The Cherry-Tree Carol- MacSweeney 1918
The Cherry-Tree Carol
by Joseph J. MacSweeney
Folklore, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Mar. 30, 1918), pp. 83-84
THE CHERRY-TREE CAROL.
Two versions of the above-named ballad, one in Irish the other in Scotch Gaelic, have not, so far as I know, been identified. In The Religious Songs of Connacht, ed. Hyde, vol. i. pp. 276-285, there is given a poem called "Muire agus naomh Ioseph," which is of composite traditional origin, being derived from the recitals of Michael MacRory and Martin O'Callally in the County Mayo. The version contains 20 stanzas, all of which, except the 11th and 12th, are four-line stanzas. Of the 11th and 12th stanzas the editor writes, "These six line verses are alien to the spirit of the Irish language, and probably arise from the first half of the next quatrain being forgotten."
Child gives a similar explanation for a similar extension of the ballad stanza in version B of " The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield" (The English and Scottish Popular Ballads). Of stanzas 4 and 5 in the latter ballad he wrote:
"It is not supposed that 4 and 5 were originally stanzas of six lines, but rather that one half of each of the two stanzas having been forgotten, the other has attached itself to a complete stanza which chanced to have the same rhyme. Stanzas of six lines formed in this way are common in traditional ballads."
To this theory of stanza-development I can hardly give full consent; because not always does one find missing sense or even abruptness in such long stanzas. Child considers the added lines as having " chanced to have the same rhyme." Chanced is hardly the word to be used in this instance for such rimes as "bee" and "y," "me" and "thee" are stock ballad rimes. Therefore I am inclined to consider the stanza as not wholly explicable by means of this theory.
Another version of this interesting carol is given in Scotch-Gaelic in Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica, vol. ii. pp. 162-165. It was taken down from Malcolm MacMillan, Benbecula, and also exhibits stanza-extension.
Both the Irish and the Scotch Gaelic poems above referred to have not, so far as I know, been identified as versions of the widely diffused European ballad known in England as "The Cherry-Tree Carol." In examining the different versions I am inclined to believe that the Irish, the Scotch-Gaelic, and the English variants are closely connected, while, of course, the latter as well as the European versions seem to derive from the apocryphal legend of the Pseudo-Matthew's gospel which has been printed in Tischendorf's Evangelica Apocrypha. The legend is, as a consequence of its origin, to be found in mediaeval literature.
In the English versions the Babe's prediction of His death is sometimes printed as a separate ballad, and this seems to me to account for the composite origin of the Irish version. (Vid. Religious Songs of Connacht, ut supra, p. 276.)
JOSEPH J. MACSWEENEY.
Barron Hill House, Bailey, Howth, Co. Dublin.