As I mentioned during a Christmas post last year, the O Oriens Antiphon gets reinterpreted in Old English, to the well-known "Eala Earendel engla beorhtast" which so stirred Tolkien that it gave birth to his Earendil myth, so of course this illustrations is getting the full Tolkien treatment, with our little Lord playing at being Earendil:
The words "oriens" and "earendel" seem to be related, (I went down the linguistic rabbit hole last year on this) and are a part of a whole legion of ear/eos based words and names which all seem to have a fiery/daystar/ dawning meaning to them. For those who care about such things, Carl F. Hostetter has a very good article dealing with this matter (my rabbit holing seems to have been a reduplication of his research) and he lays it all out far better than I could.
And here is the antiphon being sung-- it amuses me very much that "oriens" in German becomes "morgenstern". I mean, it means morning star but morgenstern has such a German banker quality to it. (And since we are on a slightly linguistic track here.... that "or" element in 'morgenstern" could be related to "oriens" and "earendel")
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