Talk:Coventry Carol

message: Hello, 
I just added the context in which the song was initially performed as this context brings to light a deeper meaning.  Wonderactivist 10:44, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [Untitled]

message: (Apologies in advance for beginner's mistakes.)
If the entire 19th-century transcriptions were posted, I believe I could make sense of them without difficulty.  That may be only a scholarly parlor game.  But if it would be a contribution to world knowledge, however small, I'd be glad to help, though I don't consider myself qualified to actually edit Wikipedia articles.  I don't want to just post this and vanish, so here is an e-mail address where interested editors/contributors can write to me:  grammarfairy@yahoo.com
Here are the three lines which are given in archaic form, in their place between the first and last lines of the fourth verse (as these two lines are given in modern form in the article):
"That woe is me, poor Child for Thee! / And ever morne and may / For thi parting / Neither say nor singe / Bye, bye, lully, lullay"
Here's my modern prose rendition of what the speaker/singer is saying:
"Woe is me (i.e. I feel great woe) for you, poor child, and I will ever mourn, and I may neither say nor sing "Bye, bye, lully, lullay" for thy parting."
When Herod's men arrive, the family and friends may not say their goodbyes to the child before it leaves them, nor sing the child to sleep as a last act of mercy before the soldiers execute it.
Now reintroduce the old second-person wording and move some of the phrases back toward their original poetic positions:
"Woe is me, poor child, for thee, and I will ever mourn, and may for thy parting neither say nor sing 'bye, bye, lully, lullay.' "
Restore the archaic spelling and punctuation and finish rearranging the words to meet the demands of rhyme and meter, and here we are, back at the original version that was supposedly so confusing.
"That woe is me, poor Child, for Thee! / And ever morne and may / For thi parting / Neither say nor singe / Bye, bye, lully, lullay."
208.119.151.49 (talk) 18:46, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That is an interesting interpretation, but Wikipedia policy is that we do not publish original research: we record only views which have already received substantial independent coverage in reliable sources. Also, even if we were to take one of the many published attempts to make sense of the words, to include that one alone in the article would be to give undue weight to one opinion. We could, of course, substantially extend the article to give a detailed comparison of all the different published interpretations, but it seems to me that this would be getting the whole thing out of proportion. The present situation, where the article mentions the difficulty and the fact that there are different interpretations, and gives one attempted reconstruction, seems to strike about the right balance. In any case, giving a new hitherto unpublished and non-notable attempt at interpretation would certainly be original research. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:04, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

text: Worth pointing out that phrases such as "bye-bye" and "lullay" appear commonly in lullaby songs of the period - the text is relatively simple and straightforward and there is no real debate over possible interpretations, or sense, in academic studies of the carol and the pageant it comes from.Svejk74 (talk) 18:37, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Lyrics may  be "difficult to make sense of," but not impossible