The Children of Coventry’s Carol

 Christmas night is a time for reflection.  Candles shimmer against windows, their flames dissolving faint blooms of frost.  From the trees, crystal garlands flash diminuitive rainbows around emptied and darkening rooms, while our weary but still excited children find their faces mirrored in eyes gentled by love.  On Christmas night, shadows of imagination bend and play like winter branches in a wind.   Set free to wander, the mind gathers its scattered thoughts into baskets of memory and brings them home, examining every exquisite detail in the light of acceptance, seeking significance and wisdom in their patterns.

This Christmas night, as I reflect on our celebration of the day, I find myself less concerned with commercialism than with sentimentality.  With Baby Jesus safely tucked away into his manger, we’re easily tempted to sigh at the loveliness of his mother, admire the steadfastness of his father, give a nod to the humble surroundings of the stable and go our way.   As a society, we have little taste for the exigencies of history or the necessities of time.   Everyone knows the parent who sees their 40-year old offspring as a child, and at Christmas, that same view of things can lead us to consign even the Christ Child to eternal infancy.

Life doesn’t allow for such freeze-frames, of course.  Even with our own children, gazing in delight at the innocent babe in the bassinet is only the beginning.  Soon enough comes colic and teething, followed closely by the Terrible Twos.  Eventually, the orthodontists, tutors or therapists come knocking at our door.  One day the driver’s license becomes unavoidable, as does that awkward young man with the skateboard and tattoo who wants to depart with a daughter in tow. Sometimes, life hands out worse: a call from jail on Saturday night, the suspension from school, terrible choices in friends.  Illness diverts the flow of life, or accidental injury.  Life is chancy at best, and unpredictable - we never know what’s around the bend, heading straight for us, perfectly capable of  doing in our children, and us along with them.

In countries less fortunate than the United States, the great irony is that life for children can be more predictable, yet less survivable.   Preventable diseases like measles and malaria, environmental scourges like shistosomiasis and simple malnutrition decimate the  ranks of children on a regular and predictable basis. Violence, insurrection, civil war and genocide kill and displace hundreds of thousands every year.  While our celebrations romanticize a single stable, children born today into stables and barns, refugee camps, colonias, barrios and slums around the world suffer and die.   They are defenseless, with few advocates, and their needs rarely are considered.  They are innocents in every sense of the word.  They have done nothing to deserve their fate. 

The Christian Feast of The Holy Innocents, celebrated only three days after Christmas on December 28, commemorates the death of other unnamed children.  As the New Testament tells it, Rome’s man in Judea already was wearing his crown a little uneasily when Jesus was born.  Given to tyranical and repressive behavior, King Herod lived in a state of hypervigilance, fearing Rome and his own subjects equally.  After a visit from the Magi, the traditional Three Kings who prophesied the birth of another, more powerful King capable of usurping his authority, Herod ordered all first-born baby boys of Bethlehem slaughtered.  Whether the massacre is historical fact and no matter how many children actually were killed,  the Feast Day stands as a reminder that power is not always kindly disposed toward innocence. In every age and across a multitude of circumstances, power seeks to maintain itself even at the expense of the defenseless.

One of the most poignant and mournful of  Christmas songs commemorates the killing of those infants by the famously paranoid King Herod.  Named for the city of Coventry, England, the 16th century  Coventry Carol  was  part of the Medieval Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The Pageant itself may have roots in 14th century morality plays that tradesmen provided as entertainment for the towns, but in any event it is one of the oldest unadapted carols we have.  It retains both its original tune (English melody, 1591) and lyrics (words attributed to Robert Croo, 1534)  Both were first recorded in 1591, and their preservation makes the Coventry Mystery Plays especially memorable.

Coventry Carol ~ The Cambridge Singers

Lully, Lullay, Thou little tiny Child
By, by, lully, lullay
Lullay, Thou little Tiny Child
By, by, lully, lullay.

O sisters, too, how may we do
For to preserve this day,
This poor Youngling for whom we do sing
By, by, lully, lullay.

Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

Then woe is me, poor child for thee,
And ever mourn and sigh
For thy parting, neither say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Lully, Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.

This is not a carol preferred by retailers.  Far too reflective, far too straightforward in its recognition of innocent death, it rarely is heard in congregational settings or found in collections of popular Christmas music.  Medievalists love it, as do madrigal groups and chamber singers, but it isn’t Joy to the World, Silent Night or Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.  Given a choice between a lovely familial scene bathed in golden light and a feast which points directly toward the slaughter of children, even this violence-ridden culture seems to hesitate.  Despite their richness and depth, and perhaps because of their unapologetic realism, some Christmas customs, traditions and songs which were favored for centuries are rarely experienced today.  They are too archaic in language, too bleak in tone, too reflective of realities we would prefer to ignore.

Ignoring reality has its own perils, of course.  As it was for the child called Christ and his unfortunate companions in time, so it is for our own children and for the unknown innocents hidden throughout the world.  Birth is only the beginning.  Life is movement, time passes and history continues to unfold.  If Herod is gone, his successors live on, determined to preserve their positions and power at the expense of innocence.

We are free to turn away from history, just as we are free to imagine ourselves innocent of complicity in events unfolding in time.  But we cannot profess to love the Babe in the manger while continuing to ignore the needs of children living among us.  If we can bring ourselves to see in Bethlehem’s stall every child of Christmas, if we dare to preserve against slaughter every poor Youngling for whom angels sing, we may yet free them from the world’s hand, transforming their song of darkness into a dance of light.

Dancing Coventry Carol ~ Farah Canale, Principal, Anchorage Ballet

 

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