“Heale, Kinge of heaven, so hie,
Borne in a crebe,
Mankinde unto Thee
Thou haste made fullye.
Heale, kinge! borne in a mayden’s bower,
Profittes did tell thou shouldest be our succore,
Thus clarkes doth saye.
Lor, I bringe thee a bell;
I praie Thee save me from hell,
So that I may with Thee dwell,
And serve thee for aye.”
The second Shepherd presents a flagon with a spoon, and the third a cap, but finishes his speech with some degree of pathos.
“This gueifte, Sonne, I bringe Thee is but small,
And though I come the hyndmoste of all,
When Thou shall them to Thy blesse call,
Good Lorde, yet thinke on me.”
Well may we say, seeing how small our gifts are, “Good Lord, yet think on me.”
In the second century, Telesphorus refers to the Christians celebrating public worship, on the night of the Nativity, and then solemnly singing the angels’ hymn, because in the same night, Christ was declared to the Shepherds by an angel; and in the early times of Christianity the bishops were accustomed to sing hymns on Christmas Day among their clergy. Aurelius Prudentius, towards the end of the fourth century, wrote a divine hymn or carol in Latin, which is still extant; but, besides that it consists of twenty-nine stanzas, it is not of sufficient general interest to be printed here.
The Bretons were very similar in manners and language to the inhabitants of Britain, many of them having had the same origin, and being, in fact, a colony from our island. The Cornouaille of Bretagne, however, must not be confounded with our province of that name by the well-wishers of the latter, because the romance writers do not speak in such terms of some of their knights as their friends might have desired.
There is a Breton song, said to be as old as the fifth century, arranged as a dialogue between a Druid and a scholar, which is similar in idea and construction to the carol beginning, “In those twelve days,” and to that called ‘Man’s Duty,’ though the twelve subjects given are quite different from those in the carols, and refer to some druidical superstitions. It is called ‘Ar Rannou,’ or ‘Les Series,’ and is in the “dialecte de Cornouaille.” The early missionaries engrafted on this a poem or song of the same construction, where the twelve subjects were connected with the Christian religion, and agree much with those in the carols, which there is fair reason to suppose may have been taken from this early poem. These subjects are,—one God; two Testaments; three Patriarchs; four Evangelists; five books of Moses; six water-vessels at Cana of Galilee; seven Sacraments; eight Beatitudes; nine degrees of Angels; ten Commandments; eleven stars that appeared to Joseph; twelve Apostles. The hymn itself is in Latin, and at the end of each verse all the previous subjects are repeated in the style of the ‘House that Jack built,’ an example to which I refer simply from its being so well known, the style itself being of great antiquity, and taken originally from an old Hebrew hymn, of which some particulars, with a translation, may be found in Halliwell’s ‘Nursery Rhymes of England;’ but the butcher, the ox, the dog, and the cat, with the other characters mentioned there, have all a mystical meaning. The last verse of the old Latin hymn may be given as a specimen:—
“....Die mihi quid duodecim?
....Duodecim Apostoli;
Undeim stellæ
A Josepho visæ:
Decem mandate Dei,
Novem angelorum chori,
Octo beatitudines;
Septem sacramenta;
Sex hydriæ positæ
In Cana Galileæ;
Quinque libri Moysis,
Quatuor Evangelistæ,
Tres Patriarchæ,
Duo testamenta;
Unus est Deus,
Qui regnat in Cœlis.”
In the fourth century, St. Ambrose introduced the chant known by his name, at Milan, of which he was the bishop, and some reformation took place in church music; and when the Gregorian chant was composed, about two centuries later, a still greater advance was made. The Anglo-Saxons, after their conversion, preserved their fondness for religious music, it being a common practice in their guilds that each member should sing two psalms daily, one for the dead, and the other for the living members. Particular hymns were appropriated to particular feasts; the Nativity, therefore, especially had its own. When the Anglo-Normans obtained the government, they equally encouraged music, and introduced greater pomp into their ceremonies.