St. Mary Magdalen School of Theology

The medieval Basque hymn ‘Gabriel’s Message’ tells the story of the Annunciation in the context of Christmas. The worship of heaven and earth conjoin as the chorus repeats the connection between the Blessed Virgin Mary’s unique status as the Mother of God and the desire to honour and praise both her and God. […]

The carol is based on a c. 13th-century Latin hymn, Angelus ad Virginem, which probably has a Franciscan origin. Its popularity meant it travelled throughout Europe, and was known in Britain soon after it was written. Indeed, it’s quoted in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, as part of the Miller’s Tale when he mentions Nicholas the scholar singing it. […]

The version of the carol we sing in Britain now, however, is not derived from Chaucerian or Middle English sources, but from that Basque original, which was paraphrased and translated by Sabine Baring-Gould, who encountered it through Basque travels during Christmas with his family when he was a boy. 

The carol is therefore part of that vital collecting, preserving, and reimagining of medieval and folk hymnody in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like so many of these examples, its medieval origins have been brought to life in the vernacular in a fairly recent form, part of a Christian tradition which, in the case of this carol, is a truly modern invention. The tune, the ideas, and the narrative sequence are ancient, but the arrangement and translation is far closer to our time than to St Francis’ or Chaucer’s. 

Gabriel’s message, with its mention of the birth in Bethlehem, is most certainly a Christmas carol rather than an Advent carol. That said, the Advent promise and the waiting in darkness for the promised arrival of Jesus has a place in this carol’s qualities and the way in which the Christmas story is told.

Ecce Ancilla Domini! (The Annunciation) 1849-50 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882 Purchased 1886 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N01210