December 25th – The sterre schon

Merry Christmas one and all! For Christmas Day, we have chosen this medieval carol which finds the baby Jesus born in Bethlehem, and a golden star shining brightly overhead:

“þe sterr’ hym schon boþe nyзt & day to lede þre kyngis þer our lord lay”

“jhesus was born in bedlem jude

of mayde mary þus fynde we

out of þe est come kyngis þre

with ryche presentis as I зow say (1)

 As þey went forth in her’ pas

þe sterr’ schon al in her’ fas

As bryзt as gold withine þe glas

to bedlem to ledyn hem þe way” (2)

(Extract, taken from “Songs and carols from a manuscript”, Thomas Wright, pp. 40 – 41; transcription by Dr Kathleen Rose Palti, “‘Synge we now alle and sum’: Three Fifteenth-Century Collections of Communal Song A study of British Library, Sloane MS 2593; Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1; and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54” (Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D., University College London Volume II: Appendices)

Browsing through our own collections, we’ve come up with a sled-full of “ryche presents”, made up of a selection of the most golden-looking items we could find.

We’ve selected special gits, “bright as gold within a glass”, from across our historic collections. From our museums, we have the medieval mace of St Salvator’s College, with the figure of Christ the Redeemer in the centre. Pulling one of our Rare Books from the shelf, we discovered this stunning gold-edged text block, with impressions of Pictish carvings. At the top of the post are some local carol singers, captured by photographer George Cowie in the 1950s, and to sing us out, Holy Trinity Augmented Choir singing ‘Hodie Christus Natus Est’, performed at the Winter Concert on the 21^st December 1969, part of our digital archive. And, to conclude our advent calendar, here is a stunningly illuminated page from a book of Persian poetry within our manuscript collection, blue and gold like stars lighting up a winter’s sky.

We hope you have enjoyed this advent foray into carols and into the collections, and wish all readers a very happy festive season.