Last week I went to pick up my grand daughter from Infant School and I arrived a little early. As I waited outside the main doors I could hear music coming from one of the classrooms. The song was, "Green Grow the Rushes O." For a few seconds my childhood came back to me. We used to sing the very same song when we where small children. So What, you may ask?
I don't know if you colonials have ever heard of this song but it's been in the wind in all the villages for many many years. Lying in bed last night I tried to remember the words of this folk song but most of it had gone from my hazy old head. So I got the books out.
Some of the references are biblical, but I did not know who were the lilywhite boys, the rivals, the proud walkers and the April rainers were. Also the symbols at your door, and the bright shiners.
The other name of this folk song is The Dilly Song, and apparently it is one of the most mysterious of old oral folk songs. Versions of this song are found in German, Flemish, Scots, Breton, Medieval Latin, Hebrew, Moravian, Greek and French. While the song is is clearly religious, it is not originally Christian. The traditional version has ten verses but two verses have been added to bring it inline with the twelve apostles.
After looking at several different explanations a possibility could be that the lily-white boys are Christ and John the Baptist. The three rivals are the magi, the six proud walkers are the water pot bearers at the feast at Cana, the eight bold rangers (April rainers?) may be the archangels, the five symbols at your door could possibly be the Hebriaic pentagon, but more likely the five wounds of Christ, the nine bright shiners could be the the nine joys of Mary, the seven stars may be the Great Bear.
Or the six proud walkers may be the burghers of Calais, the rivals are the three lovelies that Paris had to judge. The symbols at your door are the marks of lamb's blood on the entrances to the Hebrews homes in Egypt during the plagues, the first Passover.
Then in verse ten the White Goddess. Robert Graves equates the letters D and T (the 7th annd 8th letters of the Beth-Luis-Nion tree alphabet) with the lily-white boys. D is the sacred Druiic oak which rules the waxing year and T is the evergreen oak or holly, the bloody oak which rules the waning part of the year.
Jesus is often identified with the holly but it was not the holly king but the oak king who was crucified on a T-shaped cross. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (oak and holly) whoagreed to behead each other every other New Year. (Midsummer and Midwinter.
It just goes to show that some folk law is timeless and a little song sang by small children can have it,s roots embedded in Biblical and folk history.