Angelus ad virginem

Angelus ad virginem. Latin,  probably 13th Century, author unknown, possibly Philip the Chancellor* (d. 1236; see under Goliards*).  This carol is best discussed in two sections: the medieval and the modern.  The Medieval Carol This was sung by Nicholas, the student in Chaucer’s ‘The Miller’s Tale’ (Nicholas is a very unpleasant character, whose seduction of his landlord’s wife is a grotesque parody of the angel’s visit to the Virgin Mary). The carol is first recorded in a fourteenth-century MS, Arundel 248, in the British Museum, and in a Dublin Troper of 1360, now in Cambridge University Library. The New Oxford Book of Carols (NOBC) prints three versions, with music, of...