Chapter 4 - Carole Texts in Context: The Manuscripts

Summary

CAROLLING, AS WE are beginning to see, was primarily an orally transmitted culture and written records of carole texts represent a fragment of the repertoire in circulation during the late Middle Ages. The question to be asked, therefore, is not, “Why were so few caroles written down?” but “Why were particular caroles written down at all?” Let us now turn to some manuscripts that contain secular caroles compiled alongside religious caroles or other texts. Many of these caroles have been published in modern anthologies; so let us discover what can be learnt from the mise-en-page of these recorded caroles about their possible use, within the context of the manuscripts. Much can be gained from the small scraps of oblique evidence revealed by the inclusion of these texts and their compilation alongside content of differing registers, information not available when the same texts are anthologized by topic or chronologically. The four manuscripts studied here, examples of both individual and collaborative scribal practice, nuance this evidence in different ways. Mise-en-page as well as content of the texts reveal that even caroles written within the same manuscript or anthology may have been the result of a variety of compilational impulses: for example, non-religious material tends to be written, or at least begun, on the verso sides. We will also explore the correlation between conventional poetic scribal layouts and the culture in which the manuscripts were used or circulated.

No caroles are designated as such in the extant manuscript record. Texts of songs in carole form (a burden or refrain followed by stanzas) can be found within collections of songs or poems in other forms and also among prose material. In the manuscripts studied here, the songs are not separated by genre, so it is only in the self-referential context found in the “caroll” “Hay, ay, hay, ay, make we mery as we may,” and also in the religious lyrics of early fifteenth-century writer, John Audelay, that we can be sure of the appellation. Audelay’s twenty-five religious caroles are contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 302, the final one containing the words: “I pray youe, seris, pur charyté, Redis this caral reverently.”