Whose hands? Another possible case of cumulative authorship

A prose poem meditation beginning "Christ has no body now but yours" is frequently attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila, though sometimes instead to St. Catherine of Siena. You can hear a version of the text here, set to music by David Ogden:


Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJfmuVWMVnQ

However, as noted here:

http://anunslife.org/2006/09/20/saint-teresa-of-avila-prayer/#comment-260

the attribution to St. Teresa seems mistaken. I have yet to find anything like them in scholarly editions of St. Teresa's works. I have yet to meet anyone who can give a citation to any attested words of St. Teresa that can be the source of this poem.

So I tried tracing the words themselves. For now, at least, I believe the poem to be a work of cumulative authorship, like the text of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" that is found in the Episcopal Church's Hymnal 1982. In the case of "Christ has no body now but yours", the work is principally by two authors: Methodist minister Mark Guy Pearse (1842-1930), and Quaker medical missionary Sarah Elizabeth Rowntree (dates unknown.) But the poem circulates in various versions which also show minor adjustments by others.

In my present reconstruction (which may change as I gain additional information) the Rev. Mr. Pearse is responsible for the second half of the poem. He spoke as follows in a sermon delivered on January 3rd, 1888, in Steinway Hall, Portman Square, London:

Now you, my brothers and sisters, are the eyes through which Christ's compassion is to look out upon this world, and yours are the lips through which His love is to speak; yours are the hands with which He is to bless men, and yours the feet with which He is to go about doing good--through His Church, which is His body.
--Evangelical Christendom, v. 42, February 1st, 1888, p. 46

Pearse cites no sources for his words other than, of course, the Bible.

A few years later Sarah Elizabeth Rowntree used Mr. Pearse's words, which she acknowledged to be his, and to which she added the first half of the poem. Here is the report from the Quaker periodical The British Friend

Sarah Eliza Rowntree gave an interesting account of the recent establishment of the "Home" in Pearl Street, and the progress of the Mission there. She appealed for more workers to assist its further usefulness, concluding with some words of Mark Guy Pearse, "Remember Christ has no human body now upon the earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours, my brothers and sisters, are the eyes through which Christ's compassion has to look upon the world, and yours are the lips with which His love has to speak. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless men now, and yours the feet with which He is to go about doing good through His Church which is His body."
--The British Friend, volume 1, number 1, 1892, p. 15

Around the same time John Wilhelm Rowntree (1868-1905) (I suspect a cousin of Sarah Elizabeth's though I cannot yet confirm it) used the words in a sermon on "The Place of Religion in Modern Life". In the outline for this sermon that was published posthumously in 1906, the piece stood as follows:

Remember Christ has now no human body upon earth but yours; no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which His compassion is to look upon the world, yours are the lips through which His love is to speak, yours are the hands with which He is to bless, and yours the feet with which He is to go about doing good--through the church which is His body.
--from "The Place of Religion in Modern Life" (notes for a sermon), in Joshua Rowntree, ed., Palestine Notes and Other Papers by John Wilhelm Rowntree, Hadley Brothers, London, 1906, p. 106.

John Wilhelm's notes contain no attribution, either to Pearse or to Sarah Elizabeth, or to anyone else. John Wilhelm's words also differ in a few details from Sarah Elizabeth's, making him possibly the first of many who have adapted the text over the decades.

Update:It is of course possible that it was John Wilhelm (or even someone else) who added the first part to Mr. Pearse's words. But Sarah Elizabeth remains the first one on record to have spoken the whole poem in something like the form it now has.

I might as well end with something that St. Teresa did write. Or at least, she is said to have had it on a bookmark in her breviary, and the scholars seem to have accepted it has her work.

Letrilla
Nada te turbe,
nada te espante;
todo se pasa.
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia
todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene,
nada le falta;
solo Dios basta.

The Queen's Government proves itself utterly clueless

The Government of the U.K. has released details of the proposal known as the Digital Economy Bill. The bill contains a number of proposals involving the maintenance and upgrade of the UK's national digital computer network. Lurking among other proposals that might be reasonable is, however, is the following clunker:

creating a robust legal and regulatory framework to combat illegal file sharing and other forms of online copyright infringement and give Ofcom a specific new responsibility to significantly reduce this practice, including two specific obligations on Internet Service Providers: the notification of unlawful activity and, for alleged serial-infringers, collation of data to allow rights holders to obtain court orders to force the release of personal details, enabling legal action to be taken against them;

As discussed here, this will require internet service providers to serve as the entertainment syndicates' private copyright cops. Lousy public policy all around.

Mike Masnick inverviews Bill Patry

There is an interesting interview with Bill Patry over at Techdirt. The former professor, now a corporate lawyer for Google, states that he began in copyright holding a position close to copyright maximalism, but his views began to evolve when, as a member of Congressional Committee staff, he began to reflect more deeply on copyright's public purposes.

1998 was a watershed year for me, with term extension and the anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA, which, in tandem represent the Rubicon for me, the point at which copyright became unmoored from its fundamental purposes.

Indeed, back in "the days of '98" I found then Professor Patry's 1997 journal article "The Failure of the American Copyright System: Protecting the Idle Rich" (72 Notre Dame Law Review 907, May 1997) to be helpful and inspiring as I was trying to develop and articulate my own copyright philosophy.

Mike asks, "For many of us who are concerned about what copyright law has become, what do you think is the most effective way to change things?" Patry's answer is

I would talk to Michael Geist in Canada. He is, to me, the single most effective advocate for the public voice in copyright debates. He is also respected by many Canadian government officials. We do not have anyone remotely like him. It's not enough to rail about things you don't like, or have a following of people who idolize you. And that, unfortunately, is the rut we are in here.

This is perhaps one of the most important statements in this important interview. American conditions are very different from Canadian, of course. What would it take to develop a voice on behalf of the public domain that politicians would hear? If it can't be done nationally at first, can it be done in one state, so that the Senators of at least one state, before they cast their votes on copyright matters, have the decency to consult those who speak for the public domain? If it can't be done in one state, can it be done in one congressional district, so that there is at least one Congressman who is willing at least to listen to those who would challenge the maximalists' lies?

Copyright scorecard--what have we gotten in exchange for giving up our freedom?

Over the past 50 years, the copyright monopolists have gotten almost everything they asked for in expansions of copyright:

1) The copyright act of 1976, which greatly expanded U.S. copyright's scope and duration both.
2) The elimination of the renewal requirement in the early 1990s.
3) A levy on all blank digital audio tapes.
4) An open-ended anti-bootlegging provision forbidding trade in unauthorized recordings of public musical and dramatic performances.
5) The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which extended pre-1978 copyright from 75 years to a whopping 95 years from publication.
6) The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which added additional barriers, in the form of its "device" and "circumvention" provisions, to the public's use of digital works.

For this great give-away to the robber-barons, the public has gotten very little in exchange:

1) The Audio Home Recording Act, with its extremely stingy wording. It does not state that the public has freedom to make home recordings, only that "no action shall be brought" against someone who does.
2) The narrow "homestyle exemption" to public performance licensing requirements.
3) As part of the Copyright Term Extension Act, some additional narrow leeway in the exemptions from public performance licensing requirements for small clubs and restaurants. The enemies of this provision, who were supporters of the term extension, have obtained, or at least rooted for, a World Trade Organization ruling against the expanded licensing exemptions, possibly as part of a back-door strategy for their repeal.
4) As part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, some safe-harbor provisions for internet service providers and a few technical provisions applying to software copyright.
5) Replacement of the state and common-law right of first publication (RFP) and anti-bootlegging right in phonograms with a uniform federal copyright in unpublished works. Note that there is less here than meets the eye. In particular, those who claim that this is a replacement of a "perpetual common-law copyright" with a limited copyright are not telling the truth. The common-law right was only a right of first publication, not a "common law copyright". And it was not "perpetual", merely indefinite.

Nor can it be said that we have gotten more creative works in exchange for what we have sacrificed. The duration of copyright was increased by 27% by the Copyright Term Extension Act. We should, then, have gotten 27% more new music, films, and books entirely due to the term extension alone. If the major labels and major film studios are producing a quarter again more than they were in 1997, it is not obvious. Even if they are producing more, it is not self-evident that the increase in production is due to the term extension, and the term extension alone.

In Praise of Creative Freedom 4: "He took a straight walk up to Washington city"

This humorous popular song by The Corrigan Brothers discusses President Barack Obama's Irish ancestry. (The genealogical facts are discussed in some detail here.) One important aspect of the song is the melody, which is clearly derived from (though not identical to) a traditional tune, Sweet Betsy from Pike (also known as Villikins and his Dinah). The traditional air can be heard here at the Digital Tradition.

The Corrigan Brothers are not the first to re-use this traditional tune. Many popular songs were sung to it in the 19th century. One such song, found in the 1896 book Lincoln's Campaign was a political song from 1860 about then President-elect Abraham Lincoln:

One Abr'am there was who lived out in the West,
Esteemed by his neighbors the wisest and best;
And you'll see, on a time, if you follow my ditty,
How he took a straight walk up to Washington city.

Others are available on-line at the Library of Congress's American Memory web site. The song titled "A new song for Sherman & Sheriden", begins

To SHERIDAN and SHERMAN, great merit is due,
They routed the Rebels each place they went to.
In the Shenandoah Valley they struck a home blow,
Where SHERIDAN whipped EARLY, who was a great foe.

Writing words "to the tune of" a popular air is always possible, even if the air is under copyright. But performing the air publicly is an exclusive right of the holder of copyright in the air. It is because the air Sweet Betsy from Pike is publici juris that The Corrigan Brothers were able not only to write words for it, but to perform it publicly as well, and post a recording of it to You-tube, all without being impeded by the frictional force of copyright clearance. Had Sweet Betsy from Pike been under copyright, The Corrigan Brothers might have been compelled to use a different tune, possibly with less success, since it is at partly due to its catchy melody that their song has become popular.

So here is another example of what Professor Lessig calls "Remix culture." The creative freedom allowed by the public domain has led to "progress of Science", in this case, the sciences of music and political humor.