Let Your Alleluias Rise

For our celebration of Easter we come to a lesser-known hymn, though it was probably sung in various places today.  We have spoken before about the Gospel lesson for today which tells the story of Mary Magdalene and the other female followers of Jesus who were the first witnesses to the Resurrection.  This Latin text is from the twelfth century, perhaps by the French monk Peter the Venerable:

Gaude, plaude, Magdalena,

Tumba Christus exiit.

Tristis est peracta scena,

Victor mortis rediit.

Quem deflabas morientum

Nunc arride resurgentem

Alleluia resonet.

This was translated by Elizabeth Rundle Charles in her collection The Voice of Christian Life in Song (1864).  However, it does not seem to have come into use as a hymn until well into the twentieth century.  Today's version is a slightly different adaptation of Charles's translation (originally in five stanzas) than the one that appears in modern hymnals.

Lift your voice rejoicing, Mary,
Christ has risen from the tomb;
Sad the scene he passed though lately,
Now as victor he is come.
Whom your tears in death were mourning,
Welcome with your smiles returning.
Let your alleluias rise!

Clothe yourself in gladness, Mary,

Let your face shine calm and clear.

All your pain and grief have vanished,

And the glorious Light is here!
Christ has burst the tomb's cold prison,

Over death triumphant risen.
Let your alleluias rise!

Life is yours for ever, Mary,
For your light is come once more
And the strength of death is broken;
Now your songs of joy outpour.
Ended now the night of sorrow,
Love has brought the blessed morrow.
Let your alleluias rise. 

Latin,12th cent.;

tr. Elizabeth Rundle Charles, 1864; alt.

Tune: FIDES (8.7.8.7.8.8.7.)

Clement C. Scholefield, 1874

The few hymnals that now include this hymn have set it to modern (copyrighted) tunes of varying quality and/or singability, which may have kept it from spreading farther.  Unfortunately, the meter of the text (preserved from the original Latin) does not have a commonly-used tune to match.  This older tune by Clement Cotterill Scholefield (who wrote - or did he? - the well-loved ST. CLEMENT) is perhaps not exactly right either, but it will give you a sense of the text as a hymn. 

Four Years Ago: Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Three Years Ago: The strife is o'er, the battle done

One Year Ago: Jesus Christ is ris'n today

 

Elizabeth Rundle Charles

English author Elizabeth Rundle Charles was born today in 1828, in the Devonshire village of Tavistock.  Though she wrote several popular books and collections of poetry in her day, her hymns are probably her longest surviving work, and a graph at hymnary.org indicates that her hymns are appearing in a growing number of hymnals today.

In addition to original texts, she also translated older texts from traditions outside her own Anglican background.  Today's seasonal hymn dates from the fifteenth century, Heu! quid jaces stabulo, written by Abbé Jean Mauburn as part of a longer work, Rosetum Ex­er­ci­ti­or­um Spir­it­u­al­i­um et Sa­cra­rum Me­di­ta­ti­on­um (1494).  The hymn is a dialogue between the worshipper and Jesus, discussing the paradox of the future Ruler coming to earth as a helpless child.

It's still the ninth day of Christmas...

Dost thou in a manger lie,
Who hast all created,
Stretching infant hands on high,
Savior, long awaited?
If a monarch, where thy state?
Where thy court on thee to wait?
Royal purple, where?
Here no regal pomp we see;
Naught but need and penury:
Why thus cradled here?

"For the world a love supreme
Brought me to this stable;
All creation to redeem,
I alone am able.
By this lowly birth of mine,
Pilgrim, riches shall be thine,
Matchless gifts and free;
Willingly this yoke I take,
And this sacrifice I make,
Heaping joys for thee."

Fervent praise would I to thee
Evermore be raising;
For thy wondrous love to me
Thee be ever praising.
Glory, glory be for ever
Unto that most bounteous Giver,
And that loving Lord!
Better witness to thy worth,
Purer praise than ours on earth,
Angels' songs afford.

Jean Mauburn, 1494

tr. Elizabeth Rundle Charles, 1868; alt.

Tune: MAUBURN (P.M.)

T. Tertius Noble, 1918

English composer and organist T. Tertius Noble emigrated to the United States in 1913. and was soon involved with the committee that selected the music for the Episcopal Hymnal of 1916, where this tune, written for this text, was first published. The hymn remains in the current Episcopal hymnal, but with a different tune.

Four Years Ago: Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Three Years Ago: The Ninth Day of Christmas

Two Years Ago: Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Today is the birthday of Elizabeth Rundle Charles, born in 1838 in Tavistock, in the county of Devon. She was raised in the Church of England, and would write more than twenty-five books, including several popular books on various aspects of church history.

Her hymns and poems were published in several different places, and she also translated several hymns from various languages. This text comes from her collection The Women of the Gospels: The Three Wakings and Other Poems (1859).

Come and rejoice with me!
For once my heart was poor;
But I have found a treasury
Of love, an endless store.

Come and rejoice with me!
For I have found a Friend
Who knows my heart's most secret depths
Yet loves me without end.

I knew not of this love
Which God had loved so long,
This love, so faithful and so deep,
So tender and so strong.

And now I know it all,
Have heard and known God's Voice,
And hear it still from day to day --
Can I enough rejoice?

Elicabeth Rundle Charles, 1859; alt.
Tune: ADVENT (S.M.)
John Goss, 1872

That same collection also contained a poem entitled New Years' Hymn, probably not a surprising topic for her to write about given her birthday. Its first stanza reads:

What marks the dawning of the year
From any other morn?
No festal garb doth Nature wear
Because a Year is born.

Two Years Ago: Elizabeth Rundle Charles

One Year Ago: The Ninth Day of Christmas

Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Elizabeth Rundle Charles (January 2, 1828 - March 28, 1896) was a popular author in Victorian England. Nicholas Smith, in Songs From the Hearts of Women (1903) writes that her books "covered a wide field, including fiction, travels, history, biography, general religious literature, translations from the Latin, Greek, Swedish, and German languages, poetry, and hymnology." Though she was an Anglican by birth, her interests and her education pursued broader Christian themes.

One of her greatest successes was a novel (published anonymously) about Martin Luther and the Reformation, The Chronicles of the Schön­berg-Cot­ta Fam­i­ly (1863); many of her other books were published as "by the author of" that novel, such as the one pictured above, Christian Life in England in the Olden Time (1866).

She translated hymns from several languages (and therefore several denominations), many of them appearing in The Voice of Christian Life in Song (1859). She writes in the introduction of that book:

"It is trusted that the treasures of sacred song, faintly reflected in these translations, may serve to illustrate that unity of faith which binds one age to another through the Communion of Saints."

Her translated hymns seem to have survived into modern times better than her original ones (e.g., three to none in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982), but I find her original texts very intriguing, such as this one.

Around a table, not a tomb,
Christ willed our gathering place to be;
When, going to prepare our home,
Our Savior said,"Remember me."

We kneel around no sculptured stone,
To mark the place where Jesus lay;
Empty the tomb, the angels gone,
The stone forever rolled away.

No, sculptured stones are for the dead!
The three sad days of death are o'er;
Thou art the Life, our living Head,
Our living Light forevermore!

Thus round thy table, not thy tomb,
We keep the sacred feast with thee;
Until within our promised home
Our endless gathering place shall be.

Elizabeth Rundle Charles, 1862; alt.
Tune: HERONGATE (L.M.)
English traditional melody;
arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1906

Probably one reason I like Charles is that she also wrote verse and prose about the women of the Bible. I've talked before about how so many of those women went unnamed, perhaps due to the unconscious sexism of the time the scriptures were written. In Songs Old and New (1887), she advances a different theory in this excerpt from her poem The Unnamed Women:

He would not have the sullied name
Once fondly spoken in a home,
A mark for strangers' righteous blame,
Branded through every age to come.

And thus we only speak of them
As those on whom His mercies meet --
"She whom the Lord would not condemn,"
And "She who bathed with tears His feet"

I don't actually agree with her (the motive is still somewhat sexist, though chivalrous instead of unthinking) but the theory is interesting nonetheless.