The bailey beareth the bell away

[wolfinthewood]

This rather beautiful medieval fragment has intrigued and puzzled me for many years. The refrain suggests that it's a carole, a song for dancing to. It has some of the qualities of a dramatic monologue; at any rate, it evokes a voice, a situation and the rudiments of a story. It could be the start of a ballad narrative, I suppose, though it proceeds more indirectly and allusively than most ballads.

This would seem to be the story that it tells, or adumbrates. The girl is from a noble family. She has led a sheltered life in the care of her mother and she has been perfectly happy like this. She is dreamily aware of the 'bailey', the bailiff or estate steward, whose status is undoubtedly much lower than hers, though he is almost certainly a gentleman: probably one with no inheritance, or only a very modest one.

'To bear the bell away' meant to be the winner; the expression was proverbial. It derives from the fact that bells of gold or silver were sometimes given as prizes in races and other sorts of competition. Perhaps there was a real contest which the bailey won; or perhaps the bell is purely figurative.

The maidens came to her mother's bower – why? To make her ready for her wedding would be my guess. And definitely not with the winning bailey, but with some wealthy, well-born man of her parents' choosing. The poem evokes her sense of helplessness in the way that it delicately suggests her dissociation from what is happening, as her thoughts focus on apparently random (but telling) sensual details: the gold and silver (jewellery? wedding presents? vessels at a feast?), the folded robes (that have been lying in a chest waiting for her wedding day?), the sun shining through the glass window.

What is going to happen next?


The maidens came
When I was in my mother's bower;
I had all that I would.
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
The silver is white, red is the gold;
The robes they lay in fold.
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
And through the glass window shines the sun.
How should I love, and I so young?
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

Anonymous (fifteenth century)


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Comments

Re: The bailey beareth the bell away

[(Anonymous)]

There is a modern setting by Bob Chilcott.

By the way, the lily is a symbol of purity.

Re: The bailey beareth the bell away

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

Bob Chilcott's note on his version reads thusly (I found this thread looking for web commentary on the meaning of the poem; how nice I found it in home-town LJ.) (I was about to post, I don't know much about medieval poetry but this seems a bit of a stretch, given the first lines; but commenters here have already said similar things.)

The meaning of this enchanting medieval poem remains elusive. The oldest known source is a sixteenth-century British Library manuscript (Harley 7578), and the text was first printed in a modern edition in 1907. It also appears in The New Oxford Book of English Verse, edited by Helen Gardner, with the title ‘The Bridal Morn’.

‘The Lily and the Rose’ can be read as a symbol of the Virgin Mary, and perhaps the most convincing interpretation of the poem is that of Mary mourning the death of her son. References to ‘bearing the bell away’ and to the ‘bailey’ could be seen to support this: in the Middle Ages, bells were rung over a body to confirm death, and the bailey is a synonym for ‘keep’, the place where a body might be buried. The bell can also mean the ‘beautiful one’, who is taken away by the bailiff—in other words, God. ‘The silver is white, red is the gold’ could be interpreted as the purity of the Virgin Mary being inferior to the red of the blood that was shed by her dying son.

Another modern interpretation is that the text is concerned with the fear and excitement of a young girl on her wedding day, hence the title in The New Oxford Book of English Verse. Certainly, references to mother, windows, and sunshine can be read as images of protection and freedom.

Re: The bailey beareth the bell away

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Hullo, fellow Robert Graves lover! I like your journal title.

Thanks for this. I remain dubious about the allegorical interpretations that relate it to the Virgin Mary, but it is interesting to read different people's ideas about this piece.

Re: The bailey beareth the bell away

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

I'm dubious too. Happy to have found your wonderings on't.

>The bailey beareth the bell away

It's a great riff, isn't it.