Although this poem is unique to Jesus 29, The Five Joys of Our Lady Saint Mary addresses a subject very commonly found in early trilingual English miscellanies like this one. The topic of Mary’s Five Joys arises, for example, in two Harley lyrics — An Autumn Song and The Five Joys of the Virgin — and two Harley items in French — The Joys of Our Lady and Prayer on the Five Joys of Our Lady; see CHMS, 2:222–25, 2:272–75, 2:280–85, 3:274–75.

The Jesus 29 Five Joys enumerates in stanzas 1–5 the same traditional Five Joys found in the French Harley poems: Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension, and Assumption. Other formulations exist, as when the English Harley Five Joys names Epiphany instead of Assumption. In more than a dozen extant Middle English lyrics on the subject, Mary’s joys are usually five in number, although patterns of seven, eight, twelve, or fifteen joys also occur. In Jesus 29, the speaker asks, in stanza 6, for Mary’s intercession with a directness similar to An Orison to Our Lady (art. 8). In stanza 7, the petition then leads to Jesus, who is thereby approached in a gradual manner, via Mary. The worshipful care in proceeding from Mary to Jesus exemplifies a formal prayer method also found in the religious lyrics of Harley 2253 (CHMS, 2:435). On other Jesus 29 poems with Marian content, see the headnote to An Orison to Our Lady (art. 8).

The Five Joys of Our Lady Saint Mary is one of four poems in Jesus 29 composed in septenary long lines with internal rhymes, grouped in stanzas of four lines. The most important of these is Love Rune (art. 19); the others are Fire and Ice and A Homily on Sooth Love (arts. 21, 26). Will and Wit (art. 9), found only in the Cotton MS, has this meter as well. Previous editors have printed these poems in 8-line stanzas, abababab3–4. On the editorial presentation adopted here, in accordance with the scribe’s practice, see the headnote to Love Rune; and Fein, “Designing English,” pp. 50–51, 57–58.

[Fol. 181r–v. NIMEV 1833. DIMEV 3019. Compare Fein, MWME, 11:4200, 4354–55 [27]. Quire: 4. Meter: 28 septenary lines with internal rhymes, in seven 4-line stanzas rhyming aaaa7 (or (ab)(ab)(ab)(ab)7). Layout: Long lines with caesuras, and medial and end punctuation. Colored capitals mark the beginning of each 4-line stanza. Editions: Morris, pp. 87–88; Patterson, pp. 151–53; Brown, pp. 65–67, 196; Saupe, pp. 144–46, 260. Other MSS: None.]