This is perhaps one of the most important (but least-known) versions of Saint Kentigern's story — and for several reasons. Firstly, it is not simply prose, nor even just poetry, but song — plainchant, of a "secular" type, narrating the life of a saint rather than directly praising God per se. Indeed, it seems to provide a musical context for the ritual celebration of Saint Kentigern's feast day (January 13th). The narrative focuses on the folklore of Kentigern's early life at Saint Serf's foundation at Culross (Colenros), but also includes details of his royal Lothian family origins, as well as general information about the Brythonic Old North — the opening line describes Glasgow Cathedral's position "in northern Wales [ie. Welsh-speaking Strathclyde] not far from Alba [ie. Gaelic Scotland]". Specific Lothian details include the Latin form of the placename of the "province", Leudonia, stated as being "named after King Loth" (Leudonus) of later Arthurian lore. The miracles of the saint himself are placed in the context of Biblical stories, as is conventional within the hagiographical genre, connecting Culross (in Alba) with the Holy Land. Indeed, he comes across as something of a Moses figure, a leader of the people in their time of need — a national saviour. One Strathclyde highlight is, of course, the famous miracle of the ring and the fish from the River Clyde (referencing a story of St. Peter from Matthew 17:27), two images which are still celebrated in Glasgow City's coat of arms.

More musically, the plainchant broadly follows the Sarum Use of Norman custom from south of The Border, although there are plenty of original moments. In particular, it is hard not to hear a few of the modal flat 7ths as direct references to the famous "double-tonic" (I-bVII) of Scottish traditional music, lending it an additional air of "Celtic plainchant" (a genre said never to have existed, let alone survived in the historical record, at least according to academic musicologists of the crypto-Norman type). However, although the manuscript was known to Victorian antiquarians as a literary text, its musical content was only publicised as such in the 1990s by John Purser in his ground-breaking survey: Scotland's Music: A History of the Traditional and Classical Music of Scotland from Early Times to the Present Day (Edinburgh: 1992 & 2007). Happily, the manuscript's songs are now available in full on CD, performed by the local vocal group Cappella Nova on their excellent Scottish Medieval Plainchant: The Miracles of St. Kentigern (Gaudeamus: 1997). I strongly recommend getting a copy of both of these — while keeping your eye on Capella Nova's many other medieval Scottish recordings (and live performances), not least their album of plainchant dedicated to Saint Columba from Inchcolm Abbey near Edinburgh.

The manuscript itself is generally known as the Sprouston Breviary (MS Edinburgh NLS Adv. 18.2.13b), reflecting its connection with Roxburghshire (a county often within Lothian by medieval convention) and David I's great Border Abbeys nearby. However, the conventional date of the manuscript is later than David, c.1300 — in other words, within the period of the wars of the Norman dictator of England (qua "Angleterre"), Edward I against Robert the Bruce and William Wallace. As such, it is possible to read a certain nationalistic context into its circumstances of production, not least in its narrative presentation, and despite its formal relation to the Sarum model. At the same time, this apparent conflict of political-cultural interests is only apparent, and in fact reveals the genuinely international character of Roman Catholicism, despite what local dictators may get up to now and then with their nobler neighbours.

Given the importance of the Sprouston manuscript for various ideas of medieval Lothian's cultural heritage, I plan to make a big deal of it on this website in the near future. Although this first draft (which is in fact the first ever online HTML edition) is drawn from Bishop Forbes's introductory notes to his edition of the more famous Lives and was published by him in Latin alone, I am working on my own full translation. Moreover, Forbes did not publish the whole thing, and neglected its crucial musical components entirely — again, these missed opportunities will be taken up in my final version. I'll be spending a fair bit of time down the NLS to do this, scribal HB stylus in hand — once the website's general upgrading has been properly dealt with. The final plan is to publish a "total" edition of this manuscript in the style of my current digital edition of The Book of Aneirin (which manuscript can also be read as a reaction to Norman incursions, albeit into the actual North Wales, funnily enough). In the meantime, get your Latin dictionaries out, and enjoy what's already here, below. But here's a first draft of the first bit, just to give a wee flavour:

Of Saint Kentigern: Responsorium

In northern Wales, not far from Alba,
Holy Church honours the rites of Kentigern,
Whom the flying ones, the wild ones, the fishes, the streams
Obey as the master's rightful vassals.
From his breath, the little torch dulled by hatred
Was rekindled in Scotland without material fire.
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Copyright © 2009 by CyberScotia
Cyndeirn am byth!

This digital transcription and edition is Copyright © CyberScotia 2009, all rights reserved. Text transcribed from: Forbes, Alexander Penrose 1874. Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern. Compiled in the Twelfth Century. Edited from the Best MSS. in The Historians of Scotland, Vol.V., General Introduction, xciv-c. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas.