With which we were christened.’
THE CARNAL AND THE CRANE
The Text is taken from Sandys’ Christmas Carols, where it is printed from a broadside. The only alterations, in which I have followed Professor Child, are the obvious correction of ‘east’ for ‘west’ (8.1), and the insertion of one word in 16.2, where Child says ‘perhaps a preposition has been dropped.’
The Story is compounded of popular legends connected with the life and miracles of Christ. For the miracle of the cock, see [Saint Stephen and King Herod]. The adoration of the beasts is derived from the Historia de Nativitate Mariæ, and is repeated in many legends of the infancy of Christ, but is not sufficiently remarkable in itself to be popular in carols. The origin of the miracle of the harvest is unknown, though in a Breton ballad it forms one of the class known as the miracles of the Virgin (cp. Brown Robyn’s Confession). Swedish, Provençal, Catalan, Wendish, and Belgian folk-tales record similar legends.
It is much to be regretted that this ballad, which from internal evidence (e.g. the use of the word ‘renne,’ 1.2) is to be attributed to an early age, should have become so incoherent and corrupted by oral tradition. No manuscript or printed copy is known earlier than about 1750, when it occurs in broadside form. The very word ‘Carnal’ has lapsed from the dictionaries, though somewhere it may survive in speech. Stanza 17 is obviously out of place; one may suspect gaps on either side, for surely more beasts than the ‘lovely lion’ were enumerated, and a new section begins at stanza 18.
THE CARNAL AND THE CRANE
1.
1.2 ‘reign’ = renne, the old form of run.