2024-05-13
42 分钟For Mother's Day, we look at a 15th-century tale of a plowman who thinks that -- in terms of daily labor -- his wife has it too easy, and how he learns otherwise. Today's Text "Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband." Reliquiae Antiquae: Scraps From Ancient Manuscripts, Illustrating Chiefly Early English Literature and the English Language, edited by Thomas Wright and James Orchard Halliwell, vol. 2, John Russell Smith, 1845, pp. 196-99. Google Books. Accessed 8 Oct. 2018. "Ballad of a Tyrannical Husband." Edited by Eve Salisbury, TEAMS Middle English Texts Series, d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/salisbury-trials-and-joys-ballad-of-a-tyrannical-husband#f4. Originally published in The trials and Joys of Marriage, 2002. Accessed 8 Oct. 2018. Chetham's MS Mun.A.6.31. Chetham's Library, Manchester, UK, https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/Man4MedievalVC~4~4~507616~116868:On-a-tyrannical-husband "The Old Man Who Lived in the Woods." Traditional, transcribed by Sandy Paton, "Origins: More Work in a Day / Father Grumble," The Mudcat Cafe, 7 Dec. 2001, 9:41 p.m., mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=41847 Audio Credit: Fiddle tune, "Frosty Morning" performed by Henry Reed (1966), from the Library of Congress.
A note I recorded this episode while on the road at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, so there's more reverb than usual, and you might hear the occasional noise of human activity in the conference dormitory, in the background, doors, footsteps, though I think I at least removed the occasional distant toilet flush.
This is medieval death trip for Sunday, May 12, 2024.
Episode 106 concerning the hard work of a housewife.
Hello and welcome to medieval death Trip, the show where we explore the wit and weirdness of medieval texts.
I'm your host, Patrick Lane.
Today is Mother's Day, or at least it's the single most widely observed date for Mother's Day.
Some countries, of course, opt for different dates.
I ran down the modern history of Mother's Day back in our Father's Day episode from 2021, episode 88, concerning the plight of the paterfamilias, and it is very much a modern holiday conceived in the 20th century.
One of those other dates for Mother's Day, Mothering Sunday, as observed in the British Isles on the fourth Sunday in lint, which was March 10 of this year, does link back to the Middle Ages, though, through a metaphor of motherhood.
The liturgical readings for the fourth Sunday in Lent include Galatians, chapter four, verses 21 31, which include reference to Jerusalem being our mother.
And from that it became a medieval practice to honor and make a procession to one's mother church, typically your local cathedral, on the fourth Lenten Sunday.
From this honoring of mother churches, the honoring of human mothers was assigned to this day in the early 20th century, when englishwoman constance Adelaide Smith decided that the United Kingdom needed its own version of the then recently enshrined American Mother's Day.
So the medieval connection is a bit loose for mothering Sunday.
And even if you go looking among saints feast days, there's not very strong evidence for any specific date of the celebration of motherhood.
In the Middle Ages, obviously, many celebrations of the Virgin Mary involve recognition of the sanctity of motherhood, but rarely do human mothers steal the spotlight from the Holy Mother.
As near as I can tell, and other than Mary, there isn't any one clear patron saint of mothers to look to for promising feast day traditions.
There are lots of fertility related saints who sometimes have feasts involving quite peculiar customs, and there are several saints invoked for the protection of pregnant women.
But actual day to day motherhood seems oddly underrepresented in saintly portfolios.
You might call on St.
Anthony for help with conception, St.