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  In some pubs the words are put on a flipchart at the front, in some books are produced, but in many places the people are familiar with many words, although the more idiosyncratic Victorian lyrics continue to produce wry smiles from the assembled carolers.

  In response to a suggestion that the Sheffield Carols were dying out, a contributor to an internet forum on local arts maintained that was ‘nonsense’, stating there are still ‘over fifty versions of ‘While Shepherds Watched’ being sung throughout the region, you just have to know where to look’.

  Wassailing, Mari Lwyd or Sheffield Carols are all living and breathing examples of the power of custom and culture. Keeping alive the traditions of the past, bringing people together for important celebrations.

  It could have all been so different though. The Puritans had other ideas about singing, drinking, dancing and Christmas.

  2

  The Puritans Tried to Kill Christmas

  During the sixteenth century Christmas was, as it is now, extremely popular, not only as a religious festival, but also as a time for families to take part in a wide range of traditional pastimes. Christmas music had spread from the Church, where it was found in the form of chants, litanies and hymns, to become popular songs performed throughout the land by minstrels, travelling players or wassailers, the Mari Lwyd, or just sung to simple accompaniment in pubs, houses and halls. The first Christmas carols secured the national love for them as the people danced and sang to celebrate Christmas.

  The festivities saw homes and public buildings decorated with holly, ivy and rosemary. Church services were widely attended and gifts were exchanged at New Year. Seasonal food and drink would be prepared and stage-plays, concerts and events were organised for everyone. The social function of Christmas was two-fold; firstly, the struggles of a harsh winter could easily be forgotten with this welcome midwinter respite, and secondly; the Christmas season acted as a force for social cohesion, as people rediscovered their interdependence and shared the best of what they possessed. The villages and towns resonated with the sound of merriment with the accompanying stories of drunkenness and debauchery, promiscuity and other forms of excess. The success of Christmas, where the usual norms were suspended for a time of celebration, eventually became its downfall.

  The Lords of Misrule.

  Towns, villages, colleges and noble houses, and even the royal court often chose a mock king to preside over their Christmas festivities. Temporarily elevated from his ordinary, humble rank to that of ‘king’, he was known by a variety of names, including the Lord of Misrule, the Abbot of Unreason, the Christmas Lord, and the Master of Merry Disports. These colourful titles reflect the kind of madcap revelry associated with these parties.

  The duties of the Lord of Misrule varied, as did the type of entertainment offered over the Christmas period. The Lord’s most fundamental duty, however, was to preside over the festivities as a mock king. One wealthy estate owner left a record of the authority he granted to the Lord of Misrule:

  I give free leave to Owen Flood, my trumpeter, gentleman, to be Lord of Misrule of all good orders during the twelve days. And also, I give free leave to the said Owen Flood to command all and every person or persons whatsoever, as well as servants as others, to be at his command whensoever he shall sound his trumpet or music, and to do him good service, as though I were present myself, at their perils.

  The Lords of Misrule presided over races through churches on hobby-horses during services, dancing through the streets and the consumption of huge amounts of food and drink. The Lord was allowed to order anyone to do anything, and at the end of the season, he was usually sacrificed ceremonially. This image of sacrificial kings who preside over debauchery is an echo of Saturnalia, the Roman festival that was undoubtedly practiced during the period of the Roman occupation.

  The title page of Philip Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses (1580).

  Around 1580, Philip Stubbes, a strict protestant expressed the Puritan view in his famed book The Anatomie of Abuses, when he noted:

  That more mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides, what masking [participating in a masquerade] and mumming [acting as a mime artist] and whereby robbery, whoredom, murder and what not is committed? What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used, more than in all the year besides, to the great dishonour of God and impoverishing of the realm.

  The whole idea of the festivities taking on a pagan tone and the misrule turning into displays of excess and depravity weren’t the only things bothering the Puritans, they viewed the festival as an unwanted by-product of the Roman Catholic Church.

  As Christmas celebrations of this order weren’t mentioned in the Bible, they believed that people weren’t called by God to act in this manner. The first attack on Christmas struck on 2 September 1642, when the largely Puritan Parliament outlawed the performance of plays, including Christmas pageants. Eventually, all stage players would be declared ‘rogues’ and be ‘publically whipped’ should they be caught.

  A bill was passed entitled ‘An Act for the suppression of diverse innovations in churches and chapels in and about the worship of God and for the due observation of the Lord’s Day, and the better advancement of preaching God’s Holy Word in all parts of the kingdom.’ The bill required:

  That all alters [sic] and rails be taken away out of churches and chapels before April 18, 1643, and that the communion-table be fixed in some convenient place in the body of the church. That all tapers, candlesticks, basins, crucifixes, crosses, images, pictures of saints, and superstitious inscriptions in churches or churchyards, be taken away or defaced.

  Parliament enlisted the help of religious ministers to create a ‘Directory of Public Worship’, eventually making it the only legal form of worship. Easter, Pentecost and Saints’ Days were all banned or the celebrations were drastically reduced, and the stricter observance of Sunday was called for. Puritans demanded that ‘The Lord’s Day’ should remain only as a day of fasting and prayer.

  There was a ‘deep attachment to Christmas’ as Historian Chris Durston commented in the magazine History Today, writing that:

  [The Catholic people] seem to have retained a deep attachment to Christmas during Elizabeth I’s reign and the early part of the seventeenth century. The staunchly Catholic gentlewoman, Dorothy Lawson, celebrated Christmas ‘in both kinds… corporally and spiritually’, indulging in Christmas pies, dancing and gambling. In 1594 imprisoned Catholic priests at Wisbech kept a traditional Christmas which included a hobby horse and Morris Dancing, and throughout the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Benedictine school at Douai retained the traditional festivities, complete with an elected ‘Christmas King’. The Elizabethan Jesuit, John Gerard, relates in his autobiography how their vigorous celebration of Christmas and other feasts made Catholics particularly conspicuous at those times and, writing on the eve of the Civil War Richard Carpenter, a convert from Catholicism to Protestantism, observed that the recusant gentry were noted for their ‘great Christmasses’. As a result, by the 1640s many English Protestants viewed Christmas festivities as the trappings of popery, anti-Christian ‘rags of the Beast’.

  Shortly after, on 10 September 1643, the Puritans abolished the previous liturgy and its musical accompaniment, especially in cathedrals and college chapels. At the same time, the Act abolished all archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, and the vicar choral and chorister. Church organs were also moved from many churches.

  A Puritan Christmas.

  Mr Edmund Calamy, who lived at the rectory of St Mary, Aldermanbury, preached the following on Christmas Day 1644, before the House of Lords:

  This day is commonly called The Feast of Christ’s nativity, or, Christmas-day; a day that has formerly been much abused to superstition, and profaneness. It is not easy to say, whether the superstition has been greater, or the profaneness … And truly I think that the superstition and profanation of this day is so root
ed into it, as that there is no way to reform it, but by dealing with it as Hezekiah did with the brazen serpent. This year God, by his Providence, has buried this Feast in a Fast, and I hope it will never rise again.

  The excesses of the Tudor era had been replaced by severe intolerance and a desire to remove any celebration of Christmas. There was even a belief that giving presents to children would be damaging for them, people who continued to do so found themselves on the wrong side of the law. One minister declared that children might become ‘so addicted to their toys and Christmas sports that they will not be weaned from them’.

  The cultural and social consequences of the Puritan period were significant. Widespread riots and civil disobedience followed. In London a crowd of apprentices attacked a number of shops in Cheapside which had opened for trading on Christmas Day and forced their owners, ‘diverse holy Londoners’, to close them. In reporting the incident the weekly newspaper, Mercurius Civicus sympathised with the shopkeepers but argued that to avoid ‘disturbance and uproars in the City’ they should have waited ‘till such time as a course shall be taken by lawful authority with matters of that nature’.

  This 1650 note from Oliver Cromwell is found in the National Archive:

  A document dating to 1650 noting Christmas ‘disturbances’ in London.

  Report sent to S[i]r Hen[ry] Mildmay

  The Councell haveing received severall Informations that there was avery wilfull & strict observation of the day com[m]only called Christmasse day throughout the Cittyes of London & Westm[inster] by agenerall keeping of their shops shut up and that there were Contemptuous speeches used by some in favour thereof, which the Councell conceiveing to be upon the old grounds of superstition and malignancy and tending to the avowing of the same and Contempt of the present Lawes and governm[en]t have thought fit that the Parlam[en]t be moved to take the same into Consideration for such further provisions

  and penaltyes for the abolishing & punishing of those old superstitions observations and meeting w[i]th such malicious contradiction of offenders in that behalfe as their wisedomes shall iudge fit, They have likewise received informations of frequent resort unto and exerciseing of the idolatrous masse in severall places to the great dishono[u]r of Almightie God, notorious breach of the lawes and scandal of the governm[en]t wherein according to notice given they have already taken some Course and desire the parlam[en]t will be pleased to take that matter alsoe into their Consideration for further remedies & suppression of that Idolatrie in such way as to them shall seeme meet That it be likewise reported to the Parl[amen]t that the Councell is informed that there are still remaining the Armes and pictures of the late King in severall Churches Halls, upon the Gates and in other publique places of the Citty of London That the parl[amen]t bee moved to appoint whom they shall thinke fitt to see the same armes & pictures taken downe and defaced and to give an Account of their executing the same w[i]thin such tyme as they shall thinke fit to allow for that purpose And S[i]r Henry Mildmay is desired to make this report.

  The Dissenter Isaac Watts.

  The following year, when Christmas Day fell on the last Wednesday in the month, the day set aside for a regular monthly fast, Parliament produced the anticipated legal rulings. On 19 December an ordinance was passed directing that the fast day should be observed in the normal way. The tide had started to turn, however and even Royalist satirists and poets were writing widely published works, with titles like ‘Christmas In and Out’ and ‘The Vindication of Christmas’.

  Another similar piece, ‘Women Will Have Their Will or Give Christmas His Due’, which appeared in December 1648, seems to have been aimed particularly at a female audience. It contains a dialogue between ‘Mistress Custom’, a victualler’s wife in Cripplegate and ‘Mistress New-Come’ an army captain’s wife ‘living in Reformation Alley near Destruction Street’. New-Come finds Custom decorating her house for Christmas and they fall into a discussion about the feast. Custom exclaims that:

  I should rather and sooner forget my mother that bare me and the paps that gave me suck, than forget this merry time, nay if thou had’st ever seen the mirth and jollity that we have had at those times when I was young, thou wouldst bless thyself to see it.

  She claims that those who want to destroy Christmas are:

  A crew of Tatter-demallions amongst which the best could scarce ever attain to a calves-skin suit, or a piece of neckbeef and carrots on a Sunday, or scarce ever mounted (before these times) to any office above the degree of scavenger of Tithingman at the furthest.

  When New-Come suggests she should abandon her celebrations because they have been banned by the authority of Parliament, she replies:

  God deliver me from such authority; it is a Worser Authority than my husband’s, for though my husband beats me now and then, yet he gives my belly full and allows me money in my purse … Cannot I keep Christmas, eat good cheer and be merry without I go and get a licence from the Parliament. Marry gap, come up here, for my part I’ll be hanged by the neck first.

  Mistress New-Come then informs her that if she disregards Parliament, she will be tamed by ‘the honest Godly part of the army’, but Custom ignores this threat, dismissing her with the rhyme:

  For as long as I do live

  And have a jovial crew

  I’ll sit and rhat

  And be fat

  And give Christmas his due.

  These Royalist satires were recited in market places and pubs; they were even sometimes accompanied by songs and ballads which told tales of Christmas past. Eventually, the Royalists were forced to concede that the public mood would never be fully controlled and Christmas was here to stay, ‘grand festivals and lesser holy-days … are the main things which the more ignorant and common sort among them do fight for’.

  The banning of Christmas was one of the biggest mistakes, one that was based on several misconceptions about the roots of the Christmas festivities, the place of carols and hymns, and the need for communal celebrations. Eventually, the people spoke. Slowly carols and hymns returned to the churches and the market places, homes and pubs, although this process was very slow indeed. The Act of Toleration restored some civil rights to Dissenters in 1689.

  The Dissenter Isaac Watts’ book Hymns and Spiritual Songs was eventually published in 1707, but the widespread celebration of Christmas with carols and songs took more than a century to properly reappear, when we started to witness the advent of the great hymn and carol writers.

  At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, something is stirring in the imaginations of poets, artists, musicians and hymn writers.

  3

  The Golden Age of Carols

  The Golden age of Christmas carols and songs began with the rediscovery of ‘The First Nowell’. It is uncertain when this carol was written. Some believe that it was written in the eighteenth century, but some music historians argue that it could have been written as early as the sixteenth century. A version of the carol was first published in 1823 in Carols Ancient and Modern. The book was one of many to be edited and arranged by William B. Sandys and Davies Gilbert. Sandys, a solicitor and antiquarian, and Gilbert, an engineer, author and politician, rediscovered many carols from different parts of Britain, adding them to collections, sometimes with extra verses and different settings.

  Davies Gilbert was born in St Erith, Cornwall, the only child of Revd Edward Giddy and Catherine Davies. His father was the curate of St Erith Church in the village. His great love of the history and culture of Cornwall led him to assemble and write many books, including A Parochial History of Cornwall, he was also passionate about old Cornish carols that had all but fallen from use. He met William Sandys when he was elected to the Society of Antiquaries in 1820. In the introduction to Carols Ancient and Modern, Gilbert wrote:

  The Editor is desirous of preserving them [the selected Christmas carols] in their actual forms, however distorted by false grammar or by obscurities, as specimens of times now passed away, and of religious
feelings superseded by others of a different cast. He is anxious also to preserve them on account of the delight they afforded him in his childhood, when the festivities of Christmas Eve were anticipated by many days of preparation, and prolonged through several weeks by repetitions and remembrances.

  Even though Gilbert believed he was preserving carols for nostalgic purposes, he was actually laying the foundations for one of the greatest periods of hymn, music and carol writing. By the end of the century nearly all of the carols we sing, know and love today will have been written in a renaissance for Christmas music.

  The title page of William Sandys’ book, Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern.

  In Sandy and Gilbert’s Carols Ancient and Modern alone we have ‘The First Nowell’, ‘God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen’ and ‘I Saw Three Ships’. It also included songs and carols from far back as medieval times, many of which Sandys ‘improved’ and combined with other sources he found. Many of the tunes consisted of phrases that are repeated twice followed by a different phrase. These old English folk melodies were popular amongst the West Gallery Choirs, so named because at the beginning of the eighteenth century, these Georgian choirs sang in purpose-built galleries on the west ends of Anglican churches, and in Nonconformist chapels. Their fuguing tunes, unique musical meter and four-part harmonies were sometimes accompanied by the violin, cello or clarinet, although it was common for the choirs to sing unaccompanied. The Victorians frowned on this Georgian practice and sadly they removed many good examples of west galleries from churches and chapels. Nevertheless, these tunes have become popular once again, not just amongst Wassailers, Sheffield Carolers and the Mari Lwyd (see Chapter 1), but also with the choirs who have revived the tradition of West Gallery Music.