Adam Lay Bound

(15th century)

   The early 15th-century MIDDLE ENGLISH lyric beginning “Adam lay ybounden” is a fresh and lively lyric expression of the traditional theological concept of the felix culpa or fortunate fall. This doctrine held that while our first parents’ disobedience brought about the great evil of humanity’s fall from grace, it also made necessary the great act of God’s love—our redemption through Christ; therefore, paradoxically, the fall was a happy one. In Adam Lay Bound, however, the notion of the felix culpa is actually carried beyond Christ to Mary, whose glorification the poem celebrates. The lyric consists of two long, eight-line stanzas of alternating four- and three-foot lines, rhyming abcbdede. The stanza bears a striking resemblance to a pair of BALLAD stanzas. This affinity with the popular tradition is also suggested by the poet’s use of partial repetition from one line to another, while adding new information—another technique of the ballads—as can be seen in the opening lines of the poem:

   Adam lay ibounden

   Bounden in a bond.

   (Luria and Hoffman 147, ll. 1–2)

   The first stanza describes Adam’s 4,000 years of imprisonment in limbo before what medieval theologians called the HARROWING OF HELL, when Christ broke the gates of hell on Easter Saturday and carried the souls of the righteous to heaven. The attitude of the poem’s speaker seems almost lighthearted and dismissive concerning original sin: “all was for an appil” (l. 5) we are told, as the “clerkes” will find written in their books. The second stanza turns joyous: If the apple had not been taken, the speaker says, then Mary would never have “ben hevene quen” (l. 13). The image of Mary as the queen of heaven and representations of the “Coronation of the Virgin” were becoming increasingly popular by the 15th century. Certainly the image of Mary as queen ultimately symbolizes her role in mankind’s redemption through Christ. But that redemption is never explicitly mentioned in the poem: The lyric ends with the poet’s blessing the sin of Adam and exclaiming “Deo gracias” (Thanks be to God) because Adam’s transgression led ultimately to Mary’s glorification.

   Bibliography

   ■ Luria,Maxwell S., and Richard Hoffman.Middle English Lyrics. New York: Norton, 1974.