The third of a series looking at the stories behind some Christmas Carols, this one is In the Bleak Mid Winter.
This was written by the English poet Christina Rossetti. Her brothers Dante Gabriel and William Michael gave birth to a nineteenth-century art movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, for which the beautiful Christina often served as a model.
In the first verse In the bleak midwinter, Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow… she creates a dreary and desolate image of the world into which the infant Jesus appeared by drawing on the experience of a British winter. She is not suggesting that it literally snowed in Bethlehem, but is drawing on a long-established literary idea of associating snow with Christ’s birth.
In the often omitted third verse which includes … A breastful of milk, And a mangerful of hay… explores the intimacy of the manger scene.
The last verse; What can I give him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a wise man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give him; Give my heart. It has been suggested that when these words were written, women were largely excluded from the professions and from higher education. Like the shepherds, she was not employed; like the wise men, Rossetti held no degree. This gives a special sharpness and poignancy to the last verse for those who wish to find it.