ABSTRACT
This song belongs to the common heritage of western European lyrics, in Latin, Old French, Provençal, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English. Most of them have survived in undatable manuscripts bereft of the musical settings associated with them. Specifically, it follows the pattern of the chanson d’aventure—‘song of chance meeting.’ The genre eventually sank to the level of nursery rhymes, such as “Where Are You Going, My Pretty Maid?” The brilliance of meter, alliteration, and refrain, however, clearly elevates Now Springs the Spray above most examples of the genre, whether early or late. The author of the religious lyric The Five Joys of Mary (p. 205, below) may have deliberately imitated the opening line of the first stanza.
