Three days until Christmas! To drum up the late Advent excitement, I decided to write a blogpost about that wonderful English carol ‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.’ However, as I did my research, I decided that without a library I could not do better than Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative, so please have a read. And do click on the YouTube performances, for they are lovely.
Here is the entire song:
1. Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance;
Chorus
Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love
2. Then was I born of a virgin pure
Of her I took fleshly substance
Thus was I knit to man’s nature
To call my true love to my dance. Chorus
3. In a manger laid, and wrapped I was
So very poor, this was my chance
Betwixt an ox and a silly poor ass
To call my true love to my dance. Chorus
4. Then afterwards baptised I was;
The Holy Ghost on me did glance,
My Father’s voice heard from above,
To call my true love to my dance. Chorus
5. Into the desert I was led,
Where I fasted without substance;
The Devil bade me make stones my bread,
To have me break my true love’s dance. Chorus
6. [My foes] on me they made great suit,
And with me made great variance,
Because they loved darkness rather than light,
To call my true love to my dance. Chorus
7. For thirty pence Judas me sold,
His covetousness for to advance:
Mark whom I kiss, the same do hold!
The same is he shall lead the dance. Chorus
8. Before Pilate [my foes] me brought,
Where Barabbas had deliverance;
They scourged me and set me at nought,
Judged me to die to lead the dance. Chorus
9. Then on the cross hanged I was,
Where a spear my heart did glance;
There issued forth both water and blood,
To call my true love to my dance. Chorus
10. Then down to hell I took my way
For my true love’s deliverance,
And rose again on the third day,
Up to my true love and the dance. Chorus
11. Then up to heaven I did ascend,
Where now I dwell in sure substance
On the right hand of God, that man
May come unto the general dance. Chorus
Naturally as a Catholic dance organiser, I love the dance as a metaphor for our life in Christ.
Meanwhile, I am not entirely without recourse to expert (and non-internet) scholarship, for my best university pal is now at Cambridge University working on a PhD on mediaeval music performance. I hailed her over Facebook and asked if she believed ‘TSBMDD’s’ 19th century editor’s claim that the carol is mediaeval.
“Yes, I believe it is,” she replied. “Let me do a little research for a minute.”
Then she disappeared. I do not know when I or anyone else will see her again, for she is doubtlessly now buried under a pile of manuscripts at the Wren Library.
Until she returns, I will say that I myself am swayed by arguments that the carol is mediaeval because of the singer’s reference to “my play.” My friend and I met through the University of Toronto’s Poculi Ludique Societas, and so I know all about mediaeval mystery plays. These aren’t ancient versions of The Mousetrap but rather theatrical performances of Bible stories and, most famously, the Redemption Story, from Creation to the Last Judgement. The York Cycle contains 48 plays of this kind.
There is also a professional mediaevalist in my family, come. to think of it, and to dispel my youthful notion that Christendom once had a 100% Mass attendance rate, he once told me about an English peasant who, when questioned, recalled that he had indeed heard of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for he had once seen “a play at York.”
Thus, the strangeness of a song for which the narrator is Our Lord Jesus Christ is most easily explained by the existence of an actor, a 14th century Jim Caviezel.
Hurrah! My friend has emerged from the manuscript pile to tell me that in her opinion “it was very plausibly originally composed for a miracle play between the 14th and 16th century, even if the first written appearance is early 19th century. I have seen no evidence for the York Cycle particularly although that might exist.”
She has also sent me an even early use of dance as a metaphor for Christian life: a verse by the 14th century English hermit and mystic Richard Rolle of Hampole:
“A wonder it es to se, wha sa understude/How God of mageste was dyand on [th]e rude/ Bot suth [th]an es it sayde [th]at lufe ledes [th]e ryng/ [Th]at hym sa law hase layde bot lufe it was na thyng. “
This, she explains, means “A wonder it is to see, what shall (be) understood, how God of majesty died on the Rood, But sooth it is said, that love leads the ring (dance); that him so low hath laid, but for love it was nothing.”