amanuensis. I felt an affinity with Margery the moment I found a beautiful Folio edition of her Book in a second hand bookshop in King Street Norwich immediately after visiting her contemporary (and fellow Mystic) Julian of Norwich's Cell . So I was always startled when some readers, audiences and even fellow artists I worked with on presenting her, did so on the assumption she was psychotic; to me (possibly as mad as she is) she saw more truly than most of her clerical and worldly contemporaries - a 2020 vision beyond and ahead of her time - into the Love at the heart of genuine living Christian experience.

Out of her body, out of her time, out of her class and out of her mind?

The period is that of Richard II and Henry IV: Peasants' Revolt, Black Death, Lollard Revolt and (as reflected in some of the poem's titles) Chaucer. The subject is Margery of Lynn who dictated to a scribe the first autobiography in English, the Book of Margery Kempe. She tells her life story in the third person, as ‘this creature’. Her distinctive voice is heard in these poems set against the different voices of those around her. To live the life which the Book chronicles, its author defied many constraints. To ‘write’ it though illiterate, is an emblem of this.

Margery grew up and raised a family (14 children in 20 years) on the Lynn waterfront, a merchant-mayor’s daughter and later the frustrated wife of a Lynn burgess. (Well off and powerful in the town politics and economy of Lynn but not the landed/noble class who ran Church and State.) She then followed her own vision all over the world, never mind the constraints of medieval marriage or the shackles on mediaeval gender. She was a pilgrim without a licence; a nun without an order; a preacher forbidden to preach; a lifelong candidate for the heretic’s bonfire. Without written English (let alone ‘the Latin’ in which all sacred discourse was rendered) she had nothing to support the authority of and faith in her pronouncements on God except her direct experience and personal visions.

Each poem takes a different view of Margery. Some share her otherworldly outlook (which drew accusations of heresy then as of insanity now) others that of her loving but bemused husband John; of her worldly father John Brunham MP, mayor and merchant prince of Lynn; of the fellow Christians whom she exasperated and/or inspired and the mediaeval authorities who arraigned her for heresy.

1. Living The Dream
2. Post-partum
3. The Merchant’s Tale
4. Out of Her Mind
5. The Fishwife’s Tale
6. The Husband’s Tale
7. The Priest’s Tale
8. St Margaret’s Is Burning
9. Margery’s Tears
10. Margery’s Tears Interrogated
11. The Pilgrim’s Tale
12. Chaste Livers
13. The Anchoress’s Tale
14. 2020 Vision
15. A Lynn Carol

1. Living The Dream

On the banks of the Ouse grew the great port of Lynn,

The Wish of the Wash, the home of Margery,

Just a cluster of huts on an estuarine lake, a linn on a map,

Till they cut Brandon Creek and changed history.

A small salty town whose wildest dreams

Were turned into Faith then Reality

By guiding the Ouse to Lynn's Warehouse on the Wash,

From fen to firm ground, Fact from Heresy.

Living the dream in the mists of history

Like Brandon Creek re-routing the Ouse

Brought Lynn out of fen to a world on the sea

Living the dream: the Story of Margery.

2. Post partum

and in this time she saw

as she thought

devils opening their mouths

all alight with burning flames of fire

as if they would have

swallowed her in

sometimes pawing at her

sometimes threatening her

sometimes pulling her

and hauling her about

both night and day

and also the devils called out to her

with great threats

and bade her

that

she should forsake her

Christian

faith and belief

and deny her God

his mother

and all the saints

in heaven

her good works

and all good virtues

her father

her mother

and all her friends.

and so she did

she slandered her husband

her friends

and her own self

she spoke many sharp

and reproving words.

she recognised no

virtue or goodness.

she desired all wickedness

just as the spirits tempted her

to say and do

she said and did

she would have killed herself

many a time

as they stirred her to

and been damned with them in hell

then one time as she lay by herself

and her keepers were not with her

our merciful Lord

Christ Jesus

ever to be trusted,

worshipped be his name,

never forsaking his

servant in time of need

appeared to his creature

who had forsaken him

in the likeness of a man

the most

seemly,

most beauteous

and most

amiable

that ever might be seen

with mortal eye

clad in a mantle

of purple silk

sitting upon her bedside

looking upon her

with so blessed a countenance

that she was strengthened

in all her spirits

and he said to her

these words:

daughter

why have you forsaken me

and I never forsook you?

and as soon as he

said to her

these words

she saw truly

how the air

opened

as bright

as any lightning

and he

ascended

into

the

air

not hastily and quickly

but

beautifully

and

gradually

so that

she could

clearly

behold him

the

air

until it closed up

again.

3. The Merchant's Tale

(her father John Brunham MP, the richest man in Lynn)

I'm 5 times Mayor, the Merchant Prince,

Twice MP of my town;

I'll rope you in, I'll haul you up,

Make waves where others drown.

I represent His Majesty

Against the Prussian threat;

Their ships attack ours over there,

We make theirs pay the debt.

We're anchorless and quite alone,

I say to Margery;

She says we're washed in holy love,

I say we're all at sea.

I send ambassadors to scold

Their Grand Teutonic Chief

And stop all England trading till

Lynn funds that royal brief.

It’s trade that makes the world go round:

Their timber for our wool;

War by another name, not love,

Who dreams it's love's a fool.

We're anchorless and quite alone,

I say to Margery;

She says we're washed in holy love,

I say we're lost at sea.

She hears the angels' soaring songs

In whipped sails and Wash gulls;

Their wings in trade winds fair and foul,

The bumping of the hulls.

The privateers and pirates steal

Where merchants wheel and deal;

Our Hanseatic treaties keep

A kind of even keel.

We're anchorless and quite alone,

I say to Margery;

She says we're washed in holy love,

I say we're up the creek.

The biggest fish in Lynn's great pool,

Lynn's news, its Public Face;

It all comes out, or in, my Wash,

My Tuesday Market Place.

It’s trade that makes the world go round:

Their fish and pitch; our salt;

War by another name, not love,

Who dreams it's love's a dolt.

We're anchorless and quite alone,

I say to Margery;

She says we're washed in Jesu's love,

I say what good is He?

You can't wed Jesus, daughter dear,

Unless you are a nun,

There's plenty more fish in the sea

And a house and shop to run.

It’s trade that makes the world go round:

Their furs; our cloth and grain;

War by another name, not love,

Who dreams it's love's INSANE.

4. Out Of Her Mind

this creature

had various tokens

in her hearing

one was

a kind of sound

as if it were

a pair of bellows

blowing

in her ear

she being

dismayed

at this

was warned

in her soul

to have no fear

for it was

the sound

of the

Holy Ghost.

and then

Our Lord

turned it

into

the voice

of a

dove

and

afterwards

he turned

it into

the voice

of a little

bird

which is

called a

redbreast

that often sang

very merrily

in her right ear

5. The Fishwife’s Tale

A voice spoke to this creature like a Song in her heart.

"Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me…

Born before your time

It would take an eternity

To redress their abyss,

Skirting heresy.

They would fetter your soul

With wedlock-maternity,

Apron and stain,

Skirting heresy.

You fore-saw what the spirit

Of a woman could be

And clothed your flesh in it,

Flirting with heresy.

In the arms of your soul

You may take me as boldly

As a good wife her spouse,

Flirting with heresy.

The sun of love in your heart

Burns so hot and fiercely

It scares you to life,

Flirting with heresy.

This vestment of heat

Is the heat of the Holy.

It will burn away your sins,

Skirting heresy.

A voice spoke to this creature like a Song in her heart.

"Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me…

Magic water, magic sky,

What land appears to be,

Shift across your vision -

Flirting with heresy.

On Lynn's ebb and flow,

Dock and dreaming friary

Unravel like wool -

Skirting heresy.

As England revolts

In Plague and Lollardy,

Old habits cleave -

Flirting with heresy.

Your unsung fishwife Word,

Your un-nun livery,

Your Magdalene hair-shirts,

Skirting heresy.

Chat to Me without a priest;

As My Mother in Galilee,

Nurse Me like a Babe,

Flirting with heresy.

In the dance of the Hanse,

Out of step, off the quay,

Walk on water like the sun,

Skirting heresy.”

A voice spoke to this creature like a Song in her heart.

"Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me…

6. The Husband's Tale

One night as this creature lay in bed with her husband, she heard a melodious sound so sweet and delectable (surpassing all the melody that might be heard in the world) ... and after this time she never had any desire to have fleshly comownyn" (sexual intercourse) with her husband for paying the debt of matrimony was so abominable to her that she would rather have eaten and drunk the ooze and muck of the gutter.

"Upon the Ouse's stinking beach

I stand and look across,

Amid the waste, and West Lynn seems

The Eden that we've lost.

"I take the ferry there, now Lynn's

Jerusalem or Rome,

Those Walsinghams she'll chase to find

She's just as far from home.

With a bump, I bring her back to Earth,

"You’re a mother not that maid

Who sang the Song of Songs to kings,

Our class must toil and trade."

"You great lump, John, in lechery,

You waste my church-spire dreams;

Trade children, chores and chamber pots

For heaven's shining greens."

"The grass is always greener on

The other side," I say.

She says "in heaven it really is

This green hill far away."

I drag her from her saints and bones

Back here to old man flesh,

From deathless soul to perished clay

And bonds she would forget.

My vision splintered like my head

In five parts from a Fall,

Her vision capped by labouring love

Of wifedom like a pall.

Yet wife-nursing my fetid flesh

So tenderly she seems

More like an angel or a saint

Than all her church-spire dreams.

Unmarried priests can only watch

In awe, her tendering love.

"Is this the end of me?" I cry.

"No, John. You're here above."

"The grass is always greener on

The other side," I say.

She says "in heaven it really is

This green hill far away."

7. The Priest's Tale

(William Sawtrey,

Margery's parish priest and later the first man burned for his beliefs in England)

They told me that the bread became

Christ’s Body not His Ghost.

I said a priest’s no sorcerer

That did it: I was toast.

They tortured me, ‘recant

Your reasoning, or roast!’

I said ‘I cannot bear your Cross.’

That did it: I was toast.

They said a Roman prayer or Mass

Would keep me in my post.

I said ‘An English sermon’s best.’

That did it. I was toast.

‘Our Sacraments are spirit gold,’

The brassy bishops boast

‘And all that gilders isn’t God!’

That did it: I was toast.

They Credo-bashed, defrocked and lashed

My body to their post.

'Your fallen church is not the Word!'

That did it: I was toast.

They told me that the bread became

The hostage not the host.

I said ‘Man needs the bread as well.’

That did it: I was toast.

They burn me like a fallen Eve,

A holy without smoke,

I rise up like a morning star

Of love and faith and hope.

8. St Margaret's Is Burning

St Margaret's is burning but Jesus tells me

Here in my mind that all shall be well.

"Shall I carry the Sacrament towards the fire?"

Asks our priest. - Sir, yes. And to very hell.

St Margaret's is burning; I'm urging the Lord

Here in my mind, let the high heavens snow

To quench this fire and ease my heart's woe.

"A Miracle!" cries Lynn, till my heart's tears flow.

Out of my gender, out of my class and out of my mind,

Out of my body and leaving the age I was born to behind,

Where priests hurry Mass, to get back to their lusts, pies, slanders and beer:

Fruit gorged by a bear and discharged from its rear.

Now I'm old and wounded, the Lord God tells me

Here in my mind, You must go to Danzig.

I excuse you, escort you and lead you, for I

Am above your confessor, although he bans it.

Who shall be against you, the Lord God tells me

Here in my mind, then a friar says it too.

In storm and war, through slander and curse

Who shall be against, if I am with you?

Out of my gender, out of my class and out of my mind,

Out of my time and leaving the life I was born to behind,

Where priests hurry Mass, to get back to their lusts, pies, slanders and beer

And my woman's words must be wasted in tears.

9. Margery's Tears

the Archbishop

took his seat

and for so long

she melted

all into tears

and at last she cried out so loudly

that the Archbishop

and his clerics

and many people

were all astonished at her

for they had not heard

such crying before

when her crying was passed,

she came before the Archbishop

and fell down on her knees

the Archbishop saying

very

roughly

to her

why do you

weep so

woman?

she,

answering

said

sir

you shall wish

some day

you had

wept

as sorely

10. Margery's Tears Interrogated

Our Lady never cried,

so why do you?

they

asked

when my prayer

had doused the fire.

for joy of weeping

on His Passion

abused

brooding

one's

own

woes

does not

aspire

Lynn is

Mass en masse

not Norwich,

church-a-bloc.

We're one

deafened

parish

cheek-by-

blessed-

howl!

for thinking on

Christ's precious

wounds

how can I not?

which

Julian

assured me

will

make

the fiend

YOWL

11. The Pilgrim's Tale

Some would wish her in the harbour

And her floods of weeping sunk,

Some would say they are an illness

Or the ravings of a drunk.

Some say they are un-Ladylike,

Un-Saintly and untrue,

Some curse her tears with oaths so lewd

They turn her white robes blue.

Some carp that she's a Holy Joe,

"Eats no meat and drinks no wine,

Makes an altar of high table

And keeps crying all the time!"

Some say "Marge for the love of Christ,

No ass could bear your folly!"

Her confessor chides "chill out or get!

It's a pilgrimage, a Jolly!"

Some would shake her very gently

By the roaring seething throat,

Some would wish her on the ocean

In a bottomless boat.

12. Chaste Livers

and then

she was commanded

by Our Lord

to go to an anchoress

in the same city

called Julian

and so she did

and told her about the grace

that God had put into her soul

of compunction contrition

sweetness devotion

compassion with holy meditation

and high contemplation

and very many holy speeches

and converse that Our Lord

spoke to her soul

and also

many wonderful revelations

which she described

to the anchoress

to find out if there

were any deception in them

for the anchoress was expert

in such things

and could give good advice.

the anchoress

hearing the marvellous

goodness of our Lord

highly thanked God

with all her heart

for his visitation

advising this creature

to be obedient to the will

of Our Lord

and fulfil with all her might

whatever he put into her soul

if it were not against

the worship of God

and the profit of

her fellow Christians

for

if it were

then it were not

the influence of a good spirit

but an evil spirit

the Holy Ghost never urges

a thing against charity

and

if he did

he would be contrary

to his own self

for he is all charity

also

he moves a soul

to all chasteness

for chaste livers

are called the

temple of the Holy Ghost

and the Holy Ghost

makes the soul

stable and steadfast

in the right faith

and the right belief

and a double man

in soul

is always

unstable and

unsteadfast

he that is

forever doubting

like the wave

of the

sea

which is

moved and

borne about

with

the wind

13. The Anchoress's Tale

(Julian of Norwich)

Love buried me alive in here,

A dead they’ll never raise

The maid a parish comes to love,

A movement comes to praise.

No motion have I now, my course

Is inward, grave and still;

The church behind my every move,

The tomb my anchored will.

They plead with parrot prayers - O hush.

In silence are no lies.

These dreads and longings come to dust.

The spirit never dies.

‘That’s true in here and would be so

Outside and through the town

If only I had faith these tears

Are Love’s not thorns in His crown.”

O frightened child, just run to Him,

“I’m not like you – you’re dead!”

Dead to the world yet still attached,

All shall be well, He said.

He showed into my mind a nut.

I’m seeing one, they grin

In it we seek its maker, rest

Where there no rest is in.

‘You saw Eternity last May

Through Death’s wedged-open door!?’

This crucifix - like rain from eaves,

I saw its hot blood pour.

I saw in sixteen shewings how

We must – we can - abide

Dis-ease, travail and storm, for we’re

The thorn in God’s soft side.

“Which side is that?” His female side.

‘The Trinity has another?’

Christ bears us all upon His breast,

His wound’s our womb and mother.

O frightened child, just run to Him,

“I’m not like you – you’re dead!”

Dead to the world yet still attached,

All shall be well, She said.

14. 2020 Vision

some might say

her carol

wasn’t just

for christmas

but a

hymn

of the

common

people

translating

the

liturgical

latin

dove

into

lollard

robin

English

seeing through

the

sacraments

she adored

the

altars

she married

the

stained glass

she read

the

Holy Writ

she couldn’t

to the face of

GOD

15. A Lynn Carol

‘A crown of thorns to freeze your breath

The berried holly brings;

Through snowing sunlight chaste as death

The silent barn-owl wings

But now the ghostly holy dove

That bellows in your ear

Is tuned to robin-song by love

And cheerfully made clear.’

Now starry angels on the tree

Grow larger in the dusk

To heaven-blue and Eden-green

And gold and reindeer-musk.

The only gift left on the shelf,

That nothing else can rise above,

Includes all treasures, lasts forever,

And grows when shared with others: love.

And what was heard by Margery,

The Visionary of Lynn,

Rings out on tills for checkout girls

Who hear that robin sing.

"A sacred Ouse of honeyed sound

Above her dreaming bed,

She wakes as one in paradise

And leaps as from the dead.

A thrilling robin in her ear,

A rose that’s heaven scent,

A man divine to earthly eye,

All music from Him lent."

The only gift left on the shelf,

That nothing else can rise above,

Includes all treasures, lasts forever,

And grows when shared with others: love.

Afterword

The folk ballads are in ballad metre. There is no tradition of rhyme in classical or Anglo-Saxon poetry until the renaissance. It was absorbed along with much other new ‘learning’ from the Arab world between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries (the Italian renaissance sonnet for example has roots in the rhyme-patterned Persian ghazal.) Though Chaucer's use of English for literary composition at all was an innovation, his use of rhyme was distinctively 'European' in this way. The ‘folk’ ballad began as an elite courtly storytelling form but ultimately became the form in which the stories of, or popular with, or from the perspective of, the common people (eg Robin Hood) were told and sung. Margery’s own tale, emulating the elite saint narratives she loved, and with its defining pilgrimage to the Near East, seems to suit this.

It is her woman-of-the-world’s self-affirmed experience of God without the mediation of a priest, rather than any unorthodoxy in credo, (in contrast to the acceptably buried-alive, scholarly, maidenly but actually quite unorthodox Julian) that really spooks the authorities. Towards the end of the gothic horror first chapter of Margery's Book, where she describes a first pregnancy - and what modern science might term a bedevilled post-partum psychosis that makes the 20 further years of pregnancies all the more heroic - her vision of Jesus appears "in the likeness of a man, the most seemly, most beauteous, and most amiable that ever might be seen with (earthly) eye, clad in a mantle of purple silk, sitting on her bedside." This is an everyday world away from the scholarly metaphors and subtleties of contemporary mystical discourse. You could take 'this creature' from the Lynn waterfront and send her chasing after (well born, well educated) otherworldly divines but you couldn't take that waterfront out of the world-travelling wife. A worldly and married woman of the merchant class, without the English (let alone the Latin) she had nothing to support the authority of and faith in her pronouncements on God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost except her own direct experience and personal visions of them.

Her self-reference throughout in the third person as 'this creature'. This a peculiar (in fact unique) adoption of a reliable third person narrator for the first ever autobiography in English and the genre did not take it up. It gives a certain detachment from the 'autobiographical' mode, a certain deference to a greater scheme in which a divine Creator and not she is the protagonist, the object not the subject.

Margery's holy tears were her signature and caused much of the antagonism against her. She often ‘roared’ throughout Mass and at holy places on pilgrimage and any reference to Christ's Agony or Passion (including the sight of a leper) would start her off. Her fellow worshippers were deafened by it and they and the church included many (with notable exceptions like the Vicar of Sedgeford) who suspected pretence or a diabolical stimulus. Even Margery – for all her confidence in disputing the point with Archbishops - worried if they were right. She even sought out her fellow mystic the anchoress Julian of Norwich (poem no. 13) to check.

The folk ballads above were set to music and performed by our folk quartet The Penland Phezants as the musical score for Skirting Heresy Elizabeth MacDonald's ambitious historical play about Margery, in an epic production in Lynn Minster, Margery's church (September 2018). The full studio album of our score (the best work we did as a band, including John Kempe's song, Julian's song and Skirting Heresy and others) plus some dramatisations of our own, with helpful sleevenotes on the ballads, is here https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-skirting-heresy-the-life-and-times-of-margery-kempe

I played Margery's original unsympathetic amanuensis - in my triptych of dramatic monologues (The Scribe's Tale/ The Merchant's Tale/ The Wife of Lynn's Tale) about her staged at Lynn Minster - and also Fr. William Sawtrey in my musical morality play A Nice Guy staged in the courtyard of Hanse House - in July 2016.

2020 Vision can be heard in a Peacock's Tale remake of John Kempe's ballad. https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/the-mortification-of-mr-margery-2

Maz (of Peacock's Tale) as Margery at Elsing Church, Norfolk.

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The Book of Margery

Out of her body, out of her time, out of her class and out of her mind?

Afterword

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