Notes
1. Unless otherwise indicated, comments on the appearance or content
of the Audelay manuscript are derived from the observations contained in
Ella Keats Whiting's Introduction to her edition of The Poems of John
Audelay, EETS o.s. 184 (London, 1931).
2. Susanna Greer Fein, "A Thirteen-Line Alliterative Stanza on the
Abuse of Prayer from the Audelay MS," Medium Ævum 63 (1994),
61-74, at 61.
3. Richard L. Greene, ed., The Early English Carols, 2nd ed.
(Oxford, 1977), p. xxx.
4. Winifred's name appears in a variety of spellings throughout the
manuscript ("Wenefred," "Wynfryd," etc.), as does Beuno's ("Bewnou," "Bewnew").
I employ modern spellings for the sake of consistency.
5. Michael Bennett, "John Audley: Some New Evidence on His Life and
Work," Chaucer Review 16 (1982), 344-55, at 346.
6. Fein, "A Thirteen-Line Alliterative Stanza."
7. The Poems of John Audley, p. 224 line 53.
8. Bennett, "John Audelay," p. 345.
9. The Poems of John Audelay, p. 180.
10. The Poems of John Audelay, p. 171. The phrase "night
and day" allows a convenient rhyme which Audelay uses throughout his carols;
compare the burdens in nos. 39, 43, and 52.
11. Greene, The Early English Carols, p. clx.
12. Quoted in Greene, The Early English Carols, p. 420.
13. The same injunction is found at the end of the Francis carol:
The Poems of John Audelay, p. 214 line 53.
14. Evelyn Birge Vitz, "From the Oral to the Written in Medieval and
Renaissance Saints' Lives," in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe,
ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca, 1991), pp. 97-114,
at 97-101.
15. Greene, The Early English Carols, pp. cxxxiv-cxl.
16. Paul Strohm, "Passioun, Lyf, Miracle, Legende: Some Generic Terms
in Middle English Hagiographic Narrative," Chaucer Review 10 (1975),
62-75, at 62-67.
17. Lines quoted from the Winifred carol are from The Poems of John
Audelay, pp. 171-75.
18. Whiting notes that a similar story is told of the childhood of
Thomas à Becket: The Poems of John Audelay, nos. 33-40
(pp. 247-48).
19. The Poems of John Audelay, pp. 175-77. The repetitive pattern
of phrases beginning with "Hail!" typifies Audelay's salutary poems.
20. Butler's Lives of the Saints, ed. Herbert Thurston and Donald
Attwater, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Westminster, 1990), 4:245-46.
21. Whiting states that no manuscript has been found, although Greene
cites London, British Library, MSS. Cotton Claudius A. V and Lansdowne
436 as the two principal medieval sources of the Winifred story.
William Fleetwood, an eighteenth-century editor of the Shrewsbury account,
locates the original in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud lat. 21., fol.
140. Fleetwood's own source for his 1713 edition of Winifred's life
is an anonymous 1712 reimpression of a 1635 translation from the original
Latin by a Jesuit known as "J. F." Fleetwood declares this "the most
authentick account," although undermining that authenticity is his chief
concern. He states frankly that he is a Protestant with "a Zeal for
the Purity of God's Service, and a sincere Desire of undeceiving the Papists
in this erroneous and very hazardous Point of Saint-worship." Throughout
the Volume, Fleetwood delights in dissecting the Winifred narrative and
in sneering at the heresies of her believers, though he somewhat regrets
his efforts, as he is "a little ashamed of having spent so much of [his]
Time in reading so much Trash": William Fleetwood, The Life and
Miracles of Saint Winifred, Together with Her Litanies, with Some Historical
Observations Made Thereon (London, 1713), pp. 15-18.
22. Mirk's Festial. Part 1, ed. Theodor Erbe, EETS e.s. 96 (London,
1905), pp. 177-82.
23. The Poems of John Audelay, no. 24 (p. 247).
24. Greene, The Early English Carols, p. 420.
25. E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, "Fifteenth Century Carols by John
Audelay," Modern Language Review 5 (1910), 473-91, at 474-75.
26. Bennett, "John Audley," pp. 346-48.
27. Whiting, Introduction to The Poems of John Audelay, pp.
vx, xvii.