Why was the Partridge in the Pear Tree? Page 4
Carols were gradually making a comeback and caroling became fashionable once again, usually for raising money for a Church-sponsored endeavour. The old feast day of St Thomas (21 December) was a traditional day for caroling and became a firm favourite throughout Britain.
‘I Saw Three Ships’ is also thought to have been first sung in the fifteenth century, and was known across England in slightly different versions. Similar to ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ it could have been not only sung, but used as a memory game around the festive season, as people added items and attempted to remember what people had sung or said before them.
These also appear in their rediscovered form in Gilbert and Sandys’ books as does the carol that is quoted in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’.
The golden age of carols also adopted hymns that were written relatively recently, and were still being sung in the churches and chapels. Charles Wesley wrote ‘Hark the Herald Angels’, publishing it in Hymns and Sacred Songs in 1739, it reappeared, re-adapted in a modified form, set to a tune by the famous composer Felix Mendelssohn and arranged by William Cummings.
‘Joy to the World’, written in 1719 by Isaac Watts, based on Psalm 98, received a make-over in 1839 when Lowell Mason set it to the tune we sing today, although his arrangement is very similar to music from Handel’s Messiah.
At the same time, many other songs were being rescued from obscurity and re-arranged, including ‘The Boar’s Head Carol’, ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, ‘Here We Go A-Wasailling’ and even ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’.
Carols and Christmas songs had started to appear before the Victorian era, but the ascension to the throne of Queen Victoria in 1837 saw their popularity boosted. She had a strong desire to introduce a sense of seasonal morality to Christmas with the emphasis on family values at home. Christmas had, for some time, since the Puritans, been an austere event, with carols only being sung in a few isolated communities. However, during Victoria’s reign clergy throughout the land taught parishioners carols and even arranged carol-singing events outside in cities, towns and villages.
In 1840, the Queen’s consort, Prince Albert, introduced the Christmas tree to Britain. The decoration of trees at Christmas had been an old custom in his native Germany. The custom instantly caught the imagination of the public and heavily decorated Christmas trees became a central part of a Victorian Christmas.
Carol singing in Yorkshire. Drawn by John Gilbert. (Illustrated London News, 1862)
This reimagining of Christmas took many forms, with many of the traditions and customs we practice today beginning in this period. The tradition of giving Children presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day was widely popular at this time, and despite the difficulty travelling on trains and in carriages, relatives visited with baskets of gifts and fine food. The newspapers printed pictures of the Royal Family gathered around their Christmas tree, and the close-knit Victorian family would do the same, singing carols and playing games. The most popular carols time included ‘The First Noel’, ‘Silent Night’, and ‘The Wassail Song’.
Many Victorian homes had a piano or organ in their parlors. The singing would have drifted on the air to join with the carolers and wasaillers, choirs, bells and organs in the churches. This time in history was surely the golden age of Christmas carols and songs.
4
The Coventry Carol
Refrain:
Lully, lulla, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
By, by, lully, lullay.
Refrain
Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young to slay.
Refrain
That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.
‘The Coventry Carol’ is one that is not always familiar to those who enjoy singing upbeat and lively carols and Christmas songs. It is the lament of a mother for her son. The carol is one of the oldest still in existence and is named after the city of Coventry, where the sixteenth-century Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors depicted Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.
In the Bible, the Gospel According to Matthew tells the story:
Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying,
In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
Matthew 2:16-18 (King James Version)
This account of infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, reports that he ordered the killing of all young male children in Bethlehem because the Magi, or wise men, had reported that the King of the Jews had been born there. In his mission to avoid losing his throne to the Christ child, he gave the order.
The incident is described as fulfilling a prophesy made hundreds of years earlier by the Prophet Jeremiah, in the Old Testament, which is repeated in Matthew’s Gospel 700 years later, ‘In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping …’
In the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, the carol was a gentle lullaby sung by the women of Bethlehem to their children, before the soldiers of Herod arrived to kill them. It’s a deeply sad and upsetting episode in the Christmas story, which is recounted by this carol, sung as a lament in a three-part harmony with no accompaniment.
A relief depicting the Massacre of the Innocents.
The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors is one of only two plays that have survived of the late medieval Mystery Plays that took place in Coventry, the other being the Weaver’s Pageant. The Pageant probably dates back as far as the fourteenth century and is said to be a morality play that tradesman staged for the town officials and gentry. The Pageant tells the Nativity story from the Annunciation to Mary (when the Angel tells her she is to have a son, whom she will call Jesus) to the Massacre of the Innocents.
The play’s scripts would have been kept in the town hall for safekeeping, and when a copy was required, a fee would have been paid to a scribe to reproduce it, and to the town council as owners. The oldest copy of the Pageant that has been recorded was one that was edited by the then mayor, Master Palmer, and dates back to 1534. Unfortunately, the manuscript was destroyed in a fire in 1879. An earlier copy had been kept elsewhere, but the original text of the Pageant and several edited versions have been lost.
According to the English composer and pianist, Elizabeth Poston, who edited the Penguin Book of Christmas Carols, the ‘Coventry Carol’ is one of three that appear in the Pageant. One manuscript had a later annotation by Thomas Mawdycke, 1591, which directed that ‘the women singe’ and that the shepherds sing the other two.
The only remaining evidence of the first carol is:
As I out rode this endered night,
Of thre ioli sheppanders
I saw a sight
And all a bowte there fold
A star shone bright
They sange teri terlow
To mereili the sheppards
Ther pipes can blow
The evidence of the third carol is:
Doune from heaven, from heaven so hie,
Of angeles ther came a great companie,
With mirthe and ioy and great solemnitye,
The sange terly terlow;
So mereli the sheppards their pipes can blow.
In 1910, Edith Rickert, an English professor from the University of Chicago, c
o-authored a major book on the history of Christmas Carols. Ancient English Christmas Carols: 1400-1700 noted the carols from the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, joining the first and the third carols to create another which she entitled ‘As I Rode Out this Enders Night’:
London Evening News, Nativity Scene 1800.
As I rode out this enders night,
Of three jolly shepherds I saw a sight,
And all about their fold a star shone bright:
They sang terly terlow;
So merrily the shepherds their pipes gan blow
Down from heaven, from heaven so high,
Of angels there came a great company,
With mirth and joy and great solemnity,
They sang terly terlow;
So merrily the shepherds their pipes gan blow.
In a twist to the story, the great hymn collector William Sandys in his book Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833), wrote that there is an old tradition that Herod’s own son was among the innocents slaughtered. According to Sandys, the evidence came from his writing partner Davies Gilbert, who declared that Prudentius, a fourth-century Roman-Christian poet, wrote about the death of Herod’s son.
There is no clear evidence that this tragedy happened; there is evidence, however, in several sources that Herod murdered his wife and two sons in around 7 BC, and one son in 4 BC. This didn’t stop William Sandys writing a carol about the death of Herod’s son, which he called ‘When Herod in Jerusalem’ the sixth verse of which reads:
Now mark the judgments of the Lord
On their ungodly train,
King Herod’s son where he was nurs’d
Amongst the rest was slain.
The tune of the ‘Coventry Carol’ is a Picardy third, which is a traditional European musical characteristic used widely throughout the Medieval period (500-1400) and even the Renaissance period (1400-1600), and the sadness of the subject seems to fit very well with the music in this carol with the strangest of histories.
5
The Twelve Days of Christmas
On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the fifth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the sixth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the seventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the eighth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the ninth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the tenth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the eleventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Eleven Pipers Piping
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the twelfth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Twelve Drummers Drumming
Eleven Pipers Piping
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
One of the most complicated and curious Christmas song has to be ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. It has attracted lots of speculation about its origins and is still the source of some dispute. Is this song a historic remnant of a parlour game, or is it a secretly coded text to teach oppressed people about faith?
In the Western Church, the twelve days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day and continue until the Eve of the Feast of the Epiphany. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the twelfth night as ‘the evening of the fifth of January, preceding the twelfth day’. This night is traditionally the end of the Christmas season, the beginning of the Epiphany season, and the day when merriment would cease.
A common grey partridge.
The twelve days of Christmas as a festival has a long history. It was first mentioned by one of the Fathers of the Early Eastern Orhodox Church, Ephrem the Syrian (AD 306-373), who called it a Festal Tide. At the Western Church Council of Tours in AD 567, it was confirmed as a Festival of the Church, and in the Laws of Ethelred (991-1016) it was ‘ordained it to be a time of peace and concord among Christian men, when all strife must cease’.
Although the exact origins of the song are unknown, it is highly probable that it began as a memory and forfeit game for twelfth night celebrations, which would have been said and not sung. The players gathered in a circle and the leader would recite a verse and each would repeat it, the leader would add another verse, and speak faster, and so on until a mistake was made by one of the players, who would then drop out of the game. The winner would be the one who could remember all the items in order, being able to recite them at speed. The earliest printed version that suggests this was the case is found in the children’s book Mirth Without Mischief (c. 1780).
The book contained ‘Twelve Pleasing Pastimes’ including ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ and the wonderfully named ‘Play of the Gaping Wide Mouthed Waddling Frog sung at King Pippins Ball’. The game is certainly much older than the printed version, as the 1780 book was a compilation of games played in parts of Britain in the past.
Although there is some debate about the actual age of the game, it is fair to say that the consensu
s is that is dates to the early sixteenth century. This is where difficulties arise however. If the game were written 200 years before the book was printed, it wouldn’t have made much sense to the British people, because partridges didn’t perch in pear trees. This led some people to suggest that the game is of French origin.
The red-legged, or French, partridge perches in trees more frequently than the English common or grey partridge. The French red-legged partridge was not successfully introduced to Britain until the 1770s, long after this game had achieved some popularity. If this sounds all too far-fetched, and why shouldn’t we sing about athletic British partridges sat high up in pear trees, the other piece of evidence that the original game might be French comes down to translation.
The Twelfth Night.
Over the years, people have noticed that the pear tree might actually be the word perdrix, French for partridge and pronounced ‘per-dree’, which was simply copied down incorrectly when the oral version of the game was transcribed. The original line would have been: ‘A partridge, une perdrix.’. Whichever might be correct, Madamme Perdrix is almost certainly French, whether in a tree or not.
The game would have turned into a song sometime after the publication of Mirth Without Mischief in 1780, although Lady Gomme, (1853-1938) the prolific collector of folk tales and rhymes, described playing the game every twelfth night, before eating mince pies and the twelfth cake, a light dried fruit cake made with brandy and eggs.