Is there a central character from the Nativity more glossed-over than Joseph? I get it, he wasn't really Jesus' father, if you're firm in your faith anyway. But he still got all the responsibilities of helping to raise an infant and none of the credit for helping bring the King of the Jews into the world, and keeping him alive --against all odds--into adulthood. And then, at least in the text of the Bible, he just kind of fades into the ether sometime in that obscure period of Jesus' adolescence. What a raw deal! Today I'm set on making sure that Joseph gets his 2-cents in with the unfairly obscure medieval "Cherry Tree Carol."
"I'm getting too old for this shit."
The roots of this one go way back, further than I've gone on this blog so far, back to some early Christian texts not included in the modern Bible. For as long as it is, it's important to remember that the Bible as we know it is the final cut of many religious accounts that were patched together to form a consensus for the Christian faith. Most of this hashing-out took place in the 4th century, partially at the Council of Nicea in 351, but continued well into the medieval period as more texts were discovered. Many of the texts that didn't make the cut were burned to keep from interfering with the newly-established canon of the religion. The surviving texts left on the cutting room floor are now known as the New Testament apocrypha, meaning "things hidden." One of these is the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which seeks to fill some gaps in the story of Jesus' childhood and which seems fixated on pointing out how old Joseph was compared to Mary. Whether it is truth or fable is a matter of faith and deeper historical digging, but the modern consensus sets its origin around 600 A.D.
The story in Pseudo-Matthew takes place during Jesus, Mary, and Joseph's refuge in Egypt to escape Herod's massacre, with which you're all intimately familiar. According to it, Mary asks Joseph to stop at a cherry tree and pick some cherries for her. Joseph, raising what I think is a perfectly fair point, spitefully tells Mary that the father of the child can come pick the cherries himself, since apparently he wasn't as sold as most biblical characters on the concept of the immaculate conception. Jesus then, in a totally not creepy display, commands the branch of the cherry tree to bend so that Mary can pick the cherries, and then commands it back up when she's done. Joseph witnesses the miracle and, while certainly creeped out, rescinds his words and accepts that Jesus is the son of God.
"...Jesus..."
You said it, Dude. Eventually the story somehow morphed into taking place during Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem, during which time Joseph was less than enthralled with his new wife's pregnancy (there's biblical evidence for that one). In this version, and in an even less creepy display, Jesus commands the cherry tree to bend from inside the womb. This is the basis for the lyrics to "The Cherry Tree Carol."
The carol itself traces its roots back to a cycle of English "mystery plays," another concept with which you are all intimately familiar. The plays which featured "The Cherry Tree Carol" are called the N-Town plays, with N-Town thought to be short for Norfolk (not to be confused with Coventry) where the plays were performed annually in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The original manuscript of these plays survives today, and it includes the lyrics to "Cherry Tree" as part of Play 12: Joseph's Doubt about Mary. As to the tune, its origins are more ambiguous, and the lyrics have been set to quite a few over the past five centuries. Francis James Child included "Cherry Tree" as ballad #52 of 306 in his famed The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The fact that these are called "The Child Ballads" after a man and not in reference to them being children's songs comes as news to me. Americanized versions (such as the one up top) of many of these old English ballads were discovered well-preserved in Appalachia, and recorded by Cecil Sharp in the early 20th century.
However, England is without at doubt the popular home of this carol, and so I'll leave you with a distinctly English version, and the most widely-accepted arrangement of the tune, from King's College Choir:
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