctrine of the mystics, “Die in order to live,” fills the last verses:—
“Whoe'er would hope in gladness
To kiss this Holy Child,
Must suffer many a pain and woe,
Patient like Him and mild;
Must die with Him to evil
And rise to righteousness,
That so with Christ he too may share
Eternal life and bliss.”[{19}]
To the fourteenth century may perhaps belong an allegorical carol still sung in both Catholic and Protestant Germany:—
“Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
Aus einer Wurzel zart,[44]
Als uns die Alten sungen,
Von Jesse kam die Art,
Und hat ein Blümlein bracht,
Mitten im kalten Winter,
Wohl zu der halben Nacht.
Das Röslein, das ich meine,
Davon Jesajas sagt,
Hat uns gebracht alleine
Marie, die reine Magd.
Aus Gottes ew'gem Rat
Hat sie ein Kind geboren
Wohl zu der halben Nacht.”[18][{20}]
In a fourteenth-century Life of the mystic Heinrich Suso it is told how one day angels came to him to comfort him in his sufferings, how they took him by the hand and led him to dance, while one began a glad song of the child Jesus, “In dulci jubilo.” To the fourteenth century, then, dates back that most delightful of German carols, with its interwoven lines of Latin. I may quote the fine Scots translation in the “Godlie and Spirituall Sangis” of 1567:—
“In dulci Jubilo, Now lat us sing with myrth and jo
Our hartis consolatioun lyis in praesepio,
And schynis as the Sone, Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O, Alpha es et O.
O Jesu parvule! I thrist sore efter thé,[45]
Confort my hart and mynde, O puer optime,
God of all grace sa kynde, et princeps gloriae
Trahe me post te, Trahe me post te.
Ubi sunt gaudia, in ony place bot thair,
Quhair that the Angellis sing Nova cantica,
Bot and the bellis ring in regis curia,
God gif I war thair, God gif I war thair.”[{21}]
The music of “In dulci jubilo”[19] has, with all its religious feeling, something of the nature of a dance, and unites in a strange fashion solemnity, playfulness, and ecstatic delight. No other air, perhaps, shows so perfectly the reverent gaiety of the carol spirit.
The fifteenth century produced a realistic type of German carol. Here is the beginning of one such:—