Plain Language

And yet there is nothing as powerful as plain language, as this well-known Middle English religious lyric shows:

Nou goth sonne vnder wod,

Me reweth, Marie, thi faire rode.

Nou goth sonne vnder tre,

Me reweth, Marie, thy sone and the.

The first line describes the sun’s rays slipping behind the woods. But the poem’s early Christian audience would have known that “wod” and “tre” could also refer to the Cross. Perhaps we are not looking at a forest, but at the sun reddening behind Calvary, highlighting the crosses as it descends.