Alan Robinson, whom I thank, shares a poem by Fr S J Forrest about the liturgical options within the Church of England before about 1980.
I'll give them one at a time; today's stanza, the first, is what an English Missal Vicar would say to you when explaining what you, as a visiting celebrant, needed to know in order to offer the Holy Sacrifice in his Church. In each case, in every succeeding stanza, the incumbent is supremely confident that what (whatever) he is himself accustomed comfortably to do is "just the ordinary thing". Aren't we all?
Just pure and unadulterated 1662;
A minimum of wise interpolations from the Missal,
The Kyrie in Greek, the proper collect and epistle,
The Secret and the Canon and the Dominus vobiscum,
(Three aves and a salve at the end would not amiss come);
To the "militant" and the "trudle" there is little need to cling,
But apart from these exceptions, just the ordinary thing.
Here "militant" refers to the "general prayer [For the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth]", as one of the rubrics at the end of the 1662 BCP Communion service puts it; but what is the "trudle"? Is this a garbled reference to the invitation "Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins…" and the following general Confession, Absolution and Comfortable Words? I've puzzled over the meaning of "trudle" in this poem for years.
ReplyDeleteIs there a line missing from the start of this? All the rest is in couplets, but there's no rhyme for 1662.
ReplyDeleteThe first line is missing:
ReplyDelete"Oh, just the usual thing you know; the B.C.P. all through,"
A footnote explains that by trudle is meant "The Invitation, etc."
Ahh, so my surmise was correct: "trudle" therefore must be an obscure piece of Anglican slang derived from "Ye who do truly".
ReplyDeleteI've heard of the Prayer of Humble Access being called the "Humble Crumble", which would seem a similar mumbled mispronunciation.
Since, in the interwar years, sung masses were usually non-communicating, it was very common to omit the entire section, known as the 'Communion Devotions' that is, the invitation, confession, absolution and comfortable words.
ReplyDelete