Adam lay ybounden facts for kids
"Adam lay ybounden", originally titled Adam lay i-bowndyn, is a 15th-century macaronic English Christian text of unknown authorship. It relates the Biblical events of Genesis, Chapter 3 on the Fall of Man.
Originally a song text, no contemporary musical settings survive, although there are many notable modern choral settings of the text, such as that by Boris Ord.
Origins
The manuscript on which the poem is found (Sloane 2593, ff.10v-11) is held by the British Library, who date the work to c.1400 and speculate that the lyrics may have belonged to a wandering minstrel; other poems included on the same page in the manuscript include "I have a gentil cok", the famous lyric poem "I syng of a mayden" and two riddle songs – "A minstrel's begging song" and "I have a yong suster".
Analysis of their dialect by K.R. Palti (2008) places them within the song tradition of East Anglia and more specifically Norfolk; two further carol MS from the county contain songs from Sloane 2593. The texts of the songs were first printed by Victorian antiquarian Thomas Wright in 1836, who speculated that a number of the songs were intended for use in mystery plays.
Text
| Middle English original spelling | Middle English converted (Edith Rickert) |
|---|---|
|
Adam lay i-bowndyn,
Fowre thowsand wynter
|
Adam lay ybounden,
Four thousand winter
|
|
And al was for an appil,
As clerkes fyndyn wretyn
|
And all was for an apple,
As clerkës finden written
|
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Ne hadde the appil take ben,
Ne hadde never our lady
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Ne had the apple taken been,
Ne had never Our Lady,
|
|
Blyssid be the tyme
Therfore we mown syngyn
|
Blessed be the time
Therefore we may singen
|
Settings
The text was originally meant to be a song text, although no music survives. However, there are many notable modern choral settings of the text, with diverse interpretations by composers such as Peter Warlock, John Ireland, Boris Ord, Philip Ledger, Howard Skempton and Benjamin Britten (titled Deo Gracias in his Ceremony of Carols). A new setting by Giles Swayne was commissioned for and first performed in 2009 by the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge and their annual broadcast of the Advent carol service on BBC Radio 3. The Connecticut composer Robert Edward Smith wrote a setting of the text that was premiered in December 2018 in Hartford at Trinity College's annual Lessons and Carols. The piece featured the College's Chapel Singers, directed by Christopher Houlihan.
Boris Ord
<score> \relative { \key b \minor \time 3/4 b'4. b8\noBeam a b fis4 fis2 b4. d8\noBeam cis b fis2.
} </score>
Boris Ord's 1957 setting is probably the best-known version as a result of its traditional performance following the First Lesson at the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, where Ord was organist from 1929 to 1957.
