Another, “The Star of Bethlehem, a collection of esteemed Carols for the present year,” opens its narrative thus:
“Let all that are to mirth inclined
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done,
In sending His beloved Son.
Let all our songs and praises be
Unto His heavenly Majesty;
And evermore amongst our mirth
Remember Christ our Saviour’s birth.
The twenty-fifth day of December
We have great reason to remember;
In Bethlehem, upon that morn,
There was a blessed Saviour born,” &c.
One of the short pieces, by no means the best, we give whole:
“With one consent let all the earth
The praise of God proclaim,
Who sent the Saviour, by whose birth
To man salvation came.
All nations join and magnify
The great and wondrous love
Of Him who left for us the sky,
And all the joys above.
But vainly thus in hymns of praise
We bear a joyful part,
If while our voices loud we raise,
We lift not up our heart.
We, by a holy life alone,
Our Saviour’s laws fulfil;
By those His glory is best shown
Who best perform His will.
May we to all His words attend
With humble, pious care;
Then shall our praise to heaven ascend,
And find acceptance there.”
We do not suppose that the contents of these Christmas broad-sheets are supplied by the same persons who write the murder-ballads, or the attacks on crinoline. They may be borrowed from well known hymn books for anything we know. But if they are borrowed, we must still think it much to the credit of the selectors, that, where they might have found so much that is objectionable and offensive, they should have chosen as they have done. We only hope that their successors, whoever they may be who will become the caterers for their audiences, will set nothing worse before them.
Christmas broad-sheets formed an important item in the office of the “Catnach Press,” as the sale was enormous, and Catnach always looked forward for a large return of capital, and a “good clearance” immediately following the spurt for Guy Fawkes’ speeches, in October of each year. But although the sale was very large, it only occupies one “short month.” This enabled them to make Carols a stock job, so that when trade in the Ballad, Sensational, “Gallows,” or any other line of business was dull, they used to fill up every spare hour in the working off or colouring them, so as to be ready to meet the extraordinary demand which was sure to be made at the fall of the year.
Like most of the old English customs, Christmas-carol singing is fast dying out. Old peripatetic stationers well remember the rich harvest they once obtained at Christmas times by carol selling. Now there are very few who care to invest more than a shilling or two at a time on the venture; whereas in times long past, all available capital was readily embarked in the highly-coloured and plain sheets of the birth of our Saviour, with the carol of “Christians awake,” or “The Seven Good Joys of Mary:”—
“The first good joy our Mary had,
It was the joy of one,
To see her own Son, Jesus,
To suck at her breast-bone.
To suck at her breast-bone, God-man,
And blessed may He be
Both Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
To all eternity.”
