Lyr Req: Down in Yon Forest (from John Jacob Niles

Subject: RE: Down in Yon Forrest / Down in Yon Forest
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Jun 02 - 08:43 PM

No tune is known for Corpus Christi, though a number of modern settings have been made (the above is one of them). The earliest-known traditional tune associated with the song family was noted by Ralph Vaughan Williams from a Mr. J. Hall of Castleton (a few miles up the road from me) in 1908.

Subject: RE: Down in Yon Forrest / Down in Yon Forest
From: GUEST,julia
Date: 03 Jun 02 - 09:35 PM

Just to add my two cents worth, the Arthurian writer John Matthews sees references to the Fisher King and the Grail legend in this song.

Subject: RE: Down in Yon Forrest / Down in Yon Forest
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Jun 02 - 09:43 PM

A lot of the early 20th century folksong enthusiasts did, but those theories aren't taken too seriously nowadays. I read Jessie L. Weston, Robert Graves and others on the subject and was very impressed until I found out that they had made most of it up all by themselves! Without meaning to sound unkind to him, I'd tend to describe John Matthews as a "Celic" fantasist rather than a serious scholar.

Subject: RE: Down in Yon Forrest / Down in Yon Forest
From: rich-joy
Date: 03 Jun 02 - 10:08 PM

very nice version of Corpus Christi Carol by Australian group MARA! (who, BTW, do a nice line in Eastern European music), on their Plant Life album "Images" from 1984 ... Cheers! R-J

Subject: RE: Down in Yon Forrest / Down in Yon Forest
From: RoyH (Burl)
Date: 04 Jun 02 - 05:10 AM

I have always thought of 'Down in yon forest' as a traditional carol from Derbyshire. In 1965 I collected a version from an old gentleman (an apt description, he was a most gracious fellow)in Castleton. He told me that he'd known it all his life, adding that 'everybody round here knows it'. He sang me a couple more hymn-like songs, plus 'Starry night for a ramble', and a song about a lover who carried an umbrella and left behind a baby with an umbrella birthmark. I had been doing collecting throughout the East Midlands and had a number of people one one tape. I loaned it out to someone who was 'interested in traditional music'. When it came back his kids had recorded pop music over it. By the time I was able to get out there again all my informants were dead. Whenever I hear the song performed or mentioned this memory resurfaces. I think it a wonderful song, with those stark images and incantatory refrains, quite awesome.

Subject: RE: Down in Yon Forrest / Down in Yon Forest
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 01:51 PM

In notes to "Down in the Forest," The Oxford Book of Carols," one of the notes says, "point to an interweaving of the legend of the Holy Grail."
The oldest version, c. 1500 MS, was posted by Jenny S (09 June 01).

A. L. Lloyd, in "Folk Song in England," gives the version collected from Mr Hall in Derbyshire by Vaugham Williams and Ivor Getty. It differs from the one sung by Lloyd and posted above by Bruce O, 12 Oct 99. Lloyd notes that scholars have tacked on to it the title 'Corpus Christi.'

DOWN IN YON FOREST
Mr Hall, with score

Down in yon forest there stands a hall,
The bells of paradise I heard them ring,*
It's covered all over with purple so tall,
And I love my Lord Jesus above any thing.*

* These two lines used as a refrain, as shown.

In that hall there stands a bed,
It's covered all over with scarlet so red.

At the bedside there lies a stone,
Which the sweet Virgin Mary knelt upon.

Under that bed there runs a river,
The one half runs water, the other runs blood.

At the foot of the bed there grows a thorn,
Which ever blows blossom since He was born.

In his discussion of the various versions, Lloyd comments, "Ever since [Richard] Hill's notebook [the 1500 MS] ..., scholars have cudgelled their brains to reach a meaning of the carol. There has been talk of Mithraic ritual and Grail legend; the Couch of the Maimed King is knowingly mentioned, the diligent hound has been identified with Joseph of Arimathea at the sepulchre with the vessel, and the blossoming bush has brought to mind the 'miraculous' thorn at Glastonbury. But as usual with folk song, how much is direct symbolism and how much is simply the picturesque fantasy of common people would be hard to say."

It is fun to speculate, but nothing concrete will result.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Down in Yon Forest (from John Jacob Niles
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 09:10 PM

Hi there - I am a storyteller currently working on a set of medieaval stories and ballads and I have been investigating Down in Yon Forest... - fascinating thread above - many thanks, but I am particularly interested in what anyone might know of its possible pre-Christian origins and links to Arthurian / Fisher King stories - if anyone can add further on this I would be most interested. Many thanks Sophie Snell (Derbyshire)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Down in Yon Forest (from John Jacob Niles
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Nov 13 - 12:22 PM

As I see it, there's the Grail-Arthurian-Fisher King vortex (which has proved capable of aceepting anything modern Romamtics care to toss in), and then there's the carol.

Both involve a castle (or a "hall"), Jesus, and striking, perhaps intriguing Christian images - differing images at that.

Other than that, I think any "connection" (which often means that one was inspired by the other, or that they share a common origin) remains fanciful.

("What if," "maybe," and "I don't see why not" are popular Mudcat arguments, but they are not evidence.)

Now if the carol actually mentioned a Grail, or a Percival, or a Fisher King, or even an Arthur, the situation would be very different.
But it doesn't.

If there's any connection at all (and why should there be?), it could be that the person who made the carol was familiar with the internationally popular Grail story. But maybe not. It can't be shown from the texts, and if the Grail had ever been of importance to the song, it's hard to understand why it would have dropped out.

If the carol-maker was a visionary sort, he could have made the whole thing up from his own imagination, no further explanation required. Possibly the weirdness of the words helped keep the song from being more popular in tradition.

As is so often the case, there's no way to know any of this.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Down in Yon Forest (from John Jacob Niles
From: Susan of DT
Date: 03 Nov 13 - 01:30 PM

I always thought it concerned the Fisher King:

And in that bed there lieth a knight,
His wounds bleeding day and night.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Down in Yon Forest (from John Jacob Niles
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Nov 13 - 02:43 PM

Annie Gilchrist seems to have been the first writer to connect the carol with the Fisher King (Journal of the Folk-Song Society, 1910). A sample of her method:

She quotes the lines of ca 1400:

"He bare him up, he bare him down,
He bare him into an orchard brown."

And immediately interprets them to mean "Joseph of Arimathaea bears the Graal to the apple-orchard = Avalon." Got that? She overlooks the more obvious likelihood that the wounded knight is being carried home.

From the 1862 version she takes the lines "Over yonder's a park which is newly begun" and explains them as meaning "Church founded by Joseph of Aramathaea at Glastonbury." Really?

And the bleeding knight, whom she interprets as the Fisher King in one version becomes in the second, "The daily sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist." No, I'm not making it up.

It's a 14-page article proving that Gilchrist knew a lot about standard Grail literature. But even so, she admits there are "several points not explainable by reference to the Graal legend."

Leonard Wimberley, writing in 1928 (before the days of Lloyd-style jacket notes) quotes the song but makes no connection at all with the Fisher King or the Grail. He thinks it's about a "ghost-realm in the forest." No, I'm not making it up.

A knight whose wounds "bleed night and day" certainly *could* be the Fisher King. But since the nearby stone reads "Corpus Christi," isn't he more likely to be Jesus in a symbolic scene? Or a dying knight whose only hope is the "rock of the Church"? Or a surreal, personal dream-vision that the maker just had to turn into a religious carol? Etc.

And in a song about the Fisher King, shouldn't we expect a lance and a grail and a grail-seeker - or at least one of those things?

My guess is that the supposed connection has become popular because it's fun for folklore-oriented folkies to think about.