A History of Carols – Part 1

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, thought it might be interesting to share it with my readers.  Instead of my regular blog, I'm taking time off and posting some extracts from this here.

A History of Carols – Part 1

By William Mauir Ald

The sweetest sounding name for Christmas song in English is "carol." It comes down the centuries laden with the happy memories of the great midwinter feast and is as deeply woven into its romance as the evergreens and the Yule log.

The question, What is a carol? is often asked; but a simple answer is by no means easy to give. The very term itself has occasioned much comment; but "it is clearly associated at first with the idea of choric song."( Edith Rickert, Ancient English Christmas Carols). In the Preface to The Oxford Book of Carols, Percy Dearmer writes: "The word 'carol' once meant to dance in a ring: it may go back, through the Old French `caroler' and the Latin 'CHORAULA,' to the Greek 'CHORAULES,' a flute player for chorus dancing, and ultimately to the 'CHOROS' which was originally a circling dance and the origin of the Attic drama." '

In France in the twelfth century the word denoted an "amorous song dance which hailed the coming of Spring," and in Italy at the same period it meant "a ring or song dance." By Dante this conception of carolling is carried up into the Heaven of the Fixed Stars and transfigured. There in that realm of perfect love he sees groups of holy and translucent souls form themselves into carole, that is, choirs, who, expressive of the harmony and joy of the supernal life, dance and sing before him and around the radiant Beatrice. Sometime during the thirteenth century the French word carole passed into English in its normal nonreligious sense. In Chaucer dancing and carolling are synonymous terms:

Upon the carole wonder faste

I gan biholde; till atte laste

A lady gan me for to espye,

And she was cleped Curtesye . . .

Ful curteisly she called me,

"What do ye there, beau sire?" quod she,

"Come [nere], and if it lyke yow

To dauncen, daunceth with us now"

And I, withoute tarying,

Wente into the caroling.'

[ Skeat's Student Chaucer, "The Romaunt of the Rose," p. 9, 11. 793-804. Faste, eagerly. Cleped, called.]

It seems as if the word ought to have continued in this secular atmosphere; but by the beginning of the fifteenth century it comes to be applied in an increasingly exclusive manner to Christmas songs, sacred and secular alike.

Some explanation of its appropriation in this connection may be due to the fact that many of the earliest examples were modelled after the form of these old French caroller [Early English Lyrics, p. 293.]

Certainly the spirit of the dance is unmistakably present in not a few. But some again, as for example lullabies and those of a lyric stamp, convey little suggestion of this kind; while others wind out their tale with all the naive simplicity of the typical ballad. In fact, like ballads, carols are of many kinds. As to what one will enjoy, and be willing to ascribe the name to in either case, is largely a matter of taste.

On the one hand, they range from the most winsome creations to the vagabond and salacious types; on the other they run all the way from the sublime to the ridiculous and even to the gross. Though one may not have the temerity to venture upon definition, some account can be given of the origin and nature of the sacred type. By way of anticipation it may be said that the spirit of the religious carol in its purest form is, perhaps, best suggested by the happy singing of birds in the springtime at break-morn in the forest, or in some wooded dell:

Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies,

And carroll of loves praise.

The merry Larke hir martins sings aloft;

The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes;

The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft;

So goodly all agree with sweet consent

To this dayes merriment.'

[Edmund Spenser, Epithalamium, 11. 78-84]

But before the Christmas minstrels could arise to render melodious the spiritual joy of the Season, Bethlehem had to be rediscovered. How this came to pass is a matter that claims the attention of all interested in that species of song properly called the Christmas Carol.

Beyond all doubt the most important event in the religious life of Western Christendom in the Middle Ages was the birth of Francis of Assisi in 1182. Nor is this to forget the many great names which adorn the time in different lands. To the period belong St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante, before whom the mind must always make reverent pause.

Through them the moral and spiritual soul of the medieval Church found incomparable expression: the one offering the fruits of his genius in profound, analytical and argumentative prose, the other in subtle, soaring and glorious poetry.

But neither the creator of the Summa Theologica, nor the author of the Divina Commedia, exercised that direct, salutary and recreative influence on the common heart which is true of St. Francis. Prior to the rise of this remarkable man Christianity did not mean much to the plain folks anywhere in Europe, and Christmas in a spiritual sense little or nothing at all.

The sacred rites of the Church, couched in a language poorly understood, as had not been altogether the case in England before the coming of the Norman French, were followed with only the vaguest notion of their import and meaning. Efforts, indeed, had been made from time to time to enable the faithful to enter intelligently into the Latin services; but by many it was not considered in the least degree essential that they should know what was being said and done.

The prevalent conception of religion was scarcely of the kind to attract the average person. It was sombre, abstract and singularly lacking in popular appeal. In His historical aspects Christ was the thorn-crowned Saviour, whose "cruel wounds unstaunched and bleeding yet" engrossed the attention of all. Over the whole medieval world lay the broad shadow of the Cross. In His present capacities and powers Christ was the Author of Salvation, the Deliverer from the pains of eternal death and the awful Judge of mankind, whose tenderer offices had been transferred to the Mater Salutaris.

A finer type of faith could be found behind the monastery walls; for thither the more serious minded were apt to betake themselves. There, if real athletes of the spirit and unafflicted by soul weariness, or other sadder impediments, the celestial ladder leading to the marriage of the soul with Christ the Heavenly Bridegroom challenged ascent. Though such devotion could not be emulated by the many, either within or without the cloister, that did not destroy then, nor does it now, its witness to the supremacy of the spiritual and to the great cost involved in achieving pure holiness of life-"that perfect correspondence of the human soul with the Eternal."

Neither Christianity, nor Christmas, however, had yet been shaped to touch the lives of lay folk. They both passed over them like a winter sun behind clouds. But spring with its flowers and singing of birds was at hand. It came with the radiant Francis. By "that profound popular instinct which enabled him, more than any man since the primitive age, to fit religion for popular use," [Matthew Arnold] he succeeded in linking the common heart to the happy humanities of Jesus.

Caring for little else, though disputing nothing, than the human side of the Lord's life and ministry, he recovers for his age something of the original romance of the Gospel and with it the brightness of heaven and earth.

"Wherever he goes," writes Lonsdale Ragg, "he carries with him sunshine and fresh air and living water. Fresh from the pure fountain of the Gospel precepts, which he interprets with a childlike literalness, he passes along, he and Poverty his bride, beaming with love, and inspiring holy thoughts by his very look." [Dante and His Italy, p. 94]