Hail Mary, Full of Grace

For Christmas

Compare: Hail Mary, Full Of Grace (from Rickert, with sheet music from J. A. Fuller Maitland, English Carols of the Fifteenth Century)
Hail Mary Full of Grace (Terry, Two Hundred Folk Carols, with sheet music)

Also see:
Hail Mary, Full of Grace (Words: Marnie Barrell, revised 2001; Used with the kind permission of Ms. Barrell)

Words and melody from the Selden M.S. (Selden MS. B.26 f. 23.), Bodleian Library, Oxford, Mode IX

Source: Sir Richard Runciman Terry, A Medieval Carol Book: The Melodies Chiefly from MMS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1932), Carol #11, pp. 22-23.

Refrain:
Hail Mary full of grace,
Mother in virginity.

1. The Holy Ghost is to thee sent
From the Father Omnipotent,
Now is God within thee went,¹
     The angel said Ave.

2. When the angel Ave began,
(Lo) flesh and blood together ran;
Mary bare both God and man,
     Through the virtue of the dignity.

3. So saith the gospel of Saint John:
(That) God and man is made but one,
In flesh and blood, body and bone,
     O God in personès three.

4. And (so) the prophet Jeremy
Telleth, in his (fair) prophecy,
That the Son of Mary (free)
     For us died upon a tree.

5. Much joy-è was to us y-graunt²
And in earth-è peace (and) y-plaunt,³
When y-born was that Infant
     In the land of Galilee.

6. Mary grant us of the bliss,
There as thy Sonnès dwelling is,
Of that we have done amiss;
     Pray for us for charity.

Footnotes from Rev. Terry:

1. Went = gone. Return.

2. Y-grant = granted. Return.

3. Y-plaunt = planted. Return.

Sheet Music from Sir Richard Runciman Terry, A Medieval Carol Book: The Melodies Chiefly from MMS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1932), Carol #32, pp. 57-59.

Editor's Note

In verse 4, "The Prophet Jeremy" is a reference to the prophet Jeremiah, "the weeping prophet." This verse may refer to chapter 11, verse 19:

"But I was like a gentle lamb
    led to the slaughter.
I did not know it was against me
    they devised schemes, saying,
'Let us destroy the tree with its fruit,
    let us cut him off from the land of the living,
    that his name be remembered no more.' "

I have been unable to locate a more clear prophesy relating to the crucifixion of Christ in The Book Of Jeremiah, but I am not a Biblical scholar. 

The Selden Manuscript was one of the sources for A Medieval Carol Book.

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