2Godes wenche. “God’s handmaid.” Compare Luke 1:38: “And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.” Although there are some positive usages of the term wenche, it is not a word commonly applied to Mary; see MED, wench(e) (n.).back to note source
4Bidde we. In the Jesus sequence of poems, many closing stanzas open with this phrase, which signal a final prayer. Because the first letter B is always a red colored capital, these standard endings are quite noticeable to a reader of the manuscript. Compare The Passion of Jesus Christ (art. 1), line 547; Poema Morale (art. 3), line 389; The Saws of Saint Bede (art. 4), line 349; Doomsday (art. 13), line 41; and Fire and Ice (art. 21), line 2.back to note source
wende hwer we wende. “going where we go.” Even in an Annunciation lyric, we encounter the eschatological thread so prominent in the Jesus 29 lyrics: the worrying uncertainty of one’s destination after death and at Doomsday. Compare Poema Morale (art. 3), line 85; Three Sorrowful Tidings (art. 23), lines 5–6; The Proverbs of Alfred (art. 24), lines 109–110; and A Homily on Sooth Love (art. 26), lines 16, 22. On the tradition, see Woolf, pp. 86–87.back to note source