From a Cornish Window / A New Edition - Arthur Quiller-Couch

The shepherd of course follows the star, and it guides him to the inn and the Holy Family, whom he worships:—

"'Now farewell, mine own herdsman Wat!'
'Yea, 'fore God, Lady, even so I hat:[4]
Lull well Jesu in thy lap,
And farewell Joseph, with thy round cap!'
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy."
[1] Short coat.
[2] Flagon.
[3] Went.
[4] Am hight, called.

Set beside this the following Burgundian carol (of which, by the way, you will find a charming translation in Lady Lindsay's A Christmas Posy):—

"Giullô, pran ton tamborin;
Toi, pran tai fleùte, Robin.
Au son de cés instruman—
Turelurelu, patapatapan—
Au son de cés instruman
Je diron Noel gaiman.
"C'étó lai môde autrefoi
De loüé le Roi dé Roi;
Au son de cés instruman—
Turelurelu, patapatapan—
Au son de cés instruman
Ai nos an fau faire autan.
"Ce jor le Diale at ai cu,
Randons an graice ai Jésu;
Au son de cés instruman—
Turelurelu, patapatapar—
Au son de cés instruman
Fezon lai nique ai Satan.
"L'homme et Dei son pu d'aicor
Que lai fleùte et le tambor.
Au son de cés instruman—
Turelurelu, patapatapan—
Au son de cés instruman
Chanton, danson, santons-an!"

To set either of these delightful ditties alongside of the richly-jewelled lyrics of Keats or of Swinburne, of Victor Hugo or of Gautier would be to sin against congruity, even as to sing them in church would be to sin against congruity.

There was one carol, however, which I was fain to set alongside of 'The Seven Virgins,' and omitted only through a scruple in tampering with two or three stanzas, necessary to the sense, but in all discoverable versions so barbarously uncouth as to be quite inadmissible. And yet 'The Holy Well' is one of the loveliest carols in the language, and I cannot give up hope of including it some day: for the peccant verses as they stand are quite evidently corrupt, and if their originals could be found I have no doubt that the result would be flawless beauty. Can any of my readers help to restore them?

'The Holy Well,' according to Mr. Bramley, is traditional in Derbyshire. 'Joshua Sylvester,' in A Garland of Christmas Carols, published in 1861, took his version from an eighteenth-century broadsheet printed at Gravesend, and in broadsheet form it seems to have been fairly common. I choose the version given by Mr. A. H. Bullen in his Carols and Poems, published by Nimmo in 1886:—

"As it fell out one May morning,
And upon one bright holiday,
Sweet Jesus asked of His dear mother
If He might go to play.
"To play, to play, sweet Jesus shall go,
And to play pray get you gone;
And let me hear of no complaint
At night when you come home.
"Sweet Jesus went down to yonder town,
As far as the Holy Well,
And there did see as fine children,
As any tongue can tell.
"He said, God bless you every one,
And your bodies Christ save and see:
Little children shall I play with you,
And you shall play with Me?"