December 24, 2025 • 42 mins
William Sandys was an antiquarian who published a collection of Christmas carols in the 19th century that turned out to be really influential.
Research:
- Archambo, Shelley Batt. “The Development of the English Carol Through the Fifteenth Century.” The Choral Journal, OCTOBER 1986, Vol. 27, No. 3. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23547224REFERENCES
- Brain, Jessica. “History of Christmas Carols.” Historic UK. 12/13/2024. https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/History-Christmas-Carols/
- “Carol, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, June 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1684298837.
- Carter, Michael. “The origins of Christmas carols.” English Heritage. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/origins-of-christmas-carols/
- Cartwright, Mark. "The History of Christmas Carols." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 05 Dec 2023, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2339/the-history-of-christmas-carols/. Web. 03 Dec 2025.
- Davey, Henry, and Elizabeth Baigent. "Sandys, William (1792–1874), writer on music and antiquary." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. September 23, 2004. Oxford University Press. Date of access 3 Dec. 2025, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-24654
- Ditchfield, Peter Hampson. “Old English customs extant at the present time; an account of local observances.” London, G. Redway. 1896. https://archive.org/details/studentshistoryo00gardrich
- Dreamer, Percy R. et al. “The Oxford Book Of Carols.” Oxford University Press. 1928.
- English Heritage. “A Brief History of Christmas Carols.” https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/members-magazine/podcast-extras/history-of-carols/
- Sandys, William. “Christmas carols, ancient and modern; including the most popular in the west of England, and the airs to which they are sung. Also specimens of French provincial carols. With an introduction and notes.” London, R. Beckley. 1833. https://archive.org/details/christmascarolsa00sandrich/mode/1up
- Sandys, William. “Christmastide: Its History, Festivities and Carols.” London: John Russell Smith. 1860. https://archive.org/details/christmastideits00sandrich/
- The Law Bod Blog. “Heading towards Christmas.” 12/2/2013. https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/lawbod/2013/12/02/heading-towards-christmas/
- Huxtable, Sally-Anne. “Wassailing: ritual and revelry.” National Trust. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/art-collections/wassailing-ritual-and-revelry
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everybody, Holly here, listen. Before we get started today,
I wanted to talk to you for just a minute
with a little bit of information. We have been talking,
I know a lot about our trip to Morocco recently
and how amazing it was and how much we loved it.
And if that sounded like really exciting to you and
you maybe felt like you missed out on something, I
have great news. Our next trip is already available and
(00:25):
live for booking next year from September twenty sixth to
October fourth, we are going to go to Octoberfest and
experience not just Octoberfest, but that will be one of
the things we do. So we're going to spend some
time in Bavaria. We're also going to spend some time
in the Czech Republic, so we'll be staying outside of
(00:46):
Munich for a while in this very very sweet village,
but we will be close enough that we can go
in and have the Octoberfest party experience, but then retreat
to a much quieter space than all of the busy
city goings on that will be happening. We're gonna spend
several days there. We're also going to spend some really
really beautiful time in Chesskey krum Lov, which is this
(01:10):
little medieval village and it's absolutely beautiful. And then we
are going to spend several days in Prague. This is
not going to be quite as breakneck a pace as
our Morocco trip was, So if any of that sounded exhausting,
this one's gonna be just a little more relaxed. You're
still gonna see so much, do so much, get to
explore so many beautiful places, but it will be a
(01:30):
little bit at a slightly more leisurely paced. I am
so excited for this trip, and I hope you are
and that you might want to join us. So to
check out the information, go to define Destinations dot com.
That's Defined Destinations dot com. You can find on their
main page the Munich Acberfest and Prague trip which is
(01:51):
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sounds good to you. We hope to see you there.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fray. This episode's coming out on Christmas Eve,
and so I was looking around for something seasonally related
that we have not done already and also was not
some kind of a Christmas tragedy because I cannot right now.
(02:35):
And I stumbled onto William Sands, who was an antiquarian
who published a collection of Christmas carols in the nineteenth
century that turned out to be really influential. I had
expected this episode to focus mostly on him because he
sounds interesting aside from the Christmas carol part. But I
really did not find a ton of detail on his biography,
(02:57):
so we are not getting to him until the very end.
But I did find a lot about the history of
Christmas carols that was new to me, not stuff I
already knew about Christmas carols. There are, of course songs
about Christmas or songs that are sung at Christmas all
(03:17):
over the world, but this episode is really focused mostly
on the musical traditions of the British and Irish Isles,
and on sort of English language songs and traditions more specifically,
like there's a little bit about some other places, but
mostly not.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
The word carol was used in English by about the
year thirteen hundred, with multiple interrelated meanings. Carols were ring
dances accompanied by songs and the same word could also
be used for the song that was being danced to.
The word carol could also be used more generally to
describe some kind of festivity or merrymaking that was focused
(03:58):
on dancing, and it described physical rings and circles. For example,
one chronicle written in thirteen thirty described Stonehenge as a
carol of stones. This word was borrowed from the very
similar Old French word carol with an e on the end,
which had the same meanings, so presumably it would be
(04:19):
pronounced carroll. There are also similar words in other romance languages,
and they may all trace back to the word chorus
in Greek or Latin. In France, the folk tunes that
were used to provide the melodies for carols were also
called noel's.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
These songs and their dances, which again involved people dancing
in a ring, probably existed long before the word carol
first appeared in writing. There are references to people dancing
in a ring while also singing the song that they
were dancing to, going back to at least the seventh century.
(04:56):
As songs, carols also had a specif format. They had
unique stanzas and a repeated refrain or a burden, and
that refrain was repeated in between each stanza, so a
cantor would sing the stanzas, and then the dancers all
sang and danced to the burdens.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Carols really started to flourish around the fourteenth century. One
reason is that starting in the thirteenth century, Saint Francis
of Assisi encouraged the use of nativity plays, songs in
people's native tongues, and canticles or biblical chants and songs
as part of religious observances and to combat what he
saw as heresy. This included carols that had religious themes.
(05:42):
The Franciscan religious order continued all of this, and sometimes
Saint Francis is called the father of the Christmas carol.
What are the sources I read for this podcast described
Saint Francis as inventing Christmas carols? But to me that
seems like it's a little little bit overstated, given everything
that we just said and the fact that the use
(06:05):
of music in Christian religious observances goes all the way
back to Christianity's origins in Judaism. While hymns and chants
were likely to be part of church worship, carols specifically,
were also more likely to be sung out in the community,
in places like town squares or inns, and ale houses
(06:26):
or people's homes. This included carols that were written by
members of religious communities but then were sung more by
lay people. For example, fifteenth century priest John Audelay wrote
a series of carols, some of which may have been
intended to be sung by carollers who went house to
(06:46):
house singing them. Other fifteenth century collections of carols include
the Trinity Carol Rule, which contains the lyrics to thirteen
English carols, the Selden Carol Book, which has thirty carols,
and the ritz And Manuscript, which includes forty four carols.
Some of these carols are Macaronic, meaning they were partly
(07:06):
in one language and partly in another, in this case
the vernacular and Latin.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
During the medieval period, the word carol did not have
a Christmas specific connotation, but a lot of these carols
were related to Christmas. About half of the medieval carols
that have survived until today are connected to Christmas in
some way. These were usually sung on Christmas Eve, not before,
(07:33):
and then they continued to be sung through the Twelve
Days of Christmas, so they ended on January fifth or
twelfth night, and that marked the end of the Christmas season.
At least some of the people who were writing and
performing carols in the medieval period were being paid for
their work and their speculation that the reason why so
many surviving medieval carols are about Christmas is that's what
(07:56):
people were mostly getting paid to write. For example, in
the late fifteen century, Elizabeth of York, Queen of Henry
the Seventh, paid poet and composer William Cornish for quote
setting of carol upon Christmas Day. There are other records
of payments being made to composers and performers at Christmas time.
This included street performers who sang at night during the
(08:17):
Christmas season, who were either doing the equivalent of busking
for tips or going house to house with the hopes
of getting a little payment from the people inside. In
addition to these carols, medieval Christmas festivities incorporated elements from
other earlier traditions, including the Roman festival of Saturnalia, the
(08:38):
Germanic festival of Yule, and wastling, where some people also
say was sailing, which stretches back to before the Norman
conquest of Britain. Wastling encompasses two different traditions that both
involve singing. One is going house to house with a
bowl full of wastle or a hot mulled drink, singing
(08:59):
song and spreading good cheer, and then the other is
going from orchard to orchard on twelfth night, again singing
songs as well as shouting and banging on pans and
putting a piece of wossle soaked bread in the best
tree in the orchard. Watling through the orchards is meant
to thank the trees for a good harvest and to
(09:20):
ensure a good harvest the next year by waking up
the trees spirits and scaring any bad spirits away. So
all of this moving around and singing has some parallels
with the caroling tradition. By the start of the sixteenth century,
or what is framed is the start of the Renaissance,
the ring dance portion of caroling had mostly fallen out
(09:42):
of fashion, and the term carol was being used to
describe just the song. There could still be some kind
of movement involved, though, like if a carol was being
sung as part of a church service, it might be
during a processional on a particular feast day or a holiday.
It was also around the start of the fifteen hundred
it's that the word carol was increasingly used to describe joyful,
(10:04):
celebratory Christmas songs, including ones that didn't have that structure
of a repeating burden alternating between stanzas. While the word
carol has been around for hundreds of years, the term
Christmas carol specifically had not appeared in English language writing yet.
We will get to when it did after a sponsor break.
(10:36):
The first collection of Christmas carols, specifically Christmas Carol's Not
Just a Carol collection that included some songs about Christmas,
was published in fifteen twenty one. This was the work
of Wincoln to Word, who I have had on my
short list for an episode for a long time because
I like his name. Wincn to Word was an author
(10:56):
and a publisher born in Alsace, who eventually moved to
England and worked for William Caxton. Caxton had learned the
craft of printing while living in Cologne, and he had
returned to England and established a printing press. Caxton printed
a lot of the fifteenth century's most important English literature,
(11:17):
including the Canterbury Tales. Lincoln de Word took over Caxton's
operation after Caxton's death in fourteen ninety one, and he
moved the press from Westminster to Fleet Street in London. Sadly,
only a fragment of this fifteen twenty one collection survives today,
but that fragment includes the first known use of the
(11:39):
term Christmas Carols in writing. It's caliphon reads quote. Thus
ended the Christmas Carols newly imprinted at London in the
Fleet Street at the Sign of the Sun by Lincoln
de Word the year of Our Lord fifteen twenty one.
This fragment includes two carols, a carol of hunting and
a carol bringing in the boar's heed, meaning the boar's head.
(12:03):
And we're gonna talk about this boar's head thing for
a minute, because I am fascinated. It is not clear
exactly when a boar's head became a feast dish, but
it probably goes back to ancient Greece and Rome. The
story of the Caledonian boar hunt was a recurring part
of ancient stories in mythology. The goddess Diana released a
(12:26):
ferocious boar as punishment after King Onanus of Caledon failed
to adequately honor her. This boar killed several people before
finally being killed by Meleager, who presented its head to
the huntress Atlanta. There are multiple depictions of this and
other dramatic boar hunts in ancient and modern artwork.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
There's an obvious symbolism here, even without being sent by
a deity. Wild boars are huge and dangerous, and fighting
them with something like a spear was hard and could
end in fatal injuries for the hunter. So the presenting
of a boar's head at a feast could represent the
triumph over a human enemy or over a less tangible threat.
(13:11):
With the spread of Christianity across much of Europe, boar's
heads came to represent Jesus Christ's triumph over evil. At
some point, people started presenting a boar's head at Christmas feasts,
usually as the first dish brought into the hall by
a processional. The head was typically roasted and dressed with
herbs and greenery, with a whole fruit in its mouth.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Here's an account from this happening at Saint John's Oxford
in sixteen oh seven. Quote the first mess was a
boar's head, which was carried by the tallest and lustiest
of all the guard, before whom as attendants went first,
one attired in a horseman's coat with a boar's spear
in his hand next to him, another huntsman in green
(13:55):
with a bloody fossian drawn next to him, two pages
and half ata sarsenet, each of them with a mess
of mustard. Next to whom came he that carried the
boar's head, crossed with a green silk scarf, by which
hung the empty scabbard of the faucian, which was carried
before him. As they entered the hall, he sang this
(14:18):
Christmas Carol, the last three verses of every staff being
repeated after him by the whole company. I am regretting
not making the spelling more modern English before I put
this in here, because I had a little struggle with it.
One of the places where this is still done today
is Queen's College, Oxford. Originally the Boar's Head ceremony there
(14:42):
was on Christmas Eve, and a meal served for faculty
in students who were remaining at the college over the holiday.
That seems to have started not long after the college
was first founded. In thirteen forty one. There is a
fun but apocryphal story about a student who was attacked
by a ye while studying his Aristotle on Shotover Hill
(15:03):
in Oxford, and successfully defended himself by shoving his book
down the boar's throat. The boar died and the student
brought the head back to Oxford, and that marks the
beginning of the boar's head ceremony. In addition to it
being improbable that someone could kill a wild boar with
a book of Aristotle, wild boars were probably extinct in
(15:25):
England by the time this story supposedly happened. Today, the
Boar's Head Gaudy at Queen's College is usually held this
Saturday before Christmas, with the boar's Head Ceremony taking place
before dinner. If you're thinking do they still do that?
Yes they do. You can watch video of it on
YouTube from as recently as like last year. Uh when
(15:46):
this episode comes out you might be able to see
this year's ceremony. The school's provost and the fellows enter
the hall first, followed by a boar's head on a platter,
followed then by a choir. A solo sings the verses
of the Carol, which are mostly in English, while Acquire
sings the refrain, which is in Latin. There are a
(16:08):
number of other places that do something similar to this
around Christmas, sometimes using a model of a boar's head
rather than an actual head of a bore. I will
be honest with you, I am not fully clear on
the reality of the boar's head at Queen's College, Oxford.
It looks like I want to pet it, though, Okay,
(16:30):
sky a little fuzzy ears, but it's deceased, That's what
I'm saying. I'm not sure if it's an actual deceased
head of an animal or if it is a model.
And I did not find an answer to this. Some
places do use a model of a boar's head and
not an actual animal head. Yeah, I'm just saying, like
(16:51):
I think my reaction is like I don't want to
pet anything that looks like a decapitated thing. Okay, that
sure also makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
There are lots of slightly different versions of the boar's
Head Carol. One of them starts with the verse the
boar's head in hand, bear eye bedecked with bays and rosemary,
and I pray you my masters be merry quote estes
in convivio, and then the refrain is all in Latin,
so Heaven help us could put a pri de ferro
Redden's Loudest Domino. While this carol doesn't specifically include the
(17:22):
word Christmas in the lyrics, the last verse does describe
the boar's head as being provided quote in honor of
the King of Bliss.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Lincoln the words publication of his Christmas Carol collection, which
included this Boar's Head carol, took place just a few
years after Martin Luther posted his ninety nine theses on
the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany, which
has marked us the start of the Protestant Reformation. This,
of course, led to massive changes and unrest and violence,
(17:53):
as what started as a reform movement within Catholicism led
to the establishment of multiple new religious denominations. Many of
these denominations intentionally tried to differentiate their worship services and
traditions from Catholicism, including writing new hymns and composing new
music and eliminating the use of Latin. But since Christmas
(18:17):
carols had been sung mostly in secular spaces by lay people,
maybe with the exception of like special church services for
holidays and feasts, or country churches who were fairly removed
from central church authority, people just kept singing them during
and after the Reformation and Counter Reformation. During this time,
(18:39):
the word Christmas carol also started to be applied generally
to songs about Christmas, regardless of whether they followed the
traditional structural elements of the carol. A bigger influence on
the carolling tradition in the islands of Britain and Ireland
was the aftermath of the Civil War in the mid
seventeenth century, which pitted the Royalists against the Parliamentarians. The
(19:03):
Parliamentarians were victorious and established the Commonwealth of England. Oliver Cromwell,
who had been one of the generals on the parliamentarian side,
became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland in sixteen
fifty three. While Cromwell was Lord Protector, Parliament passed a
series of laws mandating Sunday be observed as a holy
(19:24):
day and restricting how people could celebrate Christmas and other holidays.
This included laws banning the observance of a Christmas holiday
in sixteen forty four and the banning of Christmas, Easter
and Whitson entirely in sixteen forty seven. This had connections
to the Protestant Reformation, since it grew from the Puritan
(19:45):
religious movement that had started in the sixteenth century, which
wanted to purify the Church of England of any vestiges
of Catholicism. The sixteen forty seven ban included banning festivities
that people might do at home, and people could be
fined if they were caught celebrating Christmas. Other laws and
(20:05):
bands followed that one, including a law requiring shops to
be open on Christmas Day. These laws were hard to enforce,
and there were definitely people who just kept on celebrating
Christmas at home or closing their shops down for the holiday,
but this did put a damper on caroling, especially caroling
out in public.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
All of these laws were repealed after the restoration of
the monarchy under Charles the Second in sixteen sixty. Charles
the Second tried to revive the Christmas observances that Cromwell
and Parliament had discouraged her outlawed, including at court, but
the royal Christmas feasts after the restoration were never as
lavish or elaborate, as many of the ones in earlier
(20:47):
centuries had been. Things could vary based on who was
monarch and what was going on in the kingdom. But
earlier Christmas festivities had included all kinds of plays and
masks and revels, with a Lord of miss rule responsible
for a lot of raucous partying. After the Restoration, Christmas
festivities at court did not involve quite so much rowdy,
(21:09):
drunkenness and over the top spectacle.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
We will finally get to william Sands after another sponsor break.
Various books of Christmas carols were published in Britain in
the seventeenth century, both before and after the Commonwealth period.
(21:35):
The idea of a Christmas carol as having one specific
melody that it was always sung to is relatively new,
so many of these books only included the words. They
did not necessarily include a tune that the words should
be sung to. In seventeen eighty two, a Christmas carol
was added to the Anglican Songbook for the first time.
(21:58):
That song was while Shepherds watched their flocks. This song
tells the story of angels appearing to shepherds who are
out with their flocks and telling them about the birth
of Jesus. It's a narrative song. It's all in English
and most versions do not have a repeated refrain like
Carol's traditionally did. It's not clear exactly when While Shepherds
(22:23):
Watched Their Flocks was written. It's attributed to Irish poet
Nathum Tate and it first appeared in a supplement to
the new version of the Psalms by Doctor Brady and
mister Tate, which was published in seventeen hundred.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Another newly composed Christmas carol in the eighteenth century was
Hark the Harold Angels Sing, written by Charles Wesley, who
wrote an enormous number of hymns. Charles Wesley and his
brother John were major figures in the Methodist movement and
the establishment of the Methodist Church. Hark the Herald Angels
Sing first appeared in the collection Hymns and Sacred Poems
(22:59):
in seventeen thirty. It has a repeated refrain of Hark
the Herald Angels sing Glory to the newborn King. While
new carols were being written, and sometimes they were being
added to different denominations, song books and hymnals by the
end of the eighteenth century, traditional carols and carolink were
(23:20):
falling out of favor in Writtain. Some of this was
because people were more likely to be singing relatively new
Christmas themed hymns and carols that had been written for churches,
like Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Silent Night, which
was composed in eighteen eighteen in Austria and then later
translated into English. We talked about that on the show
(23:42):
in twenty eighteen. According to William.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Sand's writing about Christmas Carols, by the late seventeen hundreds,
the old songs were still being sung in Ireland and Wales,
but the practice of going out into the community singings
from house to house was mostly only being done in Cornwall.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
So at the start of the nineteenth century antiquarians and
other interested people started trying to preserve and document the
old Christmas carols before the practice died out entirely. One
was Davi's Gilbert, who was a scientist and mathematician who
worked with people like Sir Humphrey Davy and who became
president of the Royal Society. Gilbert also served as High
(24:27):
Sheriff of Cornwall and as a member of Parliament. In
eighteen twenty two he published a collection of twelve carols,
and he followed that up with an expanded edition of
twenty carols in eighteen twenty three. He described these songs
as relics of the past, saying they had been sung
quote in churches on Christmas Day and in private houses
(24:48):
on Christmas Eves throughout the west of England up to
the latter part of the late century.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
William Sands cited Gilbert in his work on Christmas Carols
a few years ag later. Sans had been born in
seventeen ninety two and was the oldest son of Hannibal
and Anne Sands. He had at least one brother, named Samson,
who he went on a tour of southern Wales with
in eighteen nineteen. They took this tour mostly on foot,
(25:17):
and they wrote an illustrated account of it. I could
not find a scan of this anywhere, which disappointed me
because it sounds very up my alley. But this manuscript
is in the National Library of Wales. Sans was a
solicitor and eventually became a partner in the firm of
Sans and not. He also got married twice, first to
(25:38):
Harriet Hill from eighteen sixteen until her death in eighteen
fifty one, and then he married Eliza Pearson two years later.
They were married until Sam's death on February eighteenth, eighteen
seventy four. And that's all I know about his biography.
What we also know is that Sans wrote a lot
of books. Some of them included specimens of Macaronic poetry,
(26:02):
The History of the Violin and other instruments, Played on
with the Bow from the remote times to the present,
Specimens of Cornish provincial dialect, and a short view of
the history of Freemasonry dedicated to the Grand Lodge of England.
And of course there was his work on Christmas and
Christmas Carols which led to this entire episode. The first
(26:24):
of these was Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern, published in
eighteen thirty three. He compiled these songs from old manuscripts,
oral traditions, and interviews with elders who still remembered or
participated in the old traditions of caroling, Like Davies Gilbert.
He wrote about these carols as something from the past
(26:45):
that he was trying to preserve and document before it
died out. The back of the book also included music
for several carols. In the words of the Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography quote, his transcriptions of the two are
considered accurate, though his harmonizations are sometimes clumsy.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
This book comes from a very specific point of view.
For example, the introduction begins quote the study of popular
antiquities as connected with the early history of mankind is
one of deep interest involving researches into the different ancient
systems of religion, and is a subject of too serious
in nature to be enlarged on in the following pages.
(27:27):
The sacred rites and ceremonies of the various Heathen nations,
however different the details may appear, had a common origin.
For some few years after the flood, mankind had one religion,
the worship of the True God. But so prone is
man to err when unassisted by the divine grace, that
a century had scarcely elapsed before a perverted system was
(27:49):
introduced and the Tower of Babel was built, which caused
the dispersion of nations.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
The title of this book makes it sound as though
it's going to be exclusively about Carol's and caroling, but
about forty percent of its length is an introduction that
contains a kind of wandering exploration of the history of
Christmas observance, mainly in England and surrounding islands. It ambles
(28:17):
all through masks and watle and the Lord of Misrule,
and nativity plays and mystery plays, and on and on.
I was trying to read through all of this, some
of which did not seem related to music at all,
not even as like context setting. And I finally asked myself,
(28:38):
when is he going to get back to the carrols.
I searched the book for that term and found a
sixty page gap where carols are not mentioned at all.
And that's like the book is like three hundred and
something pages long, so that's a significant amount of it.
I was working from a scan of this book, and hilariously,
(29:01):
some past person had written the word carols in pencil
with a little star next to it in the margin
where the part about carols picked back up. In his introduction,
San cites various possible origins for where the practice of
caroling door to door may have come from. What is
this quote?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
There is a story on record of a terrible plague
at Goldsburg in fifteen fifty three, which carried off above
twenty three hundred persons, leaving not more than twenty five
housekeepers alive in the place. The plague abating. One of
the survivors went on Christmas Eve to the Lower Ring
and sang a carol, and was by degrees joined by
(29:42):
a few others to excite each other in thanksgiving. Hence
arose accustomed for the people to assemble in large numbers
at the Upper and Lower Ring on Christmas morning to
sing carols, beginning with unto us this day a child
is born.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
After the introduction, which again is lengthy, the book has
three parts, carols from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century,
carol's still being sung in the West of England, and
specimens of old French carols, and then sort of like
an appendix, there's also a Christmas play of Saint George
(30:18):
and the Dragon, and some notes in several pages of music.
The songs from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries are
written primarily in Middle English, and then in the next
part some of the ones that are still being sung
do date back to those earlier centuries, but they're written
in modern English, not in an older version of the language,
(30:40):
and for some of those sans book is their first
appearance in writing in modern English.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
One such carol is the First Noel, which Sans titles
for Christmas Day in the morning, and this spell's Noel
as Nowell, which was not an uncommon English spelling at
the time or in earlier centuries. This carol probably dates
back to at least the fifteenth century, and it starts
the first Noel the Angel did say was to three
(31:10):
poor shepherds in the fields, as they lay in fields
where they lay keeping their sheep in a cold winter's
night that was so deep. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel Born
is the King of Israel. That final series of Noel's
and the born is the King of Israel form the
repeated refrain.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
I really enjoyed the slight differences between the way a
lot of these songs are in this book and how
I personally sing them as a child. We had certain
poor shepherds, not three of them, because of the meter
being nicer that way. This book also includes God Rescue
Married Gentlemen, which probably goes back to at least the
(31:53):
seventeenth or eighteenth century, and also has that pattern of
stanzas and a refrain it starts God rescue, marry, gentlemen,
let nothing you dismay for Jesus Christ, our Savior, was
born upon this day to save us all from Satan's power.
Old we were gone astray, and then the chorus, Oh
Tidings of comfort and Joy. This one also has as
(32:15):
part of the chorus for Jesus Christ, our Savior was
born on Christmas Day. Other carols in Sans books that
people might recognize today include I saw three ships, which
has its roots in the seventeenth century. That's the one
that goes I saw three ships come sailing in on
Christmas Day. On Christmas Day. I saw three ships come
sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning, forming the refrain.
(32:39):
So as we said earlier, Sands wrote this book as
though he was documenting something that was dying out before
it disappeared entirely. But then in eighteen thirty seven, just
a few years after the book came out, Victoria became
Queen of the United Kingdom. Sans really had not anticipated
the way that celebrates of Christmas would change in Britain
(33:03):
and by extension, in the United States and other predominantly
English speaking parts of the world. During the Victorian era,
especially among the middle class. A lot of today's Christmas
traditions were popularized during these years, including things like Christmas trees,
which became a lot more popular after Queen Victoria and
(33:24):
Albert decorated one in eighteen forty eight, and illustrations of
it were published in newspapers and magazines, and in the
United States, pictures of it were adjusted so that it
didn't look like royalty, but it was the exact same
picture of a Christmas tree. We talked about this more
in our Christmas Triple feature episode from December twenty fourth,
twenty eighteen, which included Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol and
(33:48):
its connection to all of this, and in our December nineteenth,
twenty twenty one episode on Washington Irving. I think we
also talked about it in our Christmas Lights discussion. Oh yeah,
that sounds right, because how you know, I was shocked
to discover that people actually put candle lit candles on
Christmas trees. Washington Irving was an American, but his writings
(34:09):
on English Christmases folded back into Dickens's work, and as
part of this Victorian era shift in Christmas celebrations, people
also started returning to singing Christmas carols, including Carroler's Going
Door to Door. SAMs published another book on Christmas called
Christmas Tide Its History, Festivities and Carols in eighteen sixty.
(34:30):
It is possible that there may have been an earlier
edition of that book that came out in the eighteen fifties. Yeah,
there's no date on the title page, and the notation
I found of it was a little unclear. New Christmas
carols were a part of this Victorian resurgence in caroling.
As examples, the Latin carol A DestinE Fidelis, which dates
(34:53):
back to at least sixteen forty, was translated into English
as okama Ye Faithful in eighteen fe one. In eighteen
sixty two, James Chadwick based Angels we Have Heard on
High with its very wandering refrain of Gloria n x
Chelsea's deo on a traditional French carol that probably dates
(35:14):
back to the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
New collections of Carroll's also came into print. John Mason
Neil and Thomas Hillmore published Carols for Christmas Time in
eighteen fifty four. This was adapted from pie Cantionis, which
is a finish collection that was composed in Latin. It
included Carroll's like good Christian Men Rejoice and Good King
wincessless The Reverend H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Modeling College, Oxford,
(35:41):
and doctor John Stainer, the College organist, published Christmas Carols
New and Old, containing forty two Carrols, in eighteen seventy one.
The late nineteenth century also saw the first Christmas Eve
services of Lessons and Carrols, and the Oxford Book of
Carroll's was first published in nineteen twenty eight. And of
course there have continued to be so many new songs
(36:04):
written for and about Christmas, a lot of them today
categorized as Carol's, whether or not they resemble the old
Ring Dances with Stanzas and Burdens. One of our episodes
that touches on That is our two parter on twentieth
century composer and songwriter Irving Berlin, which came out in
December of twenty twenty two. Irving Berlin wrote, among other things,
(36:29):
the song White Christmas, and that is some Christmas Carol history.
Do you have listener mail to go with it?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I do.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I don't think I read this before our recent refrain.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, but this letter writer sent us the email and
then a second follow up, and I flagged the follow
up to read, and then when I was reading it today,
I was like, did I read the original thing already? Though? Anyway,
this is from Graysia. Graysia wrote, Hi, Holly and Tracy,
(37:03):
longtime listener, first time writer who never thought it actually
right in, But I was inspired by your soap making
episode and it was a little while ago, but I
am a bit behind and a bit of a procrastinator.
Why soap? Well? A couple of months ago, I was
out to dinner with my significant other, his sister and cousin,
all of whom are various engineering majors that are now
(37:26):
scientists or working engineers. I'm a designer and science and
math were never my interests, so I can find their
conversations hard to contribute to at times. Anyway, we got
into the discussion of soap, and deep back into my
elementary field trip memory, I remembered how soap was made.
I have no clue why I remember something from so
(37:47):
long ago, but standing in an eighteen hundred's farmhouse that
was a part of my hometown's Norwegian American Museum, I
remembered a guide showing us a wash basin and telling
us how they would make soap using ashes from their
fireplace and animal fat from their farm. I did, however,
put a disclaimer that what I remembered was so long
(38:08):
ago I would have to double check what all I
told them was correct. Then your episode about soap came out,
and I was thrilled to find everything I said matched up.
It's funny now looking back, that a random thing like
soap connected to a one off conversation and a podcast
I've been listening to for years. A little note on that,
(38:28):
I believe I discovered your podcast in eighth grade as
a source for a National History Day project and used
to resources and as a jumping off point. I do
know that I regularly started listening to you my sophomore
year of high school. I'd gotten my own smartphone by
then I needed something to listen to while painting a
room in my parents' house. Even with small brakes here
(38:49):
and there, I always tuned back in. Your voices have
been with me on high school sports bus rides, through
college during a pandemic, and now on my commute to
and from work. I did not realize how long to
end this long email. I just need to thank you
both using your platform to speak out about what's happening
right now. I know you know, I find comfort that
knowing there are other like minded people out there. Gracia
(39:12):
and then Graycia sent a follow up. It was like
I accidentally sent my email before I meant to, and
the second to last paragraph had been sort of in
the process of being worked on, and Grecia had meant
to say, I didn't realize how long I'd been a
listener until I started counting back to the years and
feeling a little old. Uh. And in the follow up,
(39:32):
Gracia sent pet tax. This is a little kiddy that
they called Goldfish who showed up last summer while they
were moving into a rental house. They could not have
a cat per the lease agreement, but here was a
cat who needed food and care, and so they looked
after Goldfish got her uh, got her spade, and eventually
(39:55):
found a home for her with a coworker. She is
now named Lilith and has a sibl ling named Boo.
This kitty cat, now called Lilith, is an orange kitty
with a white belly who just looks exactly like the
sort of a cat who would show up at someone's
door from outside and say hello, I would love it
if you found a way for me to be brought inside.
(40:17):
Thank you so much Gracia for this email. I love
this story. I sometimes forget how long the show has
been around, and so when I realized that a person
can have started listening to it in eighth grade and
be now still listening to it as an adult person,
it's a little startling. Also, National History Day, we have
(40:39):
had various folks right in about National History Day over
the years, including writing in about their projects, writing in
asking if they could have the source list for something
that we have done on the show before saying hey,
maybe if I get your source list from that episode,
it will help me in my National History Day projects.
And then just folks who have wanted us to know
(41:02):
what's going on with National History Day. But I am
always every year curious to see what is going on
with National History Day, what are the students doing, what
kind of projects do people have going on. It is
one of the things that I think has been affected
by massive budget cuts from the federal government, and I
(41:24):
do not know what the status of that is at
this moment, but yeah, thanks for writing in Grasia and
for mentioning that and for sending such adorable cat pictures.
If you would like to send us a note with
or without cat pictures. We are at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com and you can subscribe to our show
(41:47):
on the iHeartRadio app and to anywhere else you'd like
to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, Holly here, listen. Before we get started today,
I wanted to talk to you for just a minute
with a little bit of information. We have been talking,
I know a lot about our trip to Morocco recently
and how amazing it was and how much we loved it.
And if that sounded like really exciting to you and
you maybe felt like you missed out on something, I
have great news. Our next trip is already available and
(00:25):
live for booking next year from September twenty sixth to
October fourth, we are going to go to Octoberfest and
experience not just Octoberfest, but that will be one of
the things we do. So we're going to spend some
time in Bavaria. We're also going to spend some time
in the Czech Republic, so we'll be staying outside of
(00:46):
Munich for a while in this very very sweet village,
but we will be close enough that we can go
in and have the Octoberfest party experience, but then retreat
to a much quieter space than all of the busy
city goings on that will be happening. We're gonna spend
several days there. We're also going to spend some really
really beautiful time in Chesskey krum Lov, which is this
(01:10):
little medieval village and it's absolutely beautiful. And then we
are going to spend several days in Prague. This is
not going to be quite as breakneck a pace as
our Morocco trip was, So if any of that sounded exhausting,
this one's gonna be just a little more relaxed. You're
still gonna see so much, do so much, get to
explore so many beautiful places, but it will be a
(01:30):
little bit at a slightly more leisurely paced. I am
so excited for this trip, and I hope you are
and that you might want to join us. So to
check out the information, go to define Destinations dot com.
That's Defined Destinations dot com. You can find on their
main page the Munich Acberfest and Prague trip which is
(01:51):
gonna be us and check it out. See if it
sounds good to you. We hope to see you there.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fray. This episode's coming out on Christmas Eve,
and so I was looking around for something seasonally related
that we have not done already and also was not
some kind of a Christmas tragedy because I cannot right now.
(02:35):
And I stumbled onto William Sands, who was an antiquarian
who published a collection of Christmas carols in the nineteenth
century that turned out to be really influential. I had
expected this episode to focus mostly on him because he
sounds interesting aside from the Christmas carol part. But I
really did not find a ton of detail on his biography,
(02:57):
so we are not getting to him until the very end.
But I did find a lot about the history of
Christmas carols that was new to me, not stuff I
already knew about Christmas carols. There are, of course songs
about Christmas or songs that are sung at Christmas all
(03:17):
over the world, but this episode is really focused mostly
on the musical traditions of the British and Irish Isles,
and on sort of English language songs and traditions more specifically,
like there's a little bit about some other places, but
mostly not.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
The word carol was used in English by about the
year thirteen hundred, with multiple interrelated meanings. Carols were ring
dances accompanied by songs and the same word could also
be used for the song that was being danced to.
The word carol could also be used more generally to
describe some kind of festivity or merrymaking that was focused
(03:58):
on dancing, and it described physical rings and circles. For example,
one chronicle written in thirteen thirty described Stonehenge as a
carol of stones. This word was borrowed from the very
similar Old French word carol with an e on the end,
which had the same meanings, so presumably it would be
(04:19):
pronounced carroll. There are also similar words in other romance languages,
and they may all trace back to the word chorus
in Greek or Latin. In France, the folk tunes that
were used to provide the melodies for carols were also
called noel's.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
These songs and their dances, which again involved people dancing
in a ring, probably existed long before the word carol
first appeared in writing. There are references to people dancing
in a ring while also singing the song that they
were dancing to, going back to at least the seventh century.
(04:56):
As songs, carols also had a specif format. They had
unique stanzas and a repeated refrain or a burden, and
that refrain was repeated in between each stanza, so a
cantor would sing the stanzas, and then the dancers all
sang and danced to the burdens.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Carols really started to flourish around the fourteenth century. One
reason is that starting in the thirteenth century, Saint Francis
of Assisi encouraged the use of nativity plays, songs in
people's native tongues, and canticles or biblical chants and songs
as part of religious observances and to combat what he
saw as heresy. This included carols that had religious themes.
(05:42):
The Franciscan religious order continued all of this, and sometimes
Saint Francis is called the father of the Christmas carol.
What are the sources I read for this podcast described
Saint Francis as inventing Christmas carols? But to me that
seems like it's a little little bit overstated, given everything
that we just said and the fact that the use
(06:05):
of music in Christian religious observances goes all the way
back to Christianity's origins in Judaism. While hymns and chants
were likely to be part of church worship, carols specifically,
were also more likely to be sung out in the community,
in places like town squares or inns, and ale houses
(06:26):
or people's homes. This included carols that were written by
members of religious communities but then were sung more by
lay people. For example, fifteenth century priest John Audelay wrote
a series of carols, some of which may have been
intended to be sung by carollers who went house to
(06:46):
house singing them. Other fifteenth century collections of carols include
the Trinity Carol Rule, which contains the lyrics to thirteen
English carols, the Selden Carol Book, which has thirty carols,
and the ritz And Manuscript, which includes forty four carols.
Some of these carols are Macaronic, meaning they were partly
(07:06):
in one language and partly in another, in this case
the vernacular and Latin.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
During the medieval period, the word carol did not have
a Christmas specific connotation, but a lot of these carols
were related to Christmas. About half of the medieval carols
that have survived until today are connected to Christmas in
some way. These were usually sung on Christmas Eve, not before,
(07:33):
and then they continued to be sung through the Twelve
Days of Christmas, so they ended on January fifth or
twelfth night, and that marked the end of the Christmas season.
At least some of the people who were writing and
performing carols in the medieval period were being paid for
their work and their speculation that the reason why so
many surviving medieval carols are about Christmas is that's what
(07:56):
people were mostly getting paid to write. For example, in
the late fifteen century, Elizabeth of York, Queen of Henry
the Seventh, paid poet and composer William Cornish for quote
setting of carol upon Christmas Day. There are other records
of payments being made to composers and performers at Christmas time.
This included street performers who sang at night during the
(08:17):
Christmas season, who were either doing the equivalent of busking
for tips or going house to house with the hopes
of getting a little payment from the people inside. In
addition to these carols, medieval Christmas festivities incorporated elements from
other earlier traditions, including the Roman festival of Saturnalia, the
(08:38):
Germanic festival of Yule, and wastling, where some people also
say was sailing, which stretches back to before the Norman
conquest of Britain. Wastling encompasses two different traditions that both
involve singing. One is going house to house with a
bowl full of wastle or a hot mulled drink, singing
(08:59):
song and spreading good cheer, and then the other is
going from orchard to orchard on twelfth night, again singing
songs as well as shouting and banging on pans and
putting a piece of wossle soaked bread in the best
tree in the orchard. Watling through the orchards is meant
to thank the trees for a good harvest and to
(09:20):
ensure a good harvest the next year by waking up
the trees spirits and scaring any bad spirits away. So
all of this moving around and singing has some parallels
with the caroling tradition. By the start of the sixteenth century,
or what is framed is the start of the Renaissance,
the ring dance portion of caroling had mostly fallen out
(09:42):
of fashion, and the term carol was being used to
describe just the song. There could still be some kind
of movement involved, though, like if a carol was being
sung as part of a church service, it might be
during a processional on a particular feast day or a holiday.
It was also around the start of the fifteen hundred
it's that the word carol was increasingly used to describe joyful,
(10:04):
celebratory Christmas songs, including ones that didn't have that structure
of a repeating burden alternating between stanzas. While the word
carol has been around for hundreds of years, the term
Christmas carol specifically had not appeared in English language writing yet.
We will get to when it did after a sponsor break.
(10:36):
The first collection of Christmas carols, specifically Christmas Carol's Not
Just a Carol collection that included some songs about Christmas,
was published in fifteen twenty one. This was the work
of Wincoln to Word, who I have had on my
short list for an episode for a long time because
I like his name. Wincn to Word was an author
(10:56):
and a publisher born in Alsace, who eventually moved to
England and worked for William Caxton. Caxton had learned the
craft of printing while living in Cologne, and he had
returned to England and established a printing press. Caxton printed
a lot of the fifteenth century's most important English literature,
(11:17):
including the Canterbury Tales. Lincoln de Word took over Caxton's
operation after Caxton's death in fourteen ninety one, and he
moved the press from Westminster to Fleet Street in London. Sadly,
only a fragment of this fifteen twenty one collection survives today,
but that fragment includes the first known use of the
(11:39):
term Christmas Carols in writing. It's caliphon reads quote. Thus
ended the Christmas Carols newly imprinted at London in the
Fleet Street at the Sign of the Sun by Lincoln
de Word the year of Our Lord fifteen twenty one.
This fragment includes two carols, a carol of hunting and
a carol bringing in the boar's heed, meaning the boar's head.
(12:03):
And we're gonna talk about this boar's head thing for
a minute, because I am fascinated. It is not clear
exactly when a boar's head became a feast dish, but
it probably goes back to ancient Greece and Rome. The
story of the Caledonian boar hunt was a recurring part
of ancient stories in mythology. The goddess Diana released a
(12:26):
ferocious boar as punishment after King Onanus of Caledon failed
to adequately honor her. This boar killed several people before
finally being killed by Meleager, who presented its head to
the huntress Atlanta. There are multiple depictions of this and
other dramatic boar hunts in ancient and modern artwork.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
There's an obvious symbolism here, even without being sent by
a deity. Wild boars are huge and dangerous, and fighting
them with something like a spear was hard and could
end in fatal injuries for the hunter. So the presenting
of a boar's head at a feast could represent the
triumph over a human enemy or over a less tangible threat.
(13:11):
With the spread of Christianity across much of Europe, boar's
heads came to represent Jesus Christ's triumph over evil. At
some point, people started presenting a boar's head at Christmas feasts,
usually as the first dish brought into the hall by
a processional. The head was typically roasted and dressed with
herbs and greenery, with a whole fruit in its mouth.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Here's an account from this happening at Saint John's Oxford
in sixteen oh seven. Quote the first mess was a
boar's head, which was carried by the tallest and lustiest
of all the guard, before whom as attendants went first,
one attired in a horseman's coat with a boar's spear
in his hand next to him, another huntsman in green
(13:55):
with a bloody fossian drawn next to him, two pages
and half ata sarsenet, each of them with a mess
of mustard. Next to whom came he that carried the
boar's head, crossed with a green silk scarf, by which
hung the empty scabbard of the faucian, which was carried
before him. As they entered the hall, he sang this
(14:18):
Christmas Carol, the last three verses of every staff being
repeated after him by the whole company. I am regretting
not making the spelling more modern English before I put
this in here, because I had a little struggle with it.
One of the places where this is still done today
is Queen's College, Oxford. Originally the Boar's Head ceremony there
(14:42):
was on Christmas Eve, and a meal served for faculty
in students who were remaining at the college over the holiday.
That seems to have started not long after the college
was first founded. In thirteen forty one. There is a
fun but apocryphal story about a student who was attacked
by a ye while studying his Aristotle on Shotover Hill
(15:03):
in Oxford, and successfully defended himself by shoving his book
down the boar's throat. The boar died and the student
brought the head back to Oxford, and that marks the
beginning of the boar's head ceremony. In addition to it
being improbable that someone could kill a wild boar with
a book of Aristotle, wild boars were probably extinct in
(15:25):
England by the time this story supposedly happened. Today, the
Boar's Head Gaudy at Queen's College is usually held this
Saturday before Christmas, with the boar's Head Ceremony taking place
before dinner. If you're thinking do they still do that?
Yes they do. You can watch video of it on
YouTube from as recently as like last year. Uh when
(15:46):
this episode comes out you might be able to see
this year's ceremony. The school's provost and the fellows enter
the hall first, followed by a boar's head on a platter,
followed then by a choir. A solo sings the verses
of the Carol, which are mostly in English, while Acquire
sings the refrain, which is in Latin. There are a
(16:08):
number of other places that do something similar to this
around Christmas, sometimes using a model of a boar's head
rather than an actual head of a bore. I will
be honest with you, I am not fully clear on
the reality of the boar's head at Queen's College, Oxford.
It looks like I want to pet it, though, Okay,
(16:30):
sky a little fuzzy ears, but it's deceased, That's what
I'm saying. I'm not sure if it's an actual deceased
head of an animal or if it is a model.
And I did not find an answer to this. Some
places do use a model of a boar's head and
not an actual animal head. Yeah, I'm just saying, like
(16:51):
I think my reaction is like I don't want to
pet anything that looks like a decapitated thing. Okay, that
sure also makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
There are lots of slightly different versions of the boar's
Head Carol. One of them starts with the verse the
boar's head in hand, bear eye bedecked with bays and rosemary,
and I pray you my masters be merry quote estes
in convivio, and then the refrain is all in Latin,
so Heaven help us could put a pri de ferro
Redden's Loudest Domino. While this carol doesn't specifically include the
(17:22):
word Christmas in the lyrics, the last verse does describe
the boar's head as being provided quote in honor of
the King of Bliss.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Lincoln the words publication of his Christmas Carol collection, which
included this Boar's Head carol, took place just a few
years after Martin Luther posted his ninety nine theses on
the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany, which
has marked us the start of the Protestant Reformation. This,
of course, led to massive changes and unrest and violence,
(17:53):
as what started as a reform movement within Catholicism led
to the establishment of multiple new religious denominations. Many of
these denominations intentionally tried to differentiate their worship services and
traditions from Catholicism, including writing new hymns and composing new
music and eliminating the use of Latin. But since Christmas
(18:17):
carols had been sung mostly in secular spaces by lay people,
maybe with the exception of like special church services for
holidays and feasts, or country churches who were fairly removed
from central church authority, people just kept singing them during
and after the Reformation and Counter Reformation. During this time,
(18:39):
the word Christmas carol also started to be applied generally
to songs about Christmas, regardless of whether they followed the
traditional structural elements of the carol. A bigger influence on
the carolling tradition in the islands of Britain and Ireland
was the aftermath of the Civil War in the mid
seventeenth century, which pitted the Royalists against the Parliamentarians. The
(19:03):
Parliamentarians were victorious and established the Commonwealth of England. Oliver Cromwell,
who had been one of the generals on the parliamentarian side,
became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland in sixteen
fifty three. While Cromwell was Lord Protector, Parliament passed a
series of laws mandating Sunday be observed as a holy
(19:24):
day and restricting how people could celebrate Christmas and other holidays.
This included laws banning the observance of a Christmas holiday
in sixteen forty four and the banning of Christmas, Easter
and Whitson entirely in sixteen forty seven. This had connections
to the Protestant Reformation, since it grew from the Puritan
(19:45):
religious movement that had started in the sixteenth century, which
wanted to purify the Church of England of any vestiges
of Catholicism. The sixteen forty seven ban included banning festivities
that people might do at home, and people could be
fined if they were caught celebrating Christmas. Other laws and
(20:05):
bands followed that one, including a law requiring shops to
be open on Christmas Day. These laws were hard to enforce,
and there were definitely people who just kept on celebrating
Christmas at home or closing their shops down for the holiday,
but this did put a damper on caroling, especially caroling
out in public.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
All of these laws were repealed after the restoration of
the monarchy under Charles the Second in sixteen sixty. Charles
the Second tried to revive the Christmas observances that Cromwell
and Parliament had discouraged her outlawed, including at court, but
the royal Christmas feasts after the restoration were never as
lavish or elaborate, as many of the ones in earlier
(20:47):
centuries had been. Things could vary based on who was
monarch and what was going on in the kingdom. But
earlier Christmas festivities had included all kinds of plays and
masks and revels, with a Lord of miss rule responsible
for a lot of raucous partying. After the Restoration, Christmas
festivities at court did not involve quite so much rowdy,
(21:09):
drunkenness and over the top spectacle.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
We will finally get to william Sands after another sponsor break.
Various books of Christmas carols were published in Britain in
the seventeenth century, both before and after the Commonwealth period.
(21:35):
The idea of a Christmas carol as having one specific
melody that it was always sung to is relatively new,
so many of these books only included the words. They
did not necessarily include a tune that the words should
be sung to. In seventeen eighty two, a Christmas carol
was added to the Anglican Songbook for the first time.
(21:58):
That song was while Shepherds watched their flocks. This song
tells the story of angels appearing to shepherds who are
out with their flocks and telling them about the birth
of Jesus. It's a narrative song. It's all in English
and most versions do not have a repeated refrain like
Carol's traditionally did. It's not clear exactly when While Shepherds
(22:23):
Watched Their Flocks was written. It's attributed to Irish poet
Nathum Tate and it first appeared in a supplement to
the new version of the Psalms by Doctor Brady and
mister Tate, which was published in seventeen hundred.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Another newly composed Christmas carol in the eighteenth century was
Hark the Harold Angels Sing, written by Charles Wesley, who
wrote an enormous number of hymns. Charles Wesley and his
brother John were major figures in the Methodist movement and
the establishment of the Methodist Church. Hark the Herald Angels
Sing first appeared in the collection Hymns and Sacred Poems
(22:59):
in seventeen thirty. It has a repeated refrain of Hark
the Herald Angels sing Glory to the newborn King. While
new carols were being written, and sometimes they were being
added to different denominations, song books and hymnals by the
end of the eighteenth century, traditional carols and carolink were
(23:20):
falling out of favor in Writtain. Some of this was
because people were more likely to be singing relatively new
Christmas themed hymns and carols that had been written for churches,
like Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Silent Night, which
was composed in eighteen eighteen in Austria and then later
translated into English. We talked about that on the show
(23:42):
in twenty eighteen. According to William.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Sand's writing about Christmas Carols, by the late seventeen hundreds,
the old songs were still being sung in Ireland and Wales,
but the practice of going out into the community singings
from house to house was mostly only being done in Cornwall.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
So at the start of the nineteenth century antiquarians and
other interested people started trying to preserve and document the
old Christmas carols before the practice died out entirely. One
was Davi's Gilbert, who was a scientist and mathematician who
worked with people like Sir Humphrey Davy and who became
president of the Royal Society. Gilbert also served as High
(24:27):
Sheriff of Cornwall and as a member of Parliament. In
eighteen twenty two he published a collection of twelve carols,
and he followed that up with an expanded edition of
twenty carols in eighteen twenty three. He described these songs
as relics of the past, saying they had been sung
quote in churches on Christmas Day and in private houses
(24:48):
on Christmas Eves throughout the west of England up to
the latter part of the late century.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
William Sands cited Gilbert in his work on Christmas Carols
a few years ag later. Sans had been born in
seventeen ninety two and was the oldest son of Hannibal
and Anne Sands. He had at least one brother, named Samson,
who he went on a tour of southern Wales with
in eighteen nineteen. They took this tour mostly on foot,
(25:17):
and they wrote an illustrated account of it. I could
not find a scan of this anywhere, which disappointed me
because it sounds very up my alley. But this manuscript
is in the National Library of Wales. Sans was a
solicitor and eventually became a partner in the firm of
Sans and not. He also got married twice, first to
(25:38):
Harriet Hill from eighteen sixteen until her death in eighteen
fifty one, and then he married Eliza Pearson two years later.
They were married until Sam's death on February eighteenth, eighteen
seventy four. And that's all I know about his biography.
What we also know is that Sans wrote a lot
of books. Some of them included specimens of Macaronic poetry,
(26:02):
The History of the Violin and other instruments, Played on
with the Bow from the remote times to the present,
Specimens of Cornish provincial dialect, and a short view of
the history of Freemasonry dedicated to the Grand Lodge of England.
And of course there was his work on Christmas and
Christmas Carols which led to this entire episode. The first
(26:24):
of these was Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern, published in
eighteen thirty three. He compiled these songs from old manuscripts,
oral traditions, and interviews with elders who still remembered or
participated in the old traditions of caroling, Like Davies Gilbert.
He wrote about these carols as something from the past
(26:45):
that he was trying to preserve and document before it
died out. The back of the book also included music
for several carols. In the words of the Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography quote, his transcriptions of the two are
considered accurate, though his harmonizations are sometimes clumsy.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
This book comes from a very specific point of view.
For example, the introduction begins quote the study of popular
antiquities as connected with the early history of mankind is
one of deep interest involving researches into the different ancient
systems of religion, and is a subject of too serious
in nature to be enlarged on in the following pages.
(27:27):
The sacred rites and ceremonies of the various Heathen nations,
however different the details may appear, had a common origin.
For some few years after the flood, mankind had one religion,
the worship of the True God. But so prone is
man to err when unassisted by the divine grace, that
a century had scarcely elapsed before a perverted system was
(27:49):
introduced and the Tower of Babel was built, which caused
the dispersion of nations.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
The title of this book makes it sound as though
it's going to be exclusively about Carol's and caroling, but
about forty percent of its length is an introduction that
contains a kind of wandering exploration of the history of
Christmas observance, mainly in England and surrounding islands. It ambles
(28:17):
all through masks and watle and the Lord of Misrule,
and nativity plays and mystery plays, and on and on.
I was trying to read through all of this, some
of which did not seem related to music at all,
not even as like context setting. And I finally asked myself,
(28:38):
when is he going to get back to the carrols.
I searched the book for that term and found a
sixty page gap where carols are not mentioned at all.
And that's like the book is like three hundred and
something pages long, so that's a significant amount of it.
I was working from a scan of this book, and hilariously,
(29:01):
some past person had written the word carols in pencil
with a little star next to it in the margin
where the part about carols picked back up. In his introduction,
San cites various possible origins for where the practice of
caroling door to door may have come from. What is
this quote?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
There is a story on record of a terrible plague
at Goldsburg in fifteen fifty three, which carried off above
twenty three hundred persons, leaving not more than twenty five
housekeepers alive in the place. The plague abating. One of
the survivors went on Christmas Eve to the Lower Ring
and sang a carol, and was by degrees joined by
(29:42):
a few others to excite each other in thanksgiving. Hence
arose accustomed for the people to assemble in large numbers
at the Upper and Lower Ring on Christmas morning to
sing carols, beginning with unto us this day a child
is born.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
After the introduction, which again is lengthy, the book has
three parts, carols from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century,
carol's still being sung in the West of England, and
specimens of old French carols, and then sort of like
an appendix, there's also a Christmas play of Saint George
(30:18):
and the Dragon, and some notes in several pages of music.
The songs from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries are
written primarily in Middle English, and then in the next
part some of the ones that are still being sung
do date back to those earlier centuries, but they're written
in modern English, not in an older version of the language,
(30:40):
and for some of those sans book is their first
appearance in writing in modern English.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
One such carol is the First Noel, which Sans titles
for Christmas Day in the morning, and this spell's Noel
as Nowell, which was not an uncommon English spelling at
the time or in earlier centuries. This carol probably dates
back to at least the fifteenth century, and it starts
the first Noel the Angel did say was to three
(31:10):
poor shepherds in the fields, as they lay in fields
where they lay keeping their sheep in a cold winter's
night that was so deep. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel Born
is the King of Israel. That final series of Noel's
and the born is the King of Israel form the
repeated refrain.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
I really enjoyed the slight differences between the way a
lot of these songs are in this book and how
I personally sing them as a child. We had certain
poor shepherds, not three of them, because of the meter
being nicer that way. This book also includes God Rescue
Married Gentlemen, which probably goes back to at least the
(31:53):
seventeenth or eighteenth century, and also has that pattern of
stanzas and a refrain it starts God rescue, marry, gentlemen,
let nothing you dismay for Jesus Christ, our Savior, was
born upon this day to save us all from Satan's power.
Old we were gone astray, and then the chorus, Oh
Tidings of comfort and Joy. This one also has as
(32:15):
part of the chorus for Jesus Christ, our Savior was
born on Christmas Day. Other carols in Sans books that
people might recognize today include I saw three ships, which
has its roots in the seventeenth century. That's the one
that goes I saw three ships come sailing in on
Christmas Day. On Christmas Day. I saw three ships come
sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning, forming the refrain.
(32:39):
So as we said earlier, Sands wrote this book as
though he was documenting something that was dying out before
it disappeared entirely. But then in eighteen thirty seven, just
a few years after the book came out, Victoria became
Queen of the United Kingdom. Sans really had not anticipated
the way that celebrates of Christmas would change in Britain
(33:03):
and by extension, in the United States and other predominantly
English speaking parts of the world. During the Victorian era,
especially among the middle class. A lot of today's Christmas
traditions were popularized during these years, including things like Christmas trees,
which became a lot more popular after Queen Victoria and
(33:24):
Albert decorated one in eighteen forty eight, and illustrations of
it were published in newspapers and magazines, and in the
United States, pictures of it were adjusted so that it
didn't look like royalty, but it was the exact same
picture of a Christmas tree. We talked about this more
in our Christmas Triple feature episode from December twenty fourth,
twenty eighteen, which included Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol and
(33:48):
its connection to all of this, and in our December nineteenth,
twenty twenty one episode on Washington Irving. I think we
also talked about it in our Christmas Lights discussion. Oh yeah,
that sounds right, because how you know, I was shocked
to discover that people actually put candle lit candles on
Christmas trees. Washington Irving was an American, but his writings
(34:09):
on English Christmases folded back into Dickens's work, and as
part of this Victorian era shift in Christmas celebrations, people
also started returning to singing Christmas carols, including Carroler's Going
Door to Door. SAMs published another book on Christmas called
Christmas Tide Its History, Festivities and Carols in eighteen sixty.
(34:30):
It is possible that there may have been an earlier
edition of that book that came out in the eighteen fifties. Yeah,
there's no date on the title page, and the notation
I found of it was a little unclear. New Christmas
carols were a part of this Victorian resurgence in caroling.
As examples, the Latin carol A DestinE Fidelis, which dates
(34:53):
back to at least sixteen forty, was translated into English
as okama Ye Faithful in eighteen fe one. In eighteen
sixty two, James Chadwick based Angels we Have Heard on
High with its very wandering refrain of Gloria n x
Chelsea's deo on a traditional French carol that probably dates
(35:14):
back to the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
New collections of Carroll's also came into print. John Mason
Neil and Thomas Hillmore published Carols for Christmas Time in
eighteen fifty four. This was adapted from pie Cantionis, which
is a finish collection that was composed in Latin. It
included Carroll's like good Christian Men Rejoice and Good King
wincessless The Reverend H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Modeling College, Oxford,
(35:41):
and doctor John Stainer, the College organist, published Christmas Carols
New and Old, containing forty two Carrols, in eighteen seventy one.
The late nineteenth century also saw the first Christmas Eve
services of Lessons and Carrols, and the Oxford Book of
Carroll's was first published in nineteen twenty eight. And of
course there have continued to be so many new songs
(36:04):
written for and about Christmas, a lot of them today
categorized as Carol's, whether or not they resemble the old
Ring Dances with Stanzas and Burdens. One of our episodes
that touches on That is our two parter on twentieth
century composer and songwriter Irving Berlin, which came out in
December of twenty twenty two. Irving Berlin wrote, among other things,
(36:29):
the song White Christmas, and that is some Christmas Carol history.
Do you have listener mail to go with it?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I do.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I don't think I read this before our recent refrain.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, but this letter writer sent us the email and
then a second follow up, and I flagged the follow
up to read, and then when I was reading it today,
I was like, did I read the original thing already? Though? Anyway,
this is from Graysia. Graysia wrote, Hi, Holly and Tracy,
(37:03):
longtime listener, first time writer who never thought it actually
right in, But I was inspired by your soap making
episode and it was a little while ago, but I
am a bit behind and a bit of a procrastinator.
Why soap? Well? A couple of months ago, I was
out to dinner with my significant other, his sister and cousin,
all of whom are various engineering majors that are now
(37:26):
scientists or working engineers. I'm a designer and science and
math were never my interests, so I can find their
conversations hard to contribute to at times. Anyway, we got
into the discussion of soap, and deep back into my
elementary field trip memory, I remembered how soap was made.
I have no clue why I remember something from so
(37:47):
long ago, but standing in an eighteen hundred's farmhouse that
was a part of my hometown's Norwegian American Museum, I
remembered a guide showing us a wash basin and telling
us how they would make soap using ashes from their
fireplace and animal fat from their farm. I did, however,
put a disclaimer that what I remembered was so long
(38:08):
ago I would have to double check what all I
told them was correct. Then your episode about soap came out,
and I was thrilled to find everything I said matched up.
It's funny now looking back, that a random thing like
soap connected to a one off conversation and a podcast
I've been listening to for years. A little note on that,
(38:28):
I believe I discovered your podcast in eighth grade as
a source for a National History Day project and used
to resources and as a jumping off point. I do
know that I regularly started listening to you my sophomore
year of high school. I'd gotten my own smartphone by
then I needed something to listen to while painting a
room in my parents' house. Even with small brakes here
(38:49):
and there, I always tuned back in. Your voices have
been with me on high school sports bus rides, through
college during a pandemic, and now on my commute to
and from work. I did not realize how long to
end this long email. I just need to thank you
both using your platform to speak out about what's happening
right now. I know you know, I find comfort that
knowing there are other like minded people out there. Gracia
(39:12):
and then Graycia sent a follow up. It was like
I accidentally sent my email before I meant to, and
the second to last paragraph had been sort of in
the process of being worked on, and Grecia had meant
to say, I didn't realize how long I'd been a
listener until I started counting back to the years and
feeling a little old. Uh. And in the follow up,
(39:32):
Gracia sent pet tax. This is a little kiddy that
they called Goldfish who showed up last summer while they
were moving into a rental house. They could not have
a cat per the lease agreement, but here was a
cat who needed food and care, and so they looked
after Goldfish got her uh, got her spade, and eventually
(39:55):
found a home for her with a coworker. She is
now named Lilith and has a sibl ling named Boo.
This kitty cat, now called Lilith, is an orange kitty
with a white belly who just looks exactly like the
sort of a cat who would show up at someone's
door from outside and say hello, I would love it
if you found a way for me to be brought inside.
(40:17):
Thank you so much Gracia for this email. I love
this story. I sometimes forget how long the show has
been around, and so when I realized that a person
can have started listening to it in eighth grade and
be now still listening to it as an adult person,
it's a little startling. Also, National History Day, we have
(40:39):
had various folks right in about National History Day over
the years, including writing in about their projects, writing in
asking if they could have the source list for something
that we have done on the show before saying hey,
maybe if I get your source list from that episode,
it will help me in my National History Day projects.
And then just folks who have wanted us to know
(41:02):
what's going on with National History Day. But I am
always every year curious to see what is going on
with National History Day, what are the students doing, what
kind of projects do people have going on. It is
one of the things that I think has been affected
by massive budget cuts from the federal government, and I
(41:24):
do not know what the status of that is at
this moment, but yeah, thanks for writing in Grasia and
for mentioning that and for sending such adorable cat pictures.
If you would like to send us a note with
or without cat pictures. We are at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com and you can subscribe to our show
(41:47):
on the iHeartRadio app and to anywhere else you'd like
to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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