William Sandys & English Christmas Carols

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Stuff You Missed in History Class: William Sandys & English Christmas Carols

Date: December 24, 2025
Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Frey
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This Christmas Eve episode explores the history of English Christmas carols, focusing on their origins, evolution, cultural impact, and the pivotal role played by antiquarian William Sandys in preserving traditional carols. While the hosts originally intended a biographical deep dive on Sandys, most of the episode examines the broader, fascinating development of carols in the British Isles, touching on etymology, medieval festivities, religious shifts, ceremonial traditions like the Boar's Head, and the Victorian Christmas revival.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Meaning of “Carol”

• Definition:
  • By 1300, ‘carol’ in English described ring dances with songs, the songs themselves, and generally any kind of merry dance or festivity (05:48).
  • Etymology traces to Old French carole. Could link back to Greek/Latin "chorus."
• Structure:
  • Medieval carols were composed of unique stanzas sung by a leader ("cantor") with recurring refrains ("burdens") sung/danced by the group (06:48).

2. Early Flourishing & Religious Influence

• St. Francis of Assisi and Religious Carols:

  • St. Francis promoted nativity plays and songs in native tongues in the 13th century, giving rise to religiously themed carols (07:29).
  • “Some call St. Francis the father of the Christmas carol—but that’s a bit overstated” (08:02).

• Lay & Clergy Involvement:

  • Carols, even when written by religious figures, were typically sung in secular venues: homes, squares, inns (08:02).
  • Example: Priest John Ottley’s carols intended for community singing.

• Surviving Manuscripts:

  • Trinity Carol Roll, Selden Carol Book, Ritson Manuscript—major sources of early carol lyrics, often in English/Latin mix (09:00).

• Christmas Connection:

  • During the medieval period, “carol” wasn’t Christmas-specific, but half of the surviving ones are Christmas-related, sung mainly during the 12 days from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night (09:24).

Memorable Quote:

“About half of the medieval carols that have survived…are connected to Christmas in some way. These were usually sung on Christmas Eve, not before, and continued through the 12 days.”
—Tracy (09:24)

3. Caroling, Wassailing, and Festivals

• Paid Carolers:

  • Royals like Elizabeth of York paid poets/composers like William Cornish for carols (09:55).
  • Street carolers performed for tips or food/money.

• Blending Traditions:

  • Medieval Christmas incorporated Saturnalia, Yule, and especially ‘wassailing’—going house to house or orchard to orchard singing, to ensure good harvests and celebrate (10:39).

4. Renaissance to Reformation Changes

• Dance Declines, Song Remains:
  • By the Renaissance (1500s), ring dances mostly disappeared—“carol” increasingly meant only the song, often processional in nature (11:46).
  • "Christmas carol" as a phrase first appears only in the 16th century.

Notable Moment:

“While the word carol has been around for hundreds of years, the term ‘Christmas carol’ specifically had not appeared in English language writing yet.”
—Tracy (12:24)

• First “Christmas Carols” Collection:
  • Wynkyn de Worde published the first titled collection in 1521; only a fragment survives (15:20).
  • Included the famous Boar’s Head Carol.

5. The Boar’s Head Tradition

• Origins and Rituals:
  • Boar’s head feasts symbolize victory over evil; associated with both pagan and Christian symbolism.
  • Detailed processions at Oxford with carols sung during the presentation (17:35–20:13).
• Ceremony Today:
  • Queen’s College, Oxford, still hosts an annual Boar’s Head ceremony—the head “looks like I want to pet it, though!” jokes Tracy (20:13).

Notable Quote:

“There is a fun but apocryphal story about a student who was attacked by a wild boar while studying his Aristotle... and defended himself by shoving his book down the boar’s throat!”
—Tracy (19:19)

6. Impact of the Reformation and Puritanism

• Carols Survive Change:
  • Protestant splits altered church music (less Latin, more new hymns), but secular caroling persisted.
• Christmas Banned:
  • 17th-century Puritan (Cromwell’s) laws banned Christmas and caroling in England for a time (23:36–24:39).
  • After the Restoration under Charles II, festivities resumed, but with less raucousness.

7. Modernization & Decline/Revival of Caroling

• Changing Songbooks:
  • 18th-century carols like “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” became established, with newer hymns edging out old carols (28:44–30:25).
  • By late 1700s, traditional caroling survived mainly in Cornwall (30:25).

8. William Sandys: Biography & Influence

• Background:

  • Born 1792. Solicitor, folklorist, writer of many books (32:12–33:12).
  • Notable works: "Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern" (1833); drew from manuscripts, oral histories, and folk performance (33:34).

• Preservation Efforts:

  • Sandys and contemporaries (like Davies Gilbert) believed they were saving traditions from extinction.
  • Sandys’s book included both lyrics and (rare at the time) musical notation. His scores were “considered accurate, though his harmonizations are sometimes clumsy” (34:23).

• Content of Sandys’ Book:

  • The book begins with an expansive (sometimes digressive) introduction on the origins of Christmas observance, not all directly music-related (35:12).
  • Actual carols, in both archaic and modern English, include:
    • “The First Noel”—first known appearance in its modern English version (38:05)
    • “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”
    • “I Saw Three Ships”
  • Some lyrics differ subtly from modern versions (38:48).

Notable Moment:

“I really enjoyed the slight differences between the way a lot of these songs are in this book and how I personally sang them as a child.”
—Tracy (38:48)

9. Victorian Revival and Later Developments

• Unexpected Resurgence:

  • Sandys feared caroling would disappear, but Queen Victoria’s reign revived and reinvented Christmas, including trees and carol singing, influencing both Britain and America (39:57–41:18).

• New Carols and Collections:

  • Notable carols like “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Good King Wenceslas,” and others were published or translated in the Victorian era (41:53–42:34).
  • The “Oxford Book of Carols” was first published in 1928 (42:34).

• Evolution Continues:

  • Modern “carols” now include many 20th-century songs, e.g., Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” (43:17).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the Medieval Caroling Season:
  “About half of the medieval carols that have survived…are connected to Christmas in some way. These were usually sung on Christmas Eve, not before, and continued through the 12 days.”
  —Tracy (09:24)

• Humorous Boar’s Head Anecdote:
  “There is a fun but apocryphal story about a student who was attacked by a wild boar while studying his Aristotle... and defended himself by shoving his book down the boar’s throat!”
  —Tracy (19:19)

• Victorian Revival’s Surprise:
  “Sandys really had not anticipated the way that celebration of Christmas would change in Britain and by extension in the United States and other predominantly English speaking parts of the world during the Victorian era, especially among the middle class.”
  —Tracy (39:57)

• Nostalgia for Caroling Differences:
  “I really enjoyed the slight differences between the way a lot of these songs are in this book and how I personally sang them as a child.”
  —Tracy (38:48)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment/Topic | Timestamp | |----------------------------------------------|-----------------| | Episode theme/setup | 04:22–05:48 | | Etymology/early carols | 05:48–07:29 | | Medieval & religious tradition | 07:29–09:24 | | 15th c. carol preservation/payments | 09:55–10:39 | | Influence of other festivals/wassailing | 10:39–11:46 | | Transition: Renaissance, word “carol” usage | 11:46–12:24 | | “Christmas carol” first appears | 15:20–16:38 | | The Boar’s Head tradition | 16:38–20:13 | | Reformation, Puritans, banning Christmas | 22:15–25:57 | | Hymn/carol modernization | 28:44–31:23 | | William Sandys biography & works | 32:12–34:23 | | Analysis of Sandys’s book | 35:12–38:05 | | Victorian revival and cultural shift | 39:57–41:53 |

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Tone & Style

The hosts maintain their signature friendly, lively, and at times humorous tone, combining thorough research with candid asides and storytelling. They regularly express fascination with peculiar historical details (“I want to pet it, though!” re: the boar’s head model), openly share curiosities and frustrations, and connect historic practices to modern traditions.

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Conclusion

This episode offers an entertaining yet insightful journey through the history of English Christmas carols, rooting them in broader traditions, religious changes, and cultural transformations. William Sandys’ work emerges as a keystone in preserving carols that might otherwise have faded, laying ground for the Victorian renaissance of Christmas observance. Both history buffs and fans of holiday music will come away with new appreciation for the enduring, evolving Christmas carol.

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Transcript

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[A]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[B]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[A]

This episode's coming out on Christmas Eve, and so I was looking around for something seasonally related that we have not done already and also was not some kind of a Christmas tragedy, because I cannot right now. And I stumbled onto William Sands, who was an antiquarian who published a collection of Christmas carols in the 19th century that turned out to be really influential. I had expected this episode to focus mostly on him because he sounds interesting, aside from the Christmas carol part, but I really did not find a ton of detail on his biography. So we are not getting to him until the very end. But I did find a lot about the history of Christmas carols that was new to me, not stuff I already knew about Christmas carols. There are, of course, songs about Christmas or songs that are sung at Christmas all over the world, but this episode is really focused mostly on the musical traditions of the British and Irish isles and on sort of English language songs and traditions more specifically, like there's a little bit about some other places, but mostly not.

[B]

The word carol was used in English by About the year 1300, with multiple interrelated meanings. Carols were ring dances accompanied by songs, and the same word could also be used for the song that was being danced to. The word carol could also be used more generally to describe some kind of festivity or merry making that was focused on dancing. And it described physical rings and circles. For example, one chronicle written in 1330 describes Stonehenge as a carol of stones. This word was borrowed from the very similar Old French word carol with an e on the end, which had the same meaning. So presumably it would be pronounced carole. There are also similar words in other Romance languages, and they may all trace back to the word chorus in Greek or Latin. In France, the folk tunes that were used to provide the melodies for carols were also called Noel's.

[A]

These songs and their dances, which again involved people dancing in a ring, probably existed long before the word carol first appeared in writing. There are references to people dancing in a ring while also singing the song that they were dancing to. Going back to at least the 7th century as songs, carols also had a specific format. They had unique stanzas and a repeated refrain or a burden, and that refrain was repeated in between each stanza. So a cantor would sing the stanzas, and then the dancers all sang and danced to the burdens.

[B]

Carols really started to flourish around the 14th century. One reason is that starting in the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi encouraged the use of nativity plays, songs in people's native tongues, and canticles, or biblical chants and songs as part of religious observances. And to combat what he saw as heresy, this included carols that had religious themes. The Franciscan religious order continued all of this, and sometimes St. Francis is called the father of the Christmas carol.

[A]

One of the sources I read for this podcast described St. Francis as inventing Christmas carols. But to me, that seems like it's a little bit overstated, given everything that we just said and the fact that the use of music in Christian religious observances goes all the way back to Christianity's origins in Judaism. While hymns and chants were likely to be part of church worship, carols specifically were also more likely to be sung out in the community in places like town squares or inns and ale houses or people's homes. This included carols that were written by members of religious communities, but then were sung more by laypeople. For example, 15th century priest John Ottley wrote a series of carols, some of which may have been intended to be sung by carolers who went house to house singing them.

[B]

Other 15th century collections of carols include the Trinity Carol Roll, which contains the lyrics to 13 English carols, the Selden Carol Book, which has 30 carols, and the Ritson Manuscript, which includes 44 carols. Some of these carols are macaronic, meaning they were partly in one language and partly in another, in this case the vernacular and Latin.

[A]

During the medieval period, the word carol did not have a Christmas specific connotation, but a lot of these carols were related to Christmas. About half of the medieval carols that have survived until today are connected to Christmas in some way. These were usually sung on Christmas Eve, not before. And then they continued to be sung through the 12 days of Christmas. So they ended on January 5th or 12th night, and that marks the end of the Christmas season.

[B]

At least some of the people who were writing and performing carols in the medieval period were being paid for their work. And there's speculation that the reason why so many surviving medieval carols are about Christmas is that's what people were mostly getting paid to write. For example, in the late 15th century, Elizabeth of York, Queen of Henry VII, paid poet and composer William Cornish for, quote, setting of carol upon Christmas Day. There are other records of payments being made to composers and performers at Christmas time. This included street performers who sang at night during the Christmas season who were either doing the equivalent of busking for tips or going house to house with the hopes of getting a little payment from the people inside.

[A]

In addition to these carols, medieval Christmas festivities incorporated elements from other earlier traditions, including the Roman festival of Saturnalia, the Germanic festival of Yule, and wassailing, which some people also say wassailing, which stretches back to before the Norman conquest of Britain. Wassailing encompasses two different traditions that both involve singing. One is going house to house with a bowl full of wassel or a hot mulled drink, singing songs and spreading good cheer. And then the other is going from orchard to orchard on Twelfth Night again singing songs as well as shouting and banging on pans and putting a piece of wassail soaked bread in the best tree in the orchard. Wassling through the orchards is meant to thank the trees for a good harvest and to ensure a good harvest the next year by waking up the trees spirits and scaring any bad spirits away. So all of this moving around and singing has some parallels with the caroling tradition.

[B]

By the start of the 16th century, or what is framed as the start of the Renaissance. The the ring dance portion of caroling had mostly fallen out of fashion, and the term carol was being used to describe just the song. There could still be some kind of movement involved though, like if a carol was being sung as part of a church service, it might be during a processional on a particular feast day or a holiday. It was also around the start of the 1500s that the word carol was increasingly used to describe joyful, celebratory Christmas songs, including ones that didn't have that structure of a repeating burden alternating between stanzas.

[A]

While the word carol has been around for hundreds of years, the term Christmas carol specifically had not appeared in English language writing yet. We will get to when it did after a sponsor break.

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[A]

The first collection of Christmas carols, specifically Christmas Carols, Not Just a Carol collection that included some songs about Christmas, was published in 1521. This was the work of Wynkin de Worde, who I have had on my shortlist for an episode for a long time because I like his name. Wynkin de Worde was an author and a publisher, born in Alsace, who eventually moved to England and worked for William Caxton. Caxton had learned the craft of printing while living in Cologne, and he had returned to England and established a printing press. Caxton printed a lot of the 15th century's most important English literature, including the Canterbury Tales. Wyn Deward took over Caxton's operation after Caxton's death in 1491, and he moved the press from Westminster to Fleet street in London.

[B]

Sadly, only a fragment of this 1521 collection survives today, but that fragment includes the first known use of the term Christmas carols in writing. Its colophon reads, quote, thus endeth the Christmas carols, newly imprinted at London in the Fleet street at the sign of the sun by Wynkyn de Worde, the year of our Lord 15:21.

[A]

This fragment includes two carols, a carol of hunting and a carol bringing in the boar's head, meaning the boar's head. And we're going to talk about this boar's head thing for a minute because I am fascinated. It is not clear exactly when a boar's head became a feast dish, but it probably goes back to ancient Greece and Rome. The story of the Caledonian boar hunt was a recurring part of ancient stories and mythology. The goddess Diana released a ferocious boar as punishment after King Onanus of Caledon failed to adequately honor her. This boar killed several people before finally being killed by Maleaguer, who presented its head to the huntress Atalanta. There are multiple depictions of this and other dramatic boar hunts in ancient and modern artwork.

[B]

There's an obvious symbolism here Even without being sent by a deity, wild boars are huge and dangerous, and fighting them with something like a spear was hard and could end in fatal injuries for the hunter. So the presenting of a boar's head at a feast could represent the triumph over a human enemy or over a less tangible threat. With the spread of Christianity across much of Europe, boar's heads came to represent Jesus Christ's triumph over evil. At some point, people started presenting a boar's head at Christmas feasts, usually as the first dish brought into the hall by a processional. The head was typically roasted and dressed with herbs and greenery, with a whole fruit in its mouth.

[A]

Here's an account from this happening at St John's Oxford in 1607. Quote the first mess was a boar's head, which was carried by the tallest and lustiest of all the guard, before whom as attendants went first, one attired in a horseman's coat with a boar's spear in his hand. Next to him another huntsman in green with a bloody fossian drawn. Next to him two pages and taffeta sarsenet, each of them with a mess of mustard. Next to whom came he that carried the boar's head, crossed with a green silk scarf, by which hung the empty scabbard of the Falcian, which was carried before him. As they entered the hall, he sang this Christmas carol, the last three verses of every staff being repeated after him by the whole company. I am regretting not making the spelling more modern English before I put this in here, because I had a little struggle with it.

[B]

One of the places where this is still done today is Queen's College, Oxford. Originally, the boar's head ceremony there was on Christmas Eve at a meal served for faculty and students who were remaining at the college over the holiday that seems to have started not long after the college was first founded in 1341. There is a fun but apocryphal story about a student who was attacked by a wild boar while studying his Aristotle on Shotover Hill in Oxford and successfully defended himself by shoving his book down the boar's throat. The boar died and the student brought the head back to Oxford. And that marks the beginning of the boar's head ceremony. In addition to it being improbable that someone could kill a wild boar with a book of Aristotle, wild boars were probably extinct in England by the time this story supposedly happened.

[A]

Today, the boar's head gaudy at Queens College is usually held the Saturday before Christmas, with the boar's head ceremony taking place before dinner. If you're thinking, do they still do that? Yes, they do. You can watch video of it on YouTube from as recently as, like, last year. When this episode comes out, you might be able to see this year's ceremony. The school's provost and the fellows enter the hall first, followed by a boar's head on a platter, followed then by a choir. A soloist sings the verses of the carol, which are mostly in English, while a choir sings the refrain, which is in Latin. There are a number of other places that do something similar to this around Christmas, sometimes using a model of a boar's head rather than an actual head of a boar. I will be honest with you. I am not fully clear on the reality of the boar's head at Queens College, Oxford. It looks like I want to pet it, though.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's got a little fuzzy ears, but it's deceased. That's what I'm saying. I'm not sure if it's an actual deceased head of an animal or if it is a model. And I did not find. Was she an answer to this. Some places do use a model of a boar's head and not an actual animal head. Yeah.

[B]

I'm just saying, like, I think my reaction is like, I don't want to pet anything that looks like a decapitated thing.

[A]

Okay. That sure also makes sense.

[B]

Yeah. There are lots of slightly different versions of the Boar's Head Carol. One of them starts with the verse, the boar's head in hand bear eye bedecked with bays and rosemary, and I pray you, my masters, be merry, quote estus in convivio. And then the refrain is all in Latin, so heaven help us. Caput a pri de ferro reddens laudes domino. While this carol doesn't specifically include the word Christmas in the lyrics, the last verse does describe the boar's head as being provided, quote, in honor of the King of Bliss.

[A]

Wynkin de Word's publication of his Christmas carol collection, which included this boar's head carol, took place just a few years after Martin Luther posted his 99 theses on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany, which is marked as the start of the Protestant Reformation. This, of course, led to massive changes and unrest and violence as what started as a reform movement within Catholicism led to the establishment of multiple new religious denominations. Many of these denominations intentionally tried to differentiate their worship services and traditions from Catholicism, including writing new hymns and composing new music and eliminating the use of Latin. But since Christmas carols had been sung mostly in secular Spaces by laypeople, maybe with the exception of, like special church services for holidays and feasts or country churches who were fairly removed from central church authority, People just kept singing them during and after the Reformation and Counter Reformation. During this time, the word Christmas carol also started to be applied generally to songs about Christmas, regardless of whether they followed the traditional structural elements of the carol.

[B]

A bigger influence on the caroling tradition in the islands of Britain and Ireland was the aftermath of the Civil War in the mid 17th century, which pitted the Royalists against the Parliamentarians. The parliamentarians were victorious and established the Commonwealth of England. Oliver Cromwell, who had been one of the generals on the Parliamentarian side, became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1653. While Cromwell was Lord Protector. Parliament passed a series of laws mandating Sunday be observed as a holy day and restricting how people could celebrate Christmas and other holidays. This included laws banning the observance of a Christmas holiday in 1644 and the banning of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun entirely in 1647. This had connections to the Protestant Reformation, since it grew from the Puritan religious movement that had started in the 16th century, which wanted to purify the Church of England of any vestiges of Catholicism.

[A]

The 1647 ban included banning festivities that people might do at home and people could be fined if they were caught celebrating Christmas. Other laws and bans followed that one, including a law requiring shops to be open on Christmas Day. These laws were hard to enforce and there were definitely people who just kept on celebrating Christmas at home or closing their shops down for the holiday. But this did put a damper on caroling, especially caroling out in public.

[B]

All of these laws were repealed after the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660. Charles II tried to revive the Christmas observances that Cromwell and Parliament had discouraged or outlawed, including at court. But the royal Christmas feasts after the Restoration were never as lavish or elaborate as many of the ones in earlier centuries had been. Things could vary based on who was monarch and what was going on in the kingdom. But earlier Christmas festivities had included all kinds of plays and masks and revels, with a Lord of Misrule responsible for a lot of raucous partying. After the Restoration, Christmas festivities at court did not involve quite so much rowdy drunkenness and over the top spectacle.

[A]

We will finally get to William Sands after another sponsor break.

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[C]

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[A]

Various books of Christmas carols were published in Britain in the 17th century, both before and after the Commonwealth period. The idea of a Christmas carol as having one specific melody that it was always sung to is relatively new. So many of these books only included the words they did not necessarily include a tune that the words should be sung to. In 1782, A Christmas Carol was added to the Anglican songbook for the first time. That song was while shepherds watched their flocks. This song tells the story of angels appearing to shepherds who are out with their flocks and telling them about the birth of Jesus. It's a narrative song, it's all in English and most versions do not have a repeated refrain like carols traditionally did. It's not clear exactly when While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks was written. It's attributed to Irish poet Nahum Tait and it first appeared in a supplement to the new version of the Psalms by Dr. Brady and Mr. Tate, which was published in 1700.

[B]

Another newly composed Christmas carol in the 18th century was Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, written by Charles Wesley, who wrote an enormous number of hymns. Charles Wesley and his brother John were major figures in the Methodist movement and the establishment of the Methodist Church. Hark, the Herald Angels Sing first appeared in the collection Hymns and sacred poems in 1739. It has a repeated refrain of Hark, the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn king.

[A]

While new carols were being written and sometimes they were being added to different denominations, songbooks and hymnals. By the end of the 18th century, traditional carols and caroling were falling out of favor in Britain. Some of this was because people were more likely to be singing relatively new Christmas themed hymns and carols that had been written for churches like Hark, the Herald Angels Sing and Silent Night, which was composed in 1818 in Austria and then later translated into English. We talked about that on the show in 2018. According to William Sands, writing about Christmas carols, By the late 1700s, the old songs were still being sung in Ireland and Wales, but the practice of going out into the community singing carols from house to house was mostly only being done in Cornwall.

[B]

So at the start of the 19th century, antiquarians and other interested people started trying to preserve and document the old Christmas carols before the practice died out entirely. One was Davies Gilbert, who was a scientist and mathematician who worked with people like Sir Humphry Davy and who became president of the Royal Society. Gilbert also served as High Sheriff of Cornwall and as a Member of Parliament. In 1822, he published a collection of 12 carols and he followed that up with an expanded edition of 20 Carols in 1823. He described these songs as relics of the past, saying they had been sung, quote, in churches on Christmas Day and in private houses on Christmas Eve throughout the west of England up to the latter part of the late century.

[A]

William Sands cited Gilbert in his work on Christmas carols a few years later. Sands had been born in 1792, and was the oldest son of Hannibal and Ann Sands. He had at least one brother named Samson, who he went on a tour of southern Wales with in 1819. They took this tour mostly on foot, and they wrote an illustrated account of it. I could not find a scan of this anywhere, which disappointed me, because it sounds very up my alley, but this manuscript is in the National Library of Wales. Sands was a solicitor and eventually became a partner in the firm of Sands and Knott. He also got married twice, first to Harriet Hill from 1816 until her death in 1851, and then he married Eliza Pearson two years later. They were married until Sam's death on February 18, 1874. And that's all I know about his biography.

[B]

What we also know is that Sands wrote a lot of books. Some of them included specimens of macaronic poetry, the history of the violin and other instruments played on with the bow, from the remote times to the present, specimens of Cornish provincial dialect, and a short view of the history of Freemasonry dedicated to the Grand Lodge of England.

[A]

And, of course, there was his work on Christmas and Christmas carols, which led to this entire episode. The first of these was Christmas Carols Ancient and modern, published in 1833. He compiled these songs from old manuscripts, oral traditions and interviews with elders who still remembered or participated in the old traditions of caroling. Like Davies Gilbert, he wrote about these carols as something from the past that he was trying to preserve and document before it died out. The back of the book also included music for several carols. In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, quote, His transcriptions of the tunes are considered accurate, though his harmonizations are sometimes clumsy.

[B]

This book comes from a very specific point of view. For example, the introduction begins quote, the study of popular antiquities as connected with the early history of mankind is one of deep interest, involving researches into the different ancient systems of religion, and is a subject of too serious a nature to be enlarged on. In the following pages, the sacred rites and ceremonies of the various heathen nations, however different the details may appear, had a common origin for some few years after the flood. Mankind had one religion, the worship of the true God. But so prone is man to err when unassisted by the divine grace, that a century had scarcely elapsed before a perverted system was introduced and the Tower of Babel was built, which caused the dispersion of nations.

[A]

The title of this book makes it sound as though it's going to be exclusively about carols and caroling, but about 40% of its length is an introduction that contains a kind of wandering exploration of the history of Christmas observance, mainly in England and surrounding islands. It ambles all through masks and wassail and the Lord of misrule and nativity plays and mystery plays, and on and on. I was trying to read through all of this, some of which did not seem related to music at all, not even as like context setting. And I finally asked myself, when is he gonna get back to the carols? I searched the book for that term and found a 60 page gap where carols are not mentioned at all. And that's like the book is like 300 and something pages long. So that's a significant amount of it. I was working from a scan of this book and hilariously, some past person had written the word carols in pencil with a little star next to it in the margin, where the part about carols picked back up.

[B]

In his introduction, Sands cites various possible origins for where the practice of caroling door to door may have come from. One is this quote. There is a story on record of a terrible plague at Goldsberg in 1553 which carried off above 2300 persons, leaving not more than 25 housekeepers alive in the place. The plague abating, one of the survivors went on Christmas Eve to the lower ring and sang a carol and was by degrees joined by a few others to excite each other in thanksgiving. Hence arose a custom for the people to assemble in large numbers at the upper and lower ring on Christmas morning to sing carols beginning with Unto us this day a child is born.

[A]

After the introduction, which again is lengthy, the book has three carols from the 15th to the 17th century, carols still being sung in the west of England, and specimens of old French carols and then sort of like an appendix. There's also a Christmas play of St. George and the Dragon and some notes and several pages of music. The songs from the 15th through the 17th centuries are written primarily in middle English. And then in the next part, some of the ones that are still being sung do date back to those earlier centuries, but they're written in modern English, not in an older version of the language. And for some of those sans book is their first appearance in writing in modern English.

[B]

One such carol is the First Noel, which Sands titles for Christmas Day in the morning. And this spells Noel as N O W E L L, which was not an uncommon English spelling at the time or in earlier centuries. This carol probably dates back to at least the 15th century. And it starts the first Noel, the angel did say was to three poor shepherds in the fields as they lay in fields where they lay keeping their sheep In a cold winter's night that was so deep Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel Born is the King of Israel. That final series of Noel's and the Born is the King of Israel form the repeated refrain.

[A]

I really enjoyed the slight differences between the way a lot of these songs are in this book and how I personally sang them as a child. We had certain poor shepherds, not three of them, because of the meter being nicer that way. This book also includes God Rest you married Gentlemen, which probably goes back to at least the 17th or 18th century and also has that pattern of stanzas and a refrain. It starts God rest you married gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay For Jesus Christ our Savior was born upon this day to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray. And then the chorus O tidings of comfort and joy. This one also has us part of the chorus For Jesus Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day.

[B]

Other carols in Sands book that people might recognize today include I saw three ships, which has its roots in the 17th century. That's the one that goes I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas day, on Christmas day. I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas day in the morning for forming the refrain.

[A]

So as we said earlier, Sands wrote this book as though he was documenting something that was dying out before it disappeared entirely. But then in 1837, just a few years after the book came out, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom. Sands really had not anticipated the way that celebration of Christmas would change in Britain and by extension in the United States and other predominantly English speaking parts of the world during the Victorian era, especially among the middle class. A lot of today's Christmas traditions were popularized during these years, including things like Christmas trees, which became a lot more popular after Queen Victoria and Albert decorated one in 1848 and illustrations of it were published in newspapers and magazines and in the United States. Pictures of it were adjusted so that it didn't look like royalty, but it was the exact same picture of a Christmas tree.

[B]

We talked about this more in our Christmas Triple feature episode from December 24, 2018, which included Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol and its connection to all of this. And in our December 19, 2021 episode on Washington Irving. I think we also talked about it in our Christmas Lights discussion.

[A]

Oh yeah, that sounds right, because how.

[B]

You know, I was shocked to discover that people actually put candle lit candles on Christmas trees. Washington Irving was an American, but his writings on English Christmases folded back into Dickens's work. And as part of this Victorian era shift in Christmas celebrations, people also started returning to singing Christmas carols, including carolers going door to door. Sands published another book on Christmas called Christmastide, its History, Festivities and Carols, in 1860. It is possible that there may have been an earlier edition of that book that came out in the 1850s.

[A]

Yeah, there's no date on the title page and the notation I found of it was a little unclear. New Christmas carols were part of this Victorian resurgence in caroling. As examples, the Latin carol Edeste Fidelis, which dates back to at least 1640, was translated into English as O come all ye faithful in 1841. In 1862, James Chadwick based Angels we have Heard on High, with its very wandering refrain of Gloria in excelsis Deo on a traditional French carol that probably dates back to the 18th century.

[B]

New collections of carols also came into print. John Mason Neal and Thomas Helmore published Carols for Christmastide in 1854. This was adapted from Paella Cantilonis, which is a Finnish collection that was composed in Latin. It included carols like Good Christian Men Rejoice and Good King Wenceslas. The Reverend H.R. bramley, Fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford, and Dr. John Stayner, the college organist, published Christmas Carols New and old, containing 42 carols in 1871. The late 19th century also saw the first Christmas Eve services of lessons and carols, and the Oxford Book of Carols was first published in 1928.

[A]

And of course, there have continued to be so many new songs written for and about Christmas. A lot of them today categorized as carols, whether or not they resemble the old ring dances with stanzas and burdens. One of our episodes that touches on that is our two parter on 20th century composer and songwriter Irving Berlin, which came out in December of 2022. Irving Berlin wrote, among other things, the song White Christmas. And that is some Christmas carol history.

[B]

Do you have listener mail to go with it?

[A]

I do. I don't think I read this before.

[B]

Our recent refrain.

[A]

Yeah, but this letter writer sent us the email and then a second follow up and I flagged the follow up to read. And then when I was reading it today, I was like, did I read the original thing already though? Anyway, this is from Gracia. Gracia wrote, hi, Holly and Tracy, longtime listener, first time writer, who never thought it'd actually write in. But I was inspired by. Inspired by your soap making episode. I know it was a little while ago, but I'm a bit behind and a bit of a procrastinator. Why soap? Well, a couple of months ago I was out to dinner with my significant other, his sister and cousin, all of whom are various engineering majors that are now scientists or working engineers. I'm a designer and science and math were never my interest, so I can find their conversations hard to contribute to at times. Anyway, we got into the discussion of Soap and deep back into my elementary field trip memory, I remembered how soap was made. I have no clue why. I remember something from so long ago, but standing in an 1800s farmhouse that was part of my hometown's Norwegian American Museum, I remembered a guide showing us a wash basin and telling us how they would make soap using ashes from their fireplace and animal fat from their farm. I did, however, put a disclaimer that what I remembered was so long ago I would have to double check what all I told them was correct. Then your episode about soap came out and I was thrilled to find everything I said matched up. It's funny now, looking back, that a random thing like SOAP connected to a one off conversation in a podcast I've been listening to for years. A little note on that I believe I discovered your podcast in 8th grade as a source for a National History Day project and used your resources and as a jumping off point, I do know that I regularly started listening to you my sophomore year of high school. I'd gotten my own smartphone by then and needed something to listen to while painting a room in my parents house. Even with small breaks here and there, I always tuned back in. Your voices have been with me on high school sports, bus rides, through college, during a pandemic, and now on my commute to and from work. I did not realize how long to end this long email. I just need to thank you both for using your platform to speak out about what's happening right now. I know you know I find comfort that knowing there are other like minded people out there, Gracia and then Gracia sent a follow up that was like I accidentally sent my email before I meant to. And the second to last paragraph had been sort of in the process of being worked on. And Gracia had meant to say I didn't realize how long I'd been a listener until I started counting back the years and feeling a little old. And in the follow up, Gracious sent Pet Tax. This is a little kitty that they called Goldfish who showed up last summer while they were moving into a rental house. They could not have a cat per the lease agreement, but here was a cat who needed food and care and so they looked after Goldfish, got her, got her spayed, and eventually found a home for her with a coworker. She is now named Lilith and has a sibling named Boo. This kitty cat now called Lilith is an orange kitty with a white belly who just looks exactly like the sort of a cat who would show up at someone's door from outside and say hello. I would love it if she found a way for me to be brought inside. Thank you so much Gracia for this email. I love this story. I sometimes forget how long the show has been around and so when I realize that a person can have started listening to it in eighth grade and be now still listening to it as an adult person, it's a little startling. Also National History Day we have had various folks write in about National History Day over the years, including writing in about their projects, writing in, asking if they could have the source list for something that we have done on the show before, saying, hey, maybe if I get your source list from that episode it will help me in my National History Day projects. And then just like folks who have wanted us to know what's going on with National History Day. But I am always every year curious to see like what is going on with National History Day. What are the students doing? What kind of projects do people have going on? It is one of the things that I think has been affected by massive budget cuts from the federal government and I do not know what the status of that is at this moment. But yeah, thanks for writing in Gracia and for mentioning that and for sending such adorable cat pictures. If you would like to send us a note with or without cat pictures, we are at history podcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in history class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. At cvs. It matters that we're not just in.

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Your community, but that we're part of it.

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The world's best ski and snowboard athletes are chasing medals. Now you can follow their every move. Join Insider, the official US Ski and Snowboard fan loyalty program, and get premium viewing at World cup ski events, exclusive athlete meetups, discounts from brands you love, and a custom welcome gift mailed direct to your doorstep. This winter, show your support as they race for the podium. Head to Insider and join today.

[C]

Bring incredible sound into every corner of your home this holiday with the new Whimsound Smart speaker. Get high resolution audio with a 1.8-inch touchscreen, smart control and modern design in one powerful speaker for just $2.99. From quiet mornings to lively holiday gatherings, WinSound makes every moment sound better and feel better too. Get the gift of the season for the music enthusiast in your life or for yourself. Whim Sound Beautifully designed, effortlessly connected. Shop now at Amazon and search Whimsound. That's W I I M S O U N D Honestly, Honestly Honestly no.

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Other healthy sex practices.

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Ask a healthcare provider about all your prevention options and visit findoutaboutprep. Com to learn more.

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Sponsored by Gilead, this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.