The Rev. F. Proctor, in his History of the Book of Common Prayer, states that this brief sequence—of which he does not appear to know the origin—“was formed from an antiphon which was sung at Compline during a part of Lent.” There is also a singular misapprehension by which the “samphire gatherers” hanging over the cliffs of England at their “dreadful trade” were credited with the suggestion. It was formerly supposed that Notker watched them during their dangerous toil, and so, by another equally strange inadvertence, the fact was taken as a proof that he must have been himself a native or resident of Britain. This, like the other legend of the twenty-year debate upon sequences, proves on inquiry to have no foundation in fact. The story itself is a sufficient explanation without any coloring whatever. It reveals to us the poetic spirit of the devout man who beheld his fellow-creatures poised between life and death, and wrote this short and exquisite meditation thereon.
“The holy Notker,” says Canisius, “made the ‘prose’ of the following lament when the bridge [over the chasm] at Martinstobel was being constructed in a precipitous and most dangerous place. But who added the ‘verses’ I do not know. I have quoted it from a most ancient codex, where it is set to modern notes.” He then proceeds to give it in the ordinary form. It is, as he says, a prose, and must be distinguished from verses of regular metre:
“Media vita in morte sumus, quem quaerimus adjutorem, nisi te, Domine, qui pro peccatis nostris juste irasceris.”
Thus far Notker. Then occur the “verses” in three stanzas:
“Ah homo, perpende fragilis,
Mortalis, et instabilis,
Quod vitare non poteris
Mortem, quocunque ieris.
Aufert te, saepissime,
Dum vivis libentissime.