THE END.

There was one carol, however, which I was fain to set alongside of 'The Seven Virgins,' and omitted only through a scruple in tampering with two or three stanzas, necessary to the sense, but in all discoverable versions so barbarously uncouth as to be quite inadmissible. And yet 'The Holy Well' is one of the loveliest carols in the language, and I cannot give up hope of including it some day: for the peccant verses as they stand are quite evidently corrupt, and if their originals could be found I have no doubt that the result would be flawless beauty. Can any of my readers help to restore them?

'The Holy Well,' according to Mr. Bramley, is traditional in Derbyshire. 'Joshua Sylvester,' inA Garland of Christmas Carols, published in 1861, took his version from an eighteenth-century broadsheet printed at Gravesend, and in broadsheet form it seems to have been fairly common. I choose the version given by Mr. A. H. Bullen in hisCarols and Poems, published by Nimmo in 1886:—

"As it fell out one May morning,And upon one bright holiday,Sweet Jesus asked of His dear motherIf He might go to play."To play, to play, sweet Jesus shall go,And to play pray get you gone;And let me hear of no complaintAt night when you come home."Sweet Jesus went down to yonder town,As far as the Holy Well,And there did see as fine children,As any tongue can tell."He said, God bless you every one,And your bodies Christ save and see:Little children shall I play with you,And you shall play with Me?"

So far we have plain sailing; but now, with the children's answer, comes the trouble:—

"But they made answer to Him, No:They were lords' and ladies sons;And He, the meanest of them all,Was but a maiden's child, born in an ox's stall."Sweet Jesus turn'd Him around,And He neither laughed nor smiled,But the tears came trickling from His eyesLike water from the skies."

A glance, as I contend, shows these lines to be corrupt: they were not written, that is to say, in the above form, which violates metre and rhyme-arrangement, and is both uncouth and redundant. The carol now picks up its pace again and proceeds—

"Sweet Jesus turned Him round about,To His mother's dear home went He,And said, I have been in yonder townAs far as you can see."

Some versions give 'As after you can see.' Jesus repeats the story precisely as it has been told, with His request to the children and their rude answer. Whereupon Mary says:—

"Though You are but a maiden's child,Born in an ox's stall,Though art the Christ, the King of Heaven,And the Saviour of them all."Sweet Jesus, go down to yonder townAs far as the Holy Well,And take away those sinful soulsAnd dip them deep in Hell."Nay, nay, sweet Jesus said,Nay, nay, that may not be;There are too many sinful soulsCrying out for the help of Me."

On this exquisite close the carol might well end, as Mr. Bullen with his usual fine judgment makes it end. But the old copies give an additional stanza, and a very silly one:—

"O then spoke the angel Gabriel,Upon one good St. Stephen,Although you're but a maiden's child,You are the King of Heaven."

'One good St. Stephen' is obviously an ignorant misprint for 'one good set steven,'i.e.'appointed time,' and so it appears in Mr. Bramley's book, and in Mr. W. H. Husk'sSongs of the Nativity. But the stanza is foolish, and may be dismissed. To amend the text of the children's answer is less legitimate. Yet one feels sorely tempted; and I cannot help suggesting that the original ran something like this:—

"But they made answer to Him, No:They were lords and ladies all;And He was but a maiden's child,Born in an ox's stall."Sweet Jesus turned Him round about,And He neither laughed nor smiled,But the tears came trickling from His eyesTo be but a maiden's child.…"

I plead for this suggestion: (1) that it adds nothing to the text and changes but one word; (2) that it removes nothing but the weak and unrhyming 'Like water from the skies'; and (3) that it leads directly to Mary's answer:—

"Though you are but a maiden's child,Born in an ox's stall," &c.

But it were better to hunt out the original than to accept any emendation; and I hope you will agree that the original of this little poem, so childlike and delicately true, is worth hunting for. "The carol," says Mr. Husk, "has a widely-spread popularity. On a broadside copy printed at Gravesend,"—presumably the one from which 'Joshua Sylvester' took his version—"there is placed immediately under the title a woodcut purporting to be a representation of the site of the Holy Well, Palestine; but the admiration excited thereby for the excellent good taste of the printer is too soon alas! dispelled, for between the second and third stanzas we see another woodcut representing a feather-clad-and-crowned negro seated on a barrel, smoking—a veritable ornament of a tobacconists' paper."

One of the finest carols written of late years is Miss Louise Imogen Guiney'sTryste Noel. It is deliberately archaic, and (for reasons hinted at above) I take deliberate archaism to be about the worst fault a modern carol-writer can commit. Also it lacks the fine simplicity of Christina Rossetti'sIn the bleak midwinter. I ought to dislike it, too, for its sophisticated close. Yet its curious rhythm and curious words haunt me in spite of all prejudice:—

"The Ox he openeth wide the DooreAnd from the Snowe he calls her inne;And he hath seen her smile therefore,Our Ladye without sinne.Now soone from SleepeA Starre shall leap,And soone arrive both King and Hinde:Amen, Amen;But O the Place cou'd I but finde!"The Ox hath husht his Voyce and bentTrewe eye of Pity ore the Mow;And on his lovelie Neck, forspent,The Blessèd lays her Browe.Around her feetFull Warme and SweeteHis bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell;Amen, Amen;But sore am I with vaine Travel!"The Ox is Host in Juda's stall,And Host of more than onely one,For close she gathereth withalOur Lorde, her little Sonne.Glad Hinde and KingTheir Gyfte may bring,But wou'd to-night my Teares were there;Amen, Amen;Between her Bosom and His hayre!"

The days are short. I return from this Christmas ramble and find it high time to light the lamp and pull the curtains over my Cornish Window.

"The days are sad—it is the Holy tide:The Winter morn is short, the Night is long;So let the lifeless Hours be glorifiedWith deathless thoughts and echo'd in sweet song:And through the sunset of this purple cupThey will resume the roses of their prime,And the old Dead will hear us and wake up,Pass with dim smiles and make our hearts sublime!"

Friends dead and friends afar—I remember you at this season, here with the log on the hearth, the holly around the picture frames and the wine at my elbow. One glass in especial to you, my old friend in the far north!—

"Friend, old friend in the manse by the fireside sitting,Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log.You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog—"Silent here in the south sit I, and, leaning,One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand,Gazes deep in its heart—but ah! its meaningRather I read in the shadows and understand."Dear, kind, she is; and daily dearer, kinder,Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind herLit up a name in the leathern dusk of the shelves."Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:Yet there is one gives back to the winter grateGold of a sunset flooding a college building,Gold of an hour I waited—as now I wait—"For a light step on the stair, a girl's low laughter,Rustle of silks, shy knuckles tapping the oak,Dinner and mirth upsetting my rooms, and, after,Music, waltz upon waltz, till the June day broke."Where is her laughter now? Old tarnished covers—You that reflect her with fresh young face unchanged—Tell that we met, that we parted, not as lovers:Time, chance, brought us together, and these estranged."Loyal we were to the mood of the moment granted,Bruised not its bloom, but danced on the wave of its joy;Passion, wisdom, fell back like a wall enchantedRinging a floor for us both—Heaven for the boy!"Where is she now? Regretted not, though departed,Blessings attend and follow her all her days!—Look to your hound: he dreams of the hares he started,Whines, and awakes, and stretches his limbs to the blaze."Far old friend in the manse, by the grey ash peelingFlake by flake from the heat in the Yule log's core,Look past the woman you love—On wall and ceilingClimbs not a trellis of roses—and ghosts—o' yore?"Thoughts, thoughts! Whistle them back like hounds returning—Mark how her needles pause at a sound upstairs.Time for bed, and to leave the log's heart burning!Give ye good-night, but first thank God in your prayers!"

Back to Index Next