The Historical Mystery of the Villanelle Charge
by Cynthia Joyce Clay
Finding that the short Charge I
had been sent was a villanelle was thrilling. I thought I had a
poem by Yeats on my hands because of the the skill with which it
was written and because he was the only poet of high caliber that
I knew was interested in the occult. If Yeats had not written it,
then perhaps the poem was very old, older than the first know
Charge which had appeared in Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia
in 1899 (Hutton, p. 143). My search for the origins of the
incomplete villanelle version of the Charge has led me to three
startling conclusions. The first is that the fragment is by
William Butler Yeats. The second is that he wrote it prior to the
publication of Leland’s Aradia. The third, and
perhaps most startling, is that lines it contains which most
pagans and historians of paganism will recognize as part of
Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law (Crowley, 19, I.58)
did not originate with Crowley.
I first proceeded to track down the origins of the poetical form
the villanelle. The villanelle was originally an Italian dance,
song, and poem called the villanella (Arnold, pp 770-773). As a
dance and song, it was thought to have been performed by commedia
dell’arte troupes during the sixteenth century (Dobbins, pp
773). The dance was supposed to be “rustic and gay”
with the name coming from the word “vilano” meaning
“a peasant” (Chujoy & Manchester, 1967, p. 947) and
the villanella was said to be “any Country dance, gig,
roundelay, song, ballad, dance or hornpipe, such as Country
wenches sing” ( Florio, 1611). The villanelle first appears
in France in 1547 (McFarland, 1987, p. 27) at the court of Henri
II and Catherine de Medici. Although it is not known exactly how
the villanelle came into France (McFarland, p. 27) I assume it
was through Catherine de Medici who was a patron of the arts and
was known to have brought many Italian dances to France (Horst,
1940, p. 5 & 43). As a poem, the villanelle first took
different forms, and was written by most of the Pleiade poets
with the one notable exception of Ronsard, but the final and most
famous form was invented by Jean Passerat in the late 1590’s
(McFarland, pp 28-32). (The Pleiade poets were a group of poets
who sought to establish French as a legitimate language of
poetry. Ronsard is most famous for creating the concept of the
Three Unities which became a strict rule of neoclassical French
play construction).
Villanelles were not written in England in English until 1874
(McFarland, pp. 61-61) a full three hundred years after Passeret
invented his villanelle form. The form used by the English (and
American) poets was Passerat’s (McFarland, p. 62). However,
villanelles were written in England in the sixteenth century
(McFarland, p. 7); they just were not written in English. There
are two possible ways that the villanelle entered England. One is
through Thomas Wyatt who had traveled to Italy as an ambassador
and brought back to England Italian poetry forms that were new to
English. His poems and translations of Petrarch were published in
1557 in the first anthology of English poetry called
“Sonnets & Songs” (Adams, 1987, p. 138). However,
the poetical forms Wyatt brought over are said to be the “erza
rima, ottava rima, and the sonnet”
(Schmidt, 1999, p. 123), so there is some question whether Wyatt
did indeed bring over the villanelle. The villanelle probably
entered England by way of Mary Queen of Scots who had been
brought up at the French court of Catherine de Medici and Henri
II, and who "delighted in poetry and the poets, most of all
in M. de Ronsard, M. du [sic] Bellay...“ (Fraser, 1969, p.
79). When Mary Queen of Scots returned to Scotland she set up a
private library that included the poetry of Du Bellay and
“all the poets she had known and loved in France”
(Fraser, p. 180). Du Bellay and “all the poets” were
the Pleiade poets who were writing villanelles.
Mary Queen of Scots also brought to Scotland the dances that she
had learned in France (Fraser, p.182). These would have been the
Italian dances that Catherine de Medici had brought to France:
“if we owe the renaissance of dancing to Italy, we owe its
development to France” (Horst, 1940 p. 5) This connection of
dancing is tantalizing because of the attributing of villanellas
to dances performed by the commedia dell’arte. The commedia
dell’arte is an Italian theater form that flourished between
1550 and 1750 and had two probable sources of origin: “the
Latin theater, particularly from early mime shows and farce”
and “ritual, ceremonial, and carnival entertainments”
(Cohen, 1998, p. 188). These two sources are both from the
Etruscan civilization. Latin (Roman) theater arose directly from
Etruscan theater as would have the ritual and ceremonial vestiges
(Brocket, 1982, pp. 56-57) found in the commedia dell’arte.
This tie to the Etruscan civilization is relevant to the Charge I
was given to learn in light of Raven Grimassi's claim in his book
Italian Witchcraft: The Old Religion of Southern Europe (1995/2000,
p. 5) that “in northern Italy lies the region of Toscana, or
Tuscany. In this area dwell the descendants of an ancient people
related to the Etruscans. It is here the Old Religion of Italy
has been preserved by Witches...” and Grimassi in his Hereditary
Witchcraft: Secrets of the Old Religion (1999,
p. 223) accepts Charles Leland’s claim that a woman named
Aradia was spreading witchcraft in the later half of the
fourteenth century. Grimassi’s assertions link with the
history of the villanella in that there was a revival of Italian
music in 1480 associated with the frottola of northern Italy with
the frottola being the embryonic stage of the villanella
(McFarland, p. 19). Intriguingly, commedia dell’arte arises
from the Etruscan civilization; the villanella dance arises from
the frottola in the same region; and there is a legend of witchy
activity arising in the same region at the same time. Since
commedia dell’arte troupes traveled from place to place and
since the Aradia legends have it (Griamassi, 1999, pp. 203-210)
that Aradia’s followers had to go on the run, it would make
sense that people on the run would turn to performing as a means
of earning a living. The speculation does arise (albeit a wild
speculation) that Catherine de Medici, who practiced astrology,
(Fraser, p. 145) or someone in her retinue might have brought
some of the legendary Aradia’s teachings to France. Even if
there never were such a person such as Aradia with no secret
cult, there still may have been people practicing Italian magic
in Catherine de Medici's retinue. "Because it was considered
a necessary survival technique, folk magical practice was
diffused throughout the population" in Italy (Magliocco,
2000) making it plausible that Catherine de Medici herself would
have practiced some magic. Some of the magical pracitices of
Italy had stemmed from pagan times (Magliocco, 2000). The
"Villanelle Charge" was probably written before
Leland’s Aradia was published, and so this
chronology is an attempt to explain how the "Villanelle
Charge" could contain lines that so closely relate to ritual
of the moon given in Aradia by Leland. The tantalizing
historical ties between Mary Queen of Scotts and magic continue
with Mary Queen of Scots' return to Scotland.
Mary Queen of Scots eventually married James Hepburn, Earl of
Bothswell, a man who had been accused of studying the “black
arts” while he was in France (where he had met Mary) and of
whom “there was always a persistent rumour” about
witchcraft (Fraser, p. 149). Bothswell’s mistress,
“Margaret Lady Athol was thought to have the power of
casting spell,s having diligently studied with a magician”
(Fraser, p. 149). When Mary Stuart was giving birth to the future
King James I of England, a woman was present who was to endeavor
by magic to pass Mary’s labor pains onto another woman
(Fraser, p. 149).
It is to be noted that the Celtic Bard tradition was still extant
in Scotland at this time (Corkery, p. 30) and that those of the
Bardic Tradition were at times called witches (Robinson p. 134).
In the eighteenth century a ritual still existed for creating
poetry that involved lying on one’s back with a stone upon
one’s belly in a dark room (Corkery, p. 30) the metaphor of
which is clearly that of giving birth to a poem. In the Gaelic
idiom used in a 1450 Bardic poem of a Scots aristocratic poet,
the word for self is feminine (Williamson, 1999, p. 7). These two
details are arresting when it is considered that the pagan,
Bardic tradition, which was a magical tradition (Mathews, 1997,
p. 12), celebrated in tale a battle goddess, Morrigan, called the
Great Queen (Williamson, p. 24) Thus, Bards who were sometimes
called witches celebrated a goddess who was called a Great Queen.
Witchcraft first appeared in the Scottish criminal code in 1543
(Fraser, p. 149); an intensive witch-hunt was commenced in 1560
(Gunn, 1996/99), and the Freemasons, a secret society, was
established in Scotland at the end of this very same century
(Hutton, p. 52). My supposition is that what was left of the
traditions and beliefs of the Celtic Bardic tradition were
incorporated into the Freemasons in an effort to avoid the Bardic
magic being associated with witchcraft since treatment of those
accused of witchcraft was so terrifyingly horrible. If so, the
notion of a goddess as a Queen of Witches, Queen of Bards, may
have been preserved by the Freemasons to later reappear in a poem
by Yeats. It is possible that any elements of sorcery or
witchcraft brought from France in Mary Stuart’s retinue may
also have been incorporated into the Freemasons. Another
suggestive piece of history is that the Celtic Christian clergy
(who were converted from their pagan beliefs) were “not in
unison with the theology of the rest of Christendom” (
Maclean, 1970/1993, p. 20) and there was a saying that “The
Celtic Church gave love” while the “Roman Church gave
law “ (Maclean, p. 21). Perhaps the Celtic clergy and their
adherents sought to practice their interpretation of Christianity
within the safety of the Freemasons. If so, the reference to love
as a ritual in the "Villanelle Charge" could have
stemmed from the Celtic interpretation of Christianity.
There is one last tie of Mary Queen of Scots to the ancient
Etruscans and again it is with the commedia dell’arte. The
commedia dell’arte barely touched England (and Scotland) at
all with the one exception of the Punch and Judy puppet shows
which were based on the commedia dell’arte. Apparently Mary
Queen of Scots “loved to watch the plays of puppets, a new
fashion which had lately spread out of Italy” (Fraser, p.
180). She would have been watching Punch and Judy shows, and
since she spoke Italian, it is possible the puppet masters were
Italian.
By the 1680’s Freemason lodges following the Scottish
framework were established in England (Hutton, p. 54). Time goes
by until, in 1874 the first villanelle in English is written, and
in 1881 four Freemasons, William Wescott, Alphonsus Woodward,
William Woodman, and Samuell Mathers, created the secret Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn (Hutton, p. 75). William Butler Yeats
was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1890 (Jeffares, 1984, p.
xvii; Raine, 1990. p. 180) but “prepartory studies began
some time before his admission...and his association with the
Order might therefore have dated back to date he gives [Yeats
gives in his Autobiographies]--1887” (Raine, p.
180).
Although here I have charted a history leading neatly to Yeats, there were other Pagan poets who wrote villanelles and were contemporaries of Yeats. Therefore, I now turn to a discussion of the possible authors of the "Villanelle Charge" and explanation of why I believe Yeats originally composed it.
Chronology of events related to the Villanelle Charge
Argument that Yeats wrote the fragment
copyright 2000 Cynthia Joyce Clay all rights reserved