Chaucer, the "corones tweyne," and the Eve of Saint Agnes

CHAUCER, THE "CORONES TWEYNE," AND THE EVE OF SAINT AGNES By JAMES H. MOREY John Keats was one of the last English poets to lyricize a venerable tradition when, in his "The Eve of Saint Agnes," the narrator describes . . . one Lady there, Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day, On love, and winged St. Agnes' saintly care, As she had heard old dames full many times declare. They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve, Young virgins might have visions of delight, And soft adorings from their loves receive Upon the honey'd middle of the night, If ceremonies due they did aright. (42-50)1 On 20 January, the Eve of Saint Agnes's day, by various sorts of love-divination involving fasting, sticking pins, or the preparation of a "dumb cake" (a cake prepared in silence, usually with large quantities of salt) one could secure a vision of a future beloved. In the earliest practice both young men and women could have such visions, and they were almost always associated with unhappy outcomes. The tradition is documented in England, France, and Germany, and one can find numerous poetic treatments and descriptions in miscellanies of folklore.2 The earliest attestation known to me is 1 Quoted from The Complete Poems, ed. John Barnard, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1988), 312-23, at 313. For much of his short life, Keats was an avid reader of Chaucer. See F. E. L. Priestly, "Keats and Chaucer," Modern Language Quarterly 5 (1944): 439-47, where he notes several verbal echoes between "The Eve of St. Agnes" and Troilus and Criseyde, though none relate directly to the subject matter of this paper. On 17 November 1819, Keats wrote to his publisher John Taylor of his desire to read Chaucer instead of Ariosto, and to "diffuse the colouring of St. Agnes eve throughout a Poem in which Character and Sentiment would be figures to such drapery" (The. Letters of John Keats: 1814-1821, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols. [Cambridge, 1958] 2:234). 2 See, among many sources which document the various rituals associated with the occasion, John Brand, Observations on Popular Antiguities, Including the Whole of Mr. Bourne's Antiquitates vulgares, With Addenda to Every Chapter of That Work: As Also an Appendix Containing Such Articles on the Subject as Have Been Omitted by That Author (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1777), 386-87; see alternatively John Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities, 3 vols. (London, 1849; repr., Detroit, 1969), 1:34-38; Robert Chambers, The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1863) 120TRADITIO from Ben Jonson's The Entertainment at Althorp, performed before Queen Anne, queen of James I, in 1603. The Satyr speaks of Queen Mab: She can start our Franklin's daughters In their sleep, with shrieks and laughters; And on sweet St. Anne's night Feed them with a promised sight, Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers.3 Other early attestations are by Bobert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy in 1621 and by Wye Saltonstall in 1631.4 1:140-41; Arthur Robinson Wright, British Calendar Customs, ed. T. E. Lones, 3 vols. (London, 1936-40), 2:106-110; Jacques E. Merceron, Dictionnaire thématique et géographique des saints imaginaires, facétieux et substitués (Paris, 2002), 962-63; Eduard von Hoffman -Krayer and Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 10 vols. (Berlin, 1927-42), 1:214. Josiah Relph wrote a poem on "Saint Agnes Fast" in his Miscellany of Poems: Consisting of Original Poems, Translations, Pastorals in the Cumberland Dialect, Familiar Epistles, Fables, Songs, and Epigrams (Glasgow, 1747), 144-47; and J. Robertson collects another version in Poems: Consisting of Tales, Fables, Epigrams, &e. &c. By Nobody (London, 1770), 100-101. John Gay, in an imitation of Virgil's eighth eclogue, gathered several traditions of love-divination and conjuration in "Thursday" of The Shepherd's Week (1714), though none deals specifically with Agnes (John Gay: Poetry and Prose, ed. Vinton A. Dearing, 2 vols. [Oxford, 1974], 1:109-13). For the practices themselves, see Susan M. Drury, "English Love-Divinations Using Plants: An Aspect," Folklore 97 (1986): 210...