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Studies in Philology, Volume 107, Number 4, Fall 2010, pp. 429-464 (Article)
"At least one fifteenth-century reader-poet found Lydgate positively mystical and transformed Lydgate’s Churl and Bird into an overtly alchemical poem. This version survives in an important alchemical manuscript, British Library MS Harley 2407, among the smears and stains of surrounding recipes actively pursued. In early modern England the same version appears in one of the major alchemical collections in early print, Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (hereafter TCB).2 To this day some scholars continue to accept the alchemical Churl and Bird as an anonymous work in the tradition of hermetic poetry rather than a transmuted moral fable by England’s Lancastrian laureate."
https://sci-hub.box/10.1353/sip.2010.0005
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Some background:
Elias Ashmole included an alchemical adaptation of John Lydgate’s 15th-century fable [b]The Churl and the Bird[/b] in his 1652 collection [b]Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum[/b] , where it appears under the title Hermes Bird. [1, 2]
Key Details- [b]Original Poem:[/b] John Lydgate’s original fable tells of a churl who traps a singing bird in a garden; the bird tricks him into setting her free by claiming she possesses a magical gem, offering a moral lesson against greed and gullibility. [1, 2]
- [b]Alchemical Reworking:[/b] Anonymous medieval adapters (such as the version in British Library, Harley MS 2407) injected alchemical allegories, imagery, and extra stanzas into the narrative, transforming the bird's capture and release into a metaphor for the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone. [1, 2]
- [b]Ashmole’s Context:[/b] In the [b]Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum[/b], Ashmole preserved and annotated these vernacular alchemical poems to demonstrate a continuous native tradition of English natural philosophy and transmutation. [1, 2, 3]
In his annotations within the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652), [b]Elias Ashmole[/b] directly unpacks the added alchemical allegories of [b]Hermes Bird[/b] , validating it as a brilliant instructional cipher for the Great Work. Rather than viewing it as a simple moral fable, Ashmole frames the bird, her instructions, and her interaction with the churl as precise representations of laboratory and spiritual transmutation. [1, 2]
Ashmole’s commentary focuses on several key interpretations of the poem's symbols:
1. The Bird as Mercury (The Philosophical Mercury)
Ashmole aligns with the tradition that the titular bird is a representation of [b]Mercurius[/b] or the volatile [b]Philosopher's Mercury[/b] . In alchemy, mercury is elusive, swift, and prone to evaporating out of a vessel. The bird being trapped by the churl represents the alchemist's initial capture of this "volatile spirit". [1, 2]
2. "Eating My Wings to Make Me Tame" (Fixation)
The alchemical version of the poem explicitly includes the famous riddle found across medieval texts like the Ripley Scrolls: "The Bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame." [1, 2]- [b]Ashmole's interpretation:[/b] The "eating of wings" represents the crucial chemical process of [b]fixation[/b] or [b]sublimation[/b]. By consuming its own wings, the bird destroys its ability to fly away. In the laboratory, this means turning a volatile, gas-emitting substance into a stable, non-volatile solid compound. Once the feathers are gone, Ashmole notes it "standeth still there as a stone." [1, 2, 3]
3. The Churl as the Unskilled Alchemist (or "Sophister")
In John Lydgate's original fable, the churl is greedy and foolish, letting the bird escape because he doesn't truly understand her worth. [1]- [b]Ashmole's interpretation:[/b] Ashmole uses the churl as an allegory for the [b]ignorant practitioner[/b] or the greedy "puffers" of alchemy. The churl represents an operator who lacks "true knowledge" and acts out of covetousness. Because he treats the volatile spirit (the bird) with blunt, unrefined force, the spiritual matter slips through his fingers, leaving him empty-handed. [1]
4. The Three Precious Stones (The Stages of the Work)
When the bird negotiates her release, she promises to tell the churl about three magical gemstones.- [b]Ashmole's interpretation:[/b] Ashmole and medieval glosses treat these three stones as the primary color phases and benchmarks of the Great Work—traditionally the [b]Nigredo (blackness)[/b], [b]Albedo (whiteness)[/b], and [b]Rubedo (redness)[/b]. The final stone represents the ultimate realization of the [b]Philosopher’s Stone[/b], capable of transmuting metals and quickening the dead. [1, 2, 3]
5. The Garden and the Sea
Ashmole’s text places the bird in a garden that transforms allegorically into a "Sea" ("In the Sea withouten lesse, Standeth the Bird of Hermes"). [1]
[b]Sir Isaac Newton[/b] purchased his physical copy of Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum in 1669 for £1.80. It became one of his most heavily studied and "favorite books," packed with dense handwritten marginalia and textual cross-references. [1]
When analyzing Hermes Bird and adjacent 15th-century verses in the compendium, Newton approached the poetry not as literature, but as a coded, highly technical laboratory manual. [1, 2]
1. Translating the Metaphors into Lab Operations
Newton used his marginal notes to strip away the allegorical poetry and replace it with direct chemical keywords. [1]- Where the poem describes the magical actions of the bird or its transformation, Newton would write [b]Latin translations and operational glosses[/b] in the margins, such as "distillate mercurium philosophicum" (distill the philosophical mercury). [1]
- He used specific shorthand abbreviations in his margins like [b]"Phil:"[/b] (Philosophical explanation) or [b]"Expl:"[/b] (Explanatory note) to isolate the exact moments where the poem shifted from a narrative story to a structural recipe for creating the Philosopher's Stone. [1]
2. Deep Focus on the "Bird of Hermes" and Mercury
Newton’s alchemical research was profoundly focused on metallic transmutation, alloys, and the nature of volatile spirits. Annotations across his texts reveal that he paid meticulous attention to any mention of the [b]philosophical mercury[/b] (the "Bird"). In the margins of these specific verses, Newton frequently added [b]cross-references to other authorities[/b] , linking Ashmole's poems to the writings of Eirenaeus Philalethes (George Starkey) and his treatises on manipulating mercury. [1, 2, 3]
3. Historical and Chronological Verification
Newton possessed a deeply analytical, chronological mind. Even within allegorical works, he fact-checked historical timelines. In his copy of the Theatrum, he explicitly calculated and wrote down the exact reign dates of the monarchs to whom these medieval poems were originally dedicated (for instance, noting precisely that King Edward IV "raigned from 1460 to 1483") to anchor the lineage of the alchemical knowledge. [1]
4. Dog-Earing for Quick Reference
Beyond writing in the margins, Newton’s copies of alchemical texts—now preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge—bear his highly distinct, aggressive [b]"dog-earing" practice[/b] . Rather than just folding a corner, Newton would fold the page over deeply so that the tip of the corner pointed precisely to a specific line of text or riddle on the page that he intended to replicate or test in his laboratory. [1, 2]
5. Independent Notebook Transcripts
Newton did not just write inside the book; he also created companion documents. He meticulously [b]hand-copied excerpts of English alchemical poetry[/b] out of the Theatrum into small, folded paper notebooks. He used these transcripts to cross-examine different manuscript traditions, comparing Ashmole’s printed 1652 text against early handwritten variants (like the Sloane Manuscripts) to find out where words had been changed or corrupted over time. [1, 2, 3]
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