Carol Rumens's poem of the week

Poem of the week: The Bridal Morn

This anonymous lyric combines its mysteries with a very concrete set of images and a beguiling music
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Angel sculpture
The Bridal Morn ... an angel sculpture is adorned with a wedding veil and bouquet. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

"The Bridal Morn" is an anonymous lyric dating from the 15th-16th century, and, if that isn't vague enough, there are several variant printings in existence. The one I've chosen comes from Helen Gardner's New Oxford Book of English Verse (1972), the text originally from the British Museum MS Harley 7578. It's tempting to imagine that the song, in which the poem's origins surely lie, would have been for a solo voice, the bride's, perhaps, with a chorus of maiden helpers singing the refrain. The language seems to draw on the playful allusiveness and secret-signing of young girls' chatter and in-talk.

Usually, "The Bridal Morn" is arranged in short stanzas, but I like the solidity of the non-stanzaic arrangement in Gardner's anthology, and feel it connects the images and rhythms into a more intriguingly complex whole. The tune of the refrain is strong enough to emerge without the isolation of its own stanza.

This refrain dominates the poem, recurring three times in a work of only 13 lines altogether. It's a strange, haunting couplet, with its own liquescent verbal music: "The bailey beareth the bell away; /The lily, the rose, the rose I lay."

In another version, however, "bell" becomes "lull" in the second and third repetitions. Is this a mis-spelling of "bell" – with hasty copying to blame? "The bailey beareth the lull away" is not so odd as to be impossible. It might signify that a period of peace and quiet (the lull) is coming to an end. "Lull" certainly contrasts nicely with the "bell" of the first refrain, if we think of a bell not only as a "prize", perhaps with connotations of beauty (the French feminine, belle), but as a source of sound. The bailey might have destroyed the maiden's peace – and she might have every intention of destroying his! However, "bell" is rather more likely, I think.

I'm assuming that "bailey" is synonymous with "bailiff". He was not, of course, the contemporary kind of bailiff who breaks down your door and carries off your TV set, but he would have been a high official, perhaps with judicial powers. The designation could be ironical girl-talk, a reference to the medieval husband's somewhat custodial relationship with his wife, whatever his profession. "Bailey" also denotes the outer wall of a castle. The word in its architectural sense would harden the metaphor of an imprisoned, misappropriated bell. Both "bailey" and "bell" can be read as objects as well as people. In this reading, the bridal morn would become heavily overcast. The scenario is lighter, I think. The sun is shining (l.10), despite some shadows. Wealth, at least, is prefigured in the fact that the window is glass and there are robes lying snugly "in fold".

There's a swift pace in the poem's rhythm, capturing all the comings and goings: the maids arriving and the bailey and his bride setting forth. It evokes a transition which is also transformation. The changes for the speaker are profound.

Her last refrain-line, "The lily, the rose, the rose I lay", seems to be saying "I lay down as a lily (a maiden) and sex turned me into a rose". The rose suggests the blood of de-flowering, and also a flowering of passion. Its repetition seems a glad affirmation, as is the identification of the rose with gold, the most precious metal ("The silver is white, red is the gold"). The bride may also, of course, be eyeing her dowry and its happy marriage to the bailiff's wealth.

You could simultaneously interpret the line quite literally. The bridesmaids are scattering flowers as they sing, or the bride is weaving them into a wedding-bouquet, the pattern (one lily to two roses) symbolic of her forthcoming status.

I love the poem's rich colour-contrasts and its concrete but potent images: mother's bower, bell, robes, window, lily, rose. They have so much physical presence, and so much metaphorical implication. The shape of the bell, for example, suggests pregnancy. We don't need to pin the poem down to a birth-announcement. It's enough to imagine the shape and all its ripening promise.

This is one of the most alluring things about the poem, at least for us as we read it across the centuries: that the images have room, like well-placed bells, to mingle their separate sounds, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in dissonance. Despite its tripping iambic step, evoking a country-dance in 3-4 time, the poem is unsettled. Janus-like, it can face two ways. The "bailey" could be tenderly lifting his bride over the threshold, but he could be coercive. The girl could be delighted with herself and him and the ceremony ("I had all that I would") or incredulous and fearful. Double-meanings and puns abound. "Lay," for example, is the most slippery of verbs – and it's a noun, too, of course, meaning a ballad or song.

"How should I love, and I so young?" is a resonant question, and the one seemingly personal outburst in the poem. It could be translated as "I don't and can't love him. Help!" It might, more probably, express a mixed thrill of anxiety and delight. It might be a cry that conceals pure triumph, uttered to make those other maids jealous, and really meaning "This is wonderful, and aren't I lucky?" It could even be an ironical catch-phrase, guaranteed to set all the maidens giggling.

Interpretation is fun, but, without evidence, that's all it can be. We could dig deeper, and speculate that the poem isn't secular at all, but a coded report from the religious battle-front. Even such a weighty allegorical subtext wouldn't take a drop of colour from the rose, or spoil the swing of the rhythm, and the sense of new times inexorably unfolding. I like the idea of the poem's still secluding itself in its bower or bridal veil, shining mistily over the centuries, keeping some of its secrets from our prying, logical eyes. "The Bridal Morn" is poetry wedded to music. It may mean more than we think. It may mean less – and still not disappoint.

The Bridal Morn

The maidens came
 When I was in my mother's bower;
I had all that I would.
 The bailey beareth the bell away;
 The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
The silver is white, red is the gold:
The robes they lay in fold.
 The bailey beareth the bell away;
 The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.
And through the glass window shines the sun.
How should I love, and I so young?
 The bailey beareth the bell away;
 The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

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