Adam Lay Y’Bounden is a 15th-century English Christian text of unknown authorship. It takes as its theme the Fall of Man, as described in the Book of Genesis.
Originally a song text, no contemporary musical settings survive, although there are many notable modern choral settings of the text, such as that by Benjamin Britten (A Ceremony of Carols). The manuscript in which the poem is found isheld by the British Library, which dates the work to c.1400 and speculates that the lyrics may havebelonged to a wandering minstrel. Other poems included on the same page in the manuscript include I have a gentil cok, the famous lyric poem I syng of a mayden and two riddle songs – A minstrel’s begging song and I have a yong suster. Analysis of the dialect places them within the song traditionof East Anglia and more specifically Norfolk. The texts of the songs were first printed by Victorian antiquarian Thomas Wright in 1836, who speculated that a number of these songs were intended for use in mystery plays.
