Lanterna Rally

Author: Edith Rickert

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-11

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 9781331146100

Excerpt from Ancient English Christmas Carols MCCCC to MDCC Antiquity of Carol Singing "I pray you, sirs, both more and less, Sing these carols in Christemas." So wrote John Awdlay, the blind and deaf chaplain of Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire, about the year 1426, showing that by this time the custom was well established in England. But indeed praise of "Dan Noel" can be traced back at least two centuries earlier. There is an Anglo-Norman carol, which was perhaps sung in the days of King John, in which Noel, after enjoining upon every man to keep open house and to furnish his neighbour drink "until he nods his head and sleeps by day," concludes with the old Saxon exchange of healths "Wesseyl" and "Drinc-heyl." This carol then suggests the probability that there were Yule songs, at least of the wassail type, among the Anglo-Saxons; and it is almost certain that customs originally pagan, such as the procession of the boar's head and the holly and ivy contests, would have been accompanied by some kind of song-dance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.