‘Put the Load Right on Me’: Langland on The Incarnation (With Apologies to the Band)

Abstract

For heuene myȝte nat holden it, it was so heuy of hymselue Til it hadde of þe erþe yoten his fille, And whan it hadde of þis fold flessh and blood taken Was neuere leef vpon lynde lighter þerafter … (B 1.153–56)1 Since this quotation returns Kane and Donaldson's over-edited text to the forms of the archetype of Piers Plowman B, a translation is in order: ‘Love was so inherently heavy that heaven could not restrain it until it had completely poured itself out on the earth. And when it had done this, and taken human form of the earth, there was never a linden leaf that was lighter (or more flighty)’.2 The passage contrasts the weight of divine longing and sacrifice with their strikingly paradoxical capacity to ascend, ultimately to become ‘ledere of þe lordes folk of heuene | And a mene…bitwene þe kyng and þe commune’ (159–60). The passage thus exhibits the mystery inherent in trinitarian theology, the Son as coexisting with the Father and as expressing, in his love—which impels his incarnation—the mercy inherent in divine justice: ‘Loue…þe lawe shapeþ: | Vpon man for hise mysdedes þe mercyment he taxeþ’ (161–62). The final halfline, of course, raises an additional paradox, that a ‘tax’ here is a release.