“Adam Lay Ybounden” or “Adam lay i-bowndyn” is a middle English poem dating to approximately 1400 A.D. Of unknown authorship, it recalls the Fall of Man as recounted in the Book of Genesis, chapter 3.
The poem’s manuscript is held by the British Library, which suggests that it may have belonged to a wandering minstrel, though no contemporaneous music for the text survives.
Verse 1 expresses the medieval theological idea that Adam remained in bondage (“lay ybounden”) with the other Biblical patriarchs in the afterlife condition of limbo (limbus partum) from the time of his death until the death and resurrection of Christ (“4000 winters”).
Verse 2 notes, almost astonishingly, that Adam’s punishment was “all…for an apple that he took,” as if it were but a small transgression. Yet “as clerkes finden in their Book” (as clerics read in their Bible), it must be true.
The third verse suggests that Adam’s disobedience to God’s command was, as Thomas Aquinas posits, a felix culpa (“happy fault”), as the redemption of man by Jesus Christ, born of Mary (Heaven’s queen), was the eventual result.
Verse 4 concludes the poem happily: “Blessed be the time that apple taken was. Therefore we may singen ‘Deo Gracias'” (Thanks be to God).
This setting of “Adam Lay Ybounden” for SAB voices and organ is quick to rehearse and easily singable, and ideal for a service of lessons and carols at Advent or Christmas.
SAB/organ score (3 pages, 8.5×11″)
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