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“Thomas Rhymer (A)” and the Tradition of Early Modern Feminist Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2010
Extract
One sometimes has the experience of knowing two apparently unrelated bits of information—sometimes for years—until suddenly it occurs to one that they are in fact related and indeed illuminate each other in quite startling ways. I have had the good fortune to teach some of the Scots ballads for the last decade or so and have taught “Thomas Rhymer (A)” and ‘Tam Lin (A)” as exemplars of Scots Other World balladry. It is a truism (and the first piece of information) that the worldview of these ballads differs quite markedly from the medieval Catholic worldview that was current when these ballads may have originated and the Scots Presbyterian one that was the dominant ideology in the time and place when they were collected. Few ballad scholars would dispute this claim.
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- President and Fellows of Harvard College 2010
References
1 William Motherwell, Minstralsy Ancient and Modern (Paisley, U.K.: Alex Gardner, 1873) xxvii. I append to the paragraph from Motherwell a footnote he wrote and published on the bottom margin of the printed text of his introduction. The footnote is marked with an asterisk but not numbered.
2 For comments and references to the problem of “belief” in the traditional Märchen see Holbek, Bengt, Interpretation of Fairy Tales (FF Communications 239; Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1987) 76Google Scholar; 195–202. See also Dégh, Linda and Vázyoni, Andrew, “Legend and Belief,” in Folkore Genres (ed. Ben-Amos, Dan; Publications of the American Folklore Society 26; Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1976) 93–123Google Scholar. See also Röhrlich, Lutz, Folktales and Reality (trans. Peter Tokofsky; Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1991Google Scholar).
3 The terms “theology” and “theological” are to some degree problematical; obviously ballads and folktales are not concerned with “the science of things divine” to use Richard Hooker's phrase, but such texts can have important theological ramifications and implications.
4 All quotations of “Thomas Rhymer A” and related versions of the ballad are from The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (ed. Child, Francis James; 5 vols.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882–98Google Scholar; repr., New York: Dover, 1965) 1: 323–29 (no. 37) by stanza numbers. For discussion of the ballad, see Buchan, David, The Ballad and the Folk (London: Routland and Keegan Paul, 1972) 117–20Google Scholar.
5 For a relatively recent edition of the romance see Thomas of Erceldoune (ed. Ingeborg Nixon; 2 vols.; Publications of the Department of English, University of Copenhagen 9; Copenhagen: I kommission hos Akademisk Forlag, 1980–1983); for discussion of the relationship of the ballad to the romance see Nixon, Thomas of Erceldoune, 2: 80–84.
6 The romance might be an elaboration and expansion of a lost late medieval ballad of “Thomas Rhymer” or the modern ballad might derive from the romance. The relationship of the texts is clear, but the nature of that relationship can only be a matter of speculation.
7 Child remarks that “[Thomas Rhymer] is an entirely popular ballad as to style, and must be of considerable age, though the earliest version (A) can be traced at furthest only into the first half of the [eighteenth] century” (Popular Ballads, 3: 320, col. 1).
8 See Child, Popular Ballad, 3: 321, col. 1, for commentary.
9 See Patch, Howard Rollin, The Other World : According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950CrossRefGoogle Scholar; repr., New York: Octagon Books, 1970) 66–70 et passim.
10 For the Old English Exodus see Exodus (ed. Lucas, Peter J.; London: Methuen, 1977)Google Scholar lines 463, 477, 478 ff. In the Christian Latin tradition, the image that the mare rubrum is red because it is “stained” or “dyed” with the blood of Jesus is a common figure. See for example, Augustinus, In Iohannis evangelium tractactus, Tractatus 28, “hinc educti per baptismum tamquam per mare rubrum, ideo rubrum quia Christi sanguine consecratus” (led out hence through baptism as if through the red sea, red indeed because hallowed by the blood of Christ), CCSL 36:278; Quodvultdeus, Sermo 7, “De cataclysmo,” “Mare rubrum agnoscite baptismum christi sanguine purpuratu” (ackowledge the Red Sea [as] baptism reddened with the blood of Christ), CCSL 60:407; Heinricus Autissidorenis, Homiliae per circulum anni 64, “pascha, id est transitus, dicebatur, quod eadem nocte rubrum mare transierunt submerso Pharaone et Aegyptiis, praesignantes baptismum roseo Christi sanguine rubricatum” (Pasha, that is passing over, is so called because on that same night they pass through the Red Sea, having drowned Pharaoh and the Egyptians, presignifying baptism, reddened with the rose colored blood of Christ), CCCM 116: 616. Imagery of this sort would presumably be disseminated in the “folk” community through the medium of vernacular homilies.
11 These generalizations apply of course most immediately to the tradition of popular Christianity. Learned and philosophically-oriented Christians elaborated such ideas as the felix culpa and speculated upon the way in which the incarnation implied a mediation of some of these oppositions.
12 In Thomas of Erceldoune, the lady shows Thomas a fourfold set of branching paths, one to heaven, one to hell, one to purgatory, and the fourth to the land of faerie.
13 For references and discussion of the theological implications of the medieval Celtic immrama literature, see Mac Cana, Proinsias, “The Sinless Otherworld of Immram Brain,” in The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature (ed. Wooding, Johnathan M.; Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000) 52–72Google Scholar. See also Carey, John, A Single Ray of the Sun (Andover and Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications Inc., 1999) 1–38Google Scholar et passim.
14 Buchan, The Ballad, 299 n. 29. On the legitimacy of Mrs. Brown's role as a source of ballads, see Holgar Olaf Nygard, “Mrs. Brown's Recollected Ballads” in Ballads and Ballad Research: Selected Papers of the International Conference on Nordic and Anglo-American Ballad Research, (ed. Patricia Conroy; Seattle: University of Washington, 1978) 68–87. For a more skeptical view of the relationship of Mrs. Brown and “folk” ballad tradition, see Fowler, David C., A Literary History of the Popular Ballad (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1968) 294–331Google Scholar.
15 However, in the B version of “Thomas Rhymer” as printed by Child, the fruit of the garden is specifically glossed as the forbidden fruit of Eden. “ ‘Hold your hand, Thomas,— she says, / ‘Hold your hand, that must not be/ It was a— that cursed fruit o thine/ Beggared man and woman in your countrie” (stanza 8) Child, Popular Ballads, 324.
16 Henderson, Lizanne and Cowan, Edward J., Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell Press, 2001)Google Scholar. For a “classic” text on Scots fairy belief, see the seventeenth century text, Kirk, Robert, The Secret Common-Wealth and A Short Treatise on Charms and Spels (ed. and annot. Sanderson, Stewart; The Folklore Society, The Misteltoe Series; Cambridge, U.K.: Brewer, Rowan, and Littlefield, 1976Google Scholar).
17 See for example Marrou, Henri-Irénée, Les Troubadours (Paris: Seuil, 1971) 165–81Google Scholar; Lefévre, Yves, “L—Amour c—est le paradis: Commentaire de la chanson IX de Guillaume IX d—Aquitaine,” Romania 102 (1981) 289–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 For the argument that the Roman de la Rose is ironic and hence “orthodox” in its argument, see John V. Fleming, The Roman de la Rose: A Study in Allegory and Iconography (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969) and Reason and the Lover (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). But even if we accept the suggestion that the Roman de la Rose is ironic, Jean de Meun is still mocking ideas that must have had some currency. One does not satirize unheard of ideas. And of course, most scholars would question Fleming's position. On the problem of irony and comedy in the poem, see Hill, Thomas D., “Narcissus, Pygmalion, and the Castration of Saturn: Two Mythographical Themes in the Roman de la Rose,” SP 71 (1974) 404–26Google Scholar. For a survey of the poem and a survey of its reception, see Kay, Sarah, The Romance of the Rose (London: Grant & Cutler, 1995)Google Scholar and Badel, Pierre-Yves, Le Roman de la Rose au XIVe siècle: Étude de la réception de l—oeuvre (Geneva: Droz, 1980)Google Scholar.
19 The bibliography on Dante is immense, and Beatrice is a crucial figure in the Commedia. For a brief discussion of the problem from a feminist viewpoint, see Ferrante, Joan M., Dante's Beatrice: Priest of an Androgynous God (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Occasional Paper 2; Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1992) 3–32Google Scholar; see also Pelikan, Jaroslav, Eternal Feminines: Three Theological Allegories in Dante Paradiso (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.