The Cursor Mundi gives its own turn to this relation, with the intent to blacken Judas a little more.[201] When Judas had betrayed Jesus, he went to his mother with his pence, boasting of the act. "Hast thou sold thy master?" said she. "Shame shall be thy lot, for they will put him to death; but he shall rise again." "Rise, mother?" said Judas, "sooner shall this cock rise up that was scalded yesternight."
Hardly had he said the word,
The cock leapt up and flew,
Feathered fairer than before,
And by God's grace he crew;
The traitor false began to fear,
His peril well he knew.
This cock it was the self-same cock
Which Peter made to rue,
When he had thrice denied his lord
And proved to him untrue.
A still different version existed among the Copts, who had their copies of the apocryphal writings, and among them the gospel of Nicodemus.
The Copts say, according to Thévenot, "that on the day of the Supper a roasted cock was served to our Lord, and that when Judas went out to sell Jesus to the Jews, the Saviour commanded the cock to get up and follow him; which the cock did, and brought back his report to our Lord that Judas had sold him, for which service this cock shall be admitted to paradise."[202]
The herald of the morn is described in other carols as making known the birth of the Saviour to the animal creation, or the more familiar members of it.
"There is a sheet of carols headed thus: 'Christus natus est, Christ is born,' with a wood-cut ten inches high by eight and one half inches wide, representing the stable at Bethlehem; Christ in the crib, watched by the Virgin and Joseph; shepherds kneeling; angels attending; a man playing on the bagpipes; a woman with a basket of fruit on her head; a sheep bleating and an ox lowing on the ground; a raven croaking and a crow cawing on the hay-rack; a cock crowing above them; and angels singing in the sky. The animals have labels from their mouths, bearing Latin inscriptions. Down the side of the wood-cut is the following account and explanation: 'A religious man, inventing the conceits of both birds and beasts, drawn in the picture of our Saviour's birth, doth thus express them. The cock croweth Christus natus est, Christ is born. The raven asked Quando, When? The crow replied, Hac nocte, This night. The ox cryeth out, Ubi, ubi? Where, where? The sheep bleated out, Bethlehem, Bethlehem. A voice from heaven sounded, Gloria in excelsis, Glory be on high!'" London, 1701. Hone's Every-Day Book, I, col. 1600 f.
So in Vieux Noëls français, in Les Noëls Bressans, etc., par Philibert Le Duc, p. 145.
Joie des Bestes
à la nouvelle de la naissance du Sauveur.