Product Description
This original song uses English folk idioms to retell a traditional snowdrop legend. The chorus is an English 'weather rhyme'. It has been set for choir (SSAA), piano, harp, fiddle, and flute.
One of the Snowdrops folk names is Eves Comforter; another Maid of February.
Candlemas Carol
Maid of February, if you will,
grace mantle, hearth, and windowsill.
So let us all be of goodwill
and gather round, together.
When Winter holds the world in thrall,
and ice and snow lie over all,
the Maiden can at once recall,
the coming Summer weather.
If Candlemas is fair and bright,
cold Winter will take a second bite.
But if this day brings clouds and rain,
Winter wont return again.
When Eve and Adam left Eden fair,
the snow and ice lay evrywhere,
which filled their hearts with bleak despair,
for they could find no pardon.
They glimpsed the flowers of paradise,
beyond the earthly cold and ice,
but they could not be perfect, twice,
nor get back to the garden.
If Candlemas is fair and bright,
cold Winter will take a second bite.
But if this day brings clouds and rain,
Winter wont return again.
A teardrop fell from Eves sad eye,
and froze upon the ground close by.
An angel raised it up on high,
and called for Heavens power.
The ice became a snowdrop, then.
Thus hope returned to Eve again.
And all the people say: Amen!
in praise of Winters flower.
If Candlemas is fair and bright,
cold Winter will take a second bite.
But if this day brings clouds and rain,
Winter wont return again.
Alan Wagstaff
The legend tells that, after Adam and Eve were banished from Edens perpetual summer, they wandered, despondently, into Earths freezing winter. Eve wept as the snow fell around them. Seeing her tears, an angel intervened. He caught a teardrop when it froze and breathed on it, turning it into a snowdrop. When the angel left more snowdrops sprang up.
Thus, snowdrops in Winter, serve as a reminder, that better times will come around. The tale was often recalled at Candlemas: February 2nd.
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