The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-26 00:00:00

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL.
"Then came the merry maskers in,
And carols roared with blithesome din;
If unmelodious was the song,
It was a hearty note and strong."
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The word " carol" is said to be derived from the
Latin cantare, to sing, and rola, an interjection of joy.
By some writers, however, it is supposed to be of Ita-
liad, and by others of French, extraction; its meaning
is, gt nerally, a song of mirth and exultation, especially
of religious joy. The " Christmas Carol," in particular,
is a song in celebration of our blessed Lord's nativity.
This kind of pious ballad is undoubtedly of very remote
origin. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in his "Great Exem-
plar," fancifully remarks that the first Christmas carol
was the hymn of the angels to the shepherds in the
plains of Bethlehem:—"Glory to God in the highest, on
earth peace, good will to men." Milton, also, in Para-
dise Los', thus mentions the same anthem:—
" His place of birth a solemn angel tells
To simple shepherds keeping watch by night;
They gladly thither haste. and by a choir
Of squadron'd anges hear His carol sung."
This hymn was introthiced at an early period into
the services of the Church, being sung either at Morn-
ing Prayer, or in the Communion Office, or before the
Lessons on Christmas Day. In process of time, other
hymns of the same kind appear to ha'e been formed
after its example ; and it is stated by the eel,. brat,d
ritualist Durandus, that anciently bishops were accus-
tomed, on the above festival, to " sing carols among
their clergy" in the cathedrals.
In a Latin poem, written about the middle of the
fifteenth century, and soon after translated into Eng-
lish, the following allusion to the practice of carolling in
church at Christmas occurs :
" A wooden child is on the altar set,
About the which both boys and girls do dance and trimly jet ;
And carols sing in praise of Christ, and for to help them here,
The organs answer every verse with sweet and solemn cheer."
The " Christmas carol," however, was not confined to
the Church offices in medieval times. "It has been the
custom," says a modern writer, " for the common people
of England for many centuries to go about in bands, at
an early hour on Christmas morn, serenading their
neighbours with what are called carols.' " Such also
was the usage in other parts of Christendom. "During
the season of Advent," remarks Mr. Digby, " the waits,
while other men took their rest, wandered, singing
hymns in the streets ; and on the blessed night every
one kept watch like the shepherds, while minstrels
chanted Christmas carols." In these ancient poems the
inhabitants of each town and village used to be repre-
sented making the offering of whatever best object they
possessed to the infant Saviour and the blessed Mother.
These ditties even gladdened the festivals of royalty.
Henry VII., in the third year of his reign, kept his
Christmas at Greenwich ; on the twelfth night, after
high mass, the king went to the hall, and kept his estate
at the table; in the middle sat the dean and those of the
king's chapel, who, immediately after his Majesty's first
course, " sang a carall." The earliest collection of
Christmas carols supposed to have been published, is
only known from the last leaf of a volume, printed by
Wynkin de Worde in 1521. " These," says Brand,
" were festal chansons fur enlivening the merriments of
the Christmas celebrity; and not such religious songs as
are current at this day with the common people, under
the same title, and which were substituted by those
enemies of innocent and useful mirth, the Puritans."
We differ from the above antiquary in reference to the
puritanical origin of the "religious" Christmas carols
" current at this day." Many of them appear to be even
of earlier date than the Reformation; and, since the
Precisions, as is well known, hated Christmas Day as
Popish and anti-Christian, and abolished its observance
wherever their influence extended, it is most improbable
that they should have composed songs for its celebra-
tion. Be this as it may, the majority of the medieval
Christmas carols were "religious." Some of these, in
a more or less interpolated and modernised state, have
been banded down to us, and though, perhaps, wanting
in interest to a refined mind, are sometimes admirable
for their simplicity and tenderness. Take for example
the ensuing stanzas from that quaint old ditty, begin
ning—

"Joseph was an old man, an old man was he,
And he married Mary, Queen of Galilee,"
which was sung by companies of little children at Christ-
mas, and which " brings fairly before us the paintings of
the old masters, where Joseph is always represented as
so old a min, and Mary sits in the oxen's stall with her
crown on her head."
" As Joseph was a walking, he heard an angel sing—
This night shall be born our heavenly king;
He neither shall be born in houses nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise, but in an ox's stall;
He neither shall be clothed in purple nor in pall,
But all in fine linen, as were babies all ;
He neither shall be rock'd in silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden cradle that rocks on the mould;
He neither shall be christen'd in white wine or in red,
But with the spring water with which we were christened.'"
How sweet, again, are the following lines, which en-
rich another antique carol:—
" 0 fair, 0 fair Jerusalem ! when shall I come to thee,
When shall our griefs be at an end ? Thy joys ‘N hen shall
we see ?
The fields were green as green might be, when, from His
glorious scat,
The Lord our God lie watered us with His heavenly dew
so sweet."

These words could only have been written by one
fully conversant with the ritual of the Western Church.
They are adapted from her Advent service. Very
rneloilious to our ears is the rhythm of the carol be-
ginning with "I saw three ships come sailing on," and
containing the verses which follow :
" And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas-day, on Christmas-day;
And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas-day in the morning.
And all the angels in heaven shall sing,
On Christmas-day, on Christmas-day,
And all the angels in heaven shall sing,
On Christmas- day in the morning.
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas-day, on Christmas-day;
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas-day in the morning."
Our space will not admit of our giving to our readers
any more specimens of the simple Christmas carols
which animated the devotion of our pious ancestors. We
will now offer a few remarks on those early " feste-chan-
sons" which were merely intended to be incitements
to Christmas revelry. Perhaps the most ieterest-
ing of those extant is an Anglo-Norman carol of the
thirteenth century. It is too long for insertion here, but
it gives a very interesting picture of the gaiety and kindly
feeling which the festival of the Nativity appears to
have excited among all classes, and dwells with much
satisfaction on the long list of Christmas dainties, and
the profusion of rich wines. Another of these secular
carols was discovered in a MS. of the times of Henry
VI. The song itself, however, from the style and
spelling, may be assigned to a century earlier. "It
seems," says Miss Lawrence, " to be sung in the week
before Christmas, when the household maidens all
busied themselves with dressing up the halls and cham-
bers with evergreens. The great hostility expressed to-
wards ivy may be accounted for by the circumstance of
its being used at funerals." A few lines of this carol in
modern orthography may not be uninteresting here:—
" Nay, Ivy! nay, it shall not be, I wis;
Let Holly have the mastery, as the manner is.
Let Holly stand within the hall, fair to behold;
Let Ivy stand without the door; she is full sore a-cold.
Nay, Ivy ! &c.

Holly and his merry men deftly dance and sing;
Ivy and her maidens are always sorrowing.
Nay, Ivy ! &c.

Holly bath berries, is red as any rose,
Gay-looking to the hunter, as through the wood he goes;
Ivy, too, hath berries, but black as any sloe;
Thither come the owls, and eat them as they go.
Nay, Ivy !" &c.
The Reformation did not impair the popularity of the
Christmas carol in England. A writer in 1631, in his
description of a good and hospitable housekeeper, has
left the following picture of Christmas festivities " Sup-
pose," he says, " Christmas now approaching ; the ever
green ivy trimming and adorning the portals and part-
clo,es of so frequented a building ; the usual carols to
observe antiquity, cheerfully sounding ; and that which
is the complement of his inferior comforts, his neigh-
bours, whom he tenders as members of his own family,
join with him in this consort of mirth and melody." At
the end of a " Miscellany of Epigrams, &c." published
about the same period, is a " Christmas carol," which
contains a recital of the pastimes in vogue at that season.
This, and similar compositions of the seventeenth cen-
tury, make, however, no pretension to any religious cha-
racter ; but, in the mean time, others also, of a devo-
tional strain, were in general use. Wharton mentions a
in
license, granted to one Tysdale 1562, for printing cer-
tain goodly carols to be sung to the glory of God ;'
acd again, " Christmas carols authorised by my Lord of
London." Bishop Andrewes, in one of his sermons on
the Nativity, preached on the twentieth-fifth of Decem-
ber, 1619, celebrates the day. as " glorious in all place, as
well at home with carols as in the church with anthems."
From the time of the famous prelate just mentioned to
our own, the practice of singing Christmas carols in this
kingdom has been preserved; " varying probably in
circumstances and degrees, but dispersed, more or loss,
over the different parts of the country." In Heath's
" Account of the Scilly Islands," he says that it is usual
there to sing carols on Christmas day at church. Dr.
Goldsmith, in his "Vicar of Wakefield," writing about
1763, and " laying the scene of his narrative at a small
cure in the north of England," relates that, among other
customs which they retained, the inhabitants "keep up
the Christmas carol." Brand, in 1795, remarks that little
troops of boys and girls, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and
other places in the north of England, " go from house
to house, knocking at the doors, singing their Christmas
carols, and wishing a happy new-year." A writer in
1811, describing the manner in which the inhabitants of
the North Riding of Yorkshire celebrate Christmas, ob-
serves, " About six o clock on Christmas day I was
awakened by a sweet singing under my window; sur-
prised at a visit so early and unexpected, I arose; and
looking out of the window, I beheld six young women
and four men, welcoming with sweet music the blessed
morn." " Carols," writes Mr. Hone, in 1825, " begin
to be spoken of as not belonging to this century, and few
perhaps are aware of the number of these now printed."
He adds that he possesses " upwards of ninety, all at this
time published annually." Mr. Howitt, in 1838, remarks,
that the Christmas carols which were sung about from
door to door, for a week at least, not twenty years ago,
are rarely heard now in the midland counties. More
northward, from the hills of Derbyshire, and the bor-
dering ones of Staffordshire, up through Lancashire,
Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Durham, you may fre-
quently meet with them. The custom of Christmas
carolling prevails in Ireland to the present time. In
Scotland it is unknown. In Wales it is still preserved,
to a greater extent, perhaps, than in England. After