Christmas carols then are songs or ballads to be used during the Christmas season, in reference to the festival, under one or other of its aspects. In some it is regarded chiefly as a time of mirth and feasting; in others as the commemoration of our Lord's nativity. In many carols of widely different dates some one or more of the customary circumstances or concomitants of the celebration appear as the main subject of the verse. This is the case with the oldest known carol written in England, which exists in the Norman French language in a manuscript of the 13th century. (Joshua Sylvester, in 'A Garland of Christmas Carols,' etc., J.C. Hotten, 1861, states that it was discovered on a leaf in the middle of one of the MSS. in the British Museum, but as he gives no reference, its identification is almost impossible.) This points to an important fact in the history of the Christmas festival. In Northern Europe especially the solemnities of the annual celebration of Christ's birth were grafted upon a great national holiday-time, which had a religious significance in the days of paganism; and this has left a distinct impression upon Christmas customs and on Christmas carols. The old heathen Yule has lent its colouring to the English Christmas; and it is largely to this influence that we must attribute the jovial and purely festive character of many of the traditional and best known, as well as of the most ancient Christmas carols. These carols have not, like the hymns appropriate to other Christian seasons, exclusive reference to the events then commemorated by the Church, but represent the feelings of the populace at large, to whom the actual festivities of the season are of more interest than the event which they are ostensibly intended to recall.
At the same time there are many other Christmas carols, ranging from an early period, which treat entirely of the occasion, the circumstances, the purpose and the result of the Incarnation. These differ from hymns chiefly in the free ballad style of the words and the lighter character of the melody. Moreover, a large proportion of them embody various legendary embellishments of the Gospel narrative, with a number of apocryphal incidents connected with the birth and early years of Jesus Christ. For these they are in all probability indebted immediately to the Mystery Plays, which were greatly in vogue and much frequented at the time from which Christmas carols trace their descent; that is, the 12th or 13th century. Indeed, it seems probable that the direct source of Christmas carols, as we understand the term, is to be found (as has been already stated in this Dictionary [1]) in similar compositions which were introduced between the scenes of the Mysteries or Miracle Plays, the great religious and popular entertainments of the middle ages. Three such compositions, belonging to one of the Coventry plays,[2] have been preserved, by accident, apart from the play itself, with this note: 'The first and last the shepheards singe: and the second or middlemost the Women singe.' It is easy to see from this how carols relating to the mysteries of man's redemption might become rooted in the memories and affections of the people. Christmas carols have also been affected by the hymns of the Church on the one side, and by purely secular songs or ballads on the other. The words of a very large number, dating from the 15th century downward, are extant, and have been published in such collections as those of Sandys, Husk, Sylvester, and, most recently, A. H. Bullen; but the materials for a history of their musical character are less copious and less easily accessible. It cannot be doubted that the style of the tunes was that of the ballad music of the period to which they belong: a period which extends, so far as concerns existing melodies, from the 15th century to the 19th. An example of a strictly mediæval carol tune is to be found in that of the second of the carols introduced into the Coventry play already mentioned. 'Lully, lulla, yw littell tine childe,' which has been published in modern notation by Mr. Pauer. Others, in three or four parts, of the time of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. exist in manuscript.[3]
In the time of King Henry VII. and later it was one of the duties of the choir of the Chapel Royal to sing Christmas carols before the sovereign; and it may be that this custom gave rise to the elaborate compositions bearing that name, of which some specimens are preserved among the works of William Byrd. Each of the collections numbered 2, 3, and 8 in the list of his works given in this Dictionary[4] contains a Christmas carol, so called. The first, 'Lulla, lullaby,' is probably the Lullaby referred to by the Earl of Worcester in his letter about the doings at Queen Elizabeth's court.[5] The first strain of the second is here given as a specimen. The third, 'This day Christ is borne,' is headed 'A carroll for Christmas day,' and is followed by 'A carroll for New yeares day.'
