Vocaboly.com

[Troy Steadman]

Does anyone know what this poem means? For years I thought I had the
words wrong: "The silver white, red is the gold" doesn't convey any
obvious revelation. It is immortalised in Peter Warlock's
accompaniment:

The Maiden's Song

The maidens came when I was in my mother's bower
I had all that I would,

The bailey beareth the bell away
A lily, a rose, a rose I lay.

The silver white, red is the gold,
The robes they lay in fold.

The bailey beareth the bell away,
A lily, a rose, a rose I lay.

And through the glass window there shines the sun,
How should I love and I so young?

The bailey beareth the bell away,
A lily, a lily, a rose I lay.


Here's another slightly different version:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/arts/poems/poem.asp?DID=110

[CDB]

What an interesting song. I think it was a song first, don't you?
_The Oxford Book of English Verse_ calls it "Bridal Morning", and
gives the refrain in the second and third stanzas as "The bailey
beareth the lull away".

Random thoughts:

The maidens came in bridal procession to take me from my mother, and I
had my greatest wish(?) had as much as I could bear(?)

The COD says "beareth the bell away" meant "takes the prize". The
bailey could be the representative of the lord she is marrying, whose
prize she both has and is. He has taken the prize and is bearing it
to his master.

A lily is purity or virginity, a rose is love or passion. I lay on
the bridal bed(?) before my wedding(?) the incarnation of purity and
love, between virginity and passion.

The COD doesn't give a verb "to lay" meaning "to sing", but I wonder.

The colours of gold and silver were conventionally red and white,
which again stand for passion and purity. Silver and gold are also
the riches of her new husband. Love is more precious than purity?
Marriage is more profitable than virginity?

Dunno about any secondary meaning for the robes. Is "lay" present
tense (attendants are laying them into a chest folded) or past tense
(the robes lay folded, perhaps by the marriage bed)?

The glass window, in the 15th century, also meant she was marrying
into wealth. But the sun shines through the window without warming
it. She is marrying too young to feel passion, as she says.

A lull could be a calming drink. Was she tranquillized? Life was
hard in those days, even for the nobility. A young girl would be
married for very practical reasons, and her consent wouldn't much
enter into the matter.

The first two stanzas end "a lily, a rose, a rose...", the last " a
lily, a lily, a rose...". Was it easier for her to feel love
emotionally, in her mother's bower, than physically in her husband's
arms?

A lovely poem, and perhaps rather tragic, that I had somehow missed.
Thank you.

[Pat Durkin]

I had a rather bawdy interpretation, until I reread the title. From another
view (I think), the white and the red, the lily and the rose, are indicative
of something precious: a virgin and her deflowering. I think in some gypsy
tales the evidence of the virginal blood is referred to as roses, and in
some areas (way back in the 16th and 17th centuries and earlier) gypsy or
not, the bloodied sheet was flaunted from the window, whether by the ladies
in waiting or other female relatives.

The bailey's bell might be tantamount to his bearing witness to and
announcing the deflowering (in person? well, sometimes that was done, even
to the point of the father witnessing that his daughter was a virgin, just
in case the bridegroom wanted to make some claim for an annulment.)

So whether the maiden is regretting the loss of her youth for the silver and
gold, or daydreaming and wondering when she would "love", and regretting
being too young.

Still more physical than the interpretation of CDB.

[Pat Durkin]

"Pat Durkin" <durkinpa@nothome.com> wrote in message
news:3yREe.6489$_%4.3767@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...

[CDB]

In deadly pain, and sweetest sympathy. No, but; I meant a verbing of
the noun "lay". None of these possibilities rules out, or possibly
rule out, any of the others, naturally. I agree entirely with your
physical interpretation of the white and red. About the bailey
announcing the banns: there is a definition of "bear the bell" meaning
to go first (possibly in a procession) -- but how do you square that
with "away"?

For COD I should have written SOD. It's longer, of course.

[Don Phillipson]

"Pat Durkin" wrote

[John Dean]

CDB wrote:

[CDB]

"John Dean" <john-dean@frag.lineone.net> wrote in message
news:dc1a1c$26u$1@news5.svr.pol.co.uk...

[Doris W Davis]

For years this poem has haunted me because I have seen it as a poem about death (mortality) and spirituality. I see the speaker as a young woman, possibly in (or watching) a wedding procession, but it could also be a funeral procession -- led by a bell-ringing official. Indeed, it could be both, if she is not pleased with the marriage choice which has been made for her. She is meditating about death. Her dilemma is: faced with mortality, where should I place my life's energy -- my purity and passion? Love is clearly a worthy purpose to serve. Shall I serve God or mankind, or a man -- as in a marriage and family? To me, the glass window has always connoted the glass windows of a cathedral with the light streaming in. She places both the lily and the roses on the coffin. The dilemma is left as a question: given my youth, how shall I love?