John Fleagle - Worldes Blis

Details

Description

From John Fleagle's 1996 "World's Bliss - Medieval Songs of Love and Death".

About the song :
"A fair number of poems written as meditations on the vanity of the world survive from medieval England, a few with musical notes. During the thirteenth century, a cult of death grew out of the natural response of people subject continually to the ravages of war, famine and pestilence: bringers of untimely death. This cult took as one of its image a "dance of death", characterized by ballads, plays and paintings by a procession of humanity chosen by death. Death, the great leveller of the estates, exposes his victims' frailty and fondness for worldly pleasure. "Thu likest honi of thorn, ywis, that seyst thi love o worldes blis", (You lick honey from a thorn, indeed, who place your hope on worldly pleasures) chides the poet of a popular homily on the transitory nature of life's happiness [...]".

Rawlinson MS G18, 13th century.