FRIAR WILLIAM HEREBERT’S CAROLS RECONSIDERED

Abstract

William Herebert’s Middle English poems, which appear in his Commonplace Book (c. 1314), have been undervalued by scholars. Yet, far from being a lonely purveyor of an ungainly series of translations, Herebert instead was a skillful adapter of Latin hymns into dance songs. Echoing his contemporaries and following the example of St Francis, Herebert revised the forms of two Latin poems, ‘Gloria, laus et honor’ and ‘Popule meus, quid feci tibi’, into two English lyrics: ‘Wele, heriȝyng and worshype’ and ‘My volk, what habbe y do þe?’ In doing so, he dealt imaginatively with poetic form, liturgical content, concepts of time and matching words to music – and he ended up producing early examples of English carols. Herebert’s achievements in dance song demonstrate that the seemingly outrageous idea of the dancing friar is not as alien to religious devotions as one might expect. We conclude with speculations concerning the performance of Herebert’s songs.