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.