“Nay my nay,” &c.
“Holy, & hys mery men, they dawnsyn and they syng,
Ivy and hur maydyns, they wepyn & they wryng.
“Nay my nay,” &c.
The popularity of carol-singing occasioned the publication of a duodecimo volume in 1642, intituled, “Psalmes or Songs of Sion, turned into the language, and set to the tunes of a strange land. By W(illiam) S(latyer), intended for Christmas carols, and fitted to divers of the most noted and common but solemne tunes, every where in this land familiarly used and knowne.” Upon the copy of this book in the British Museum, a former possessor has written the names of some of the tunes to which the author designed them to be sung: for instance, Psalm 6, to the tune of Jane Shore; Psalm 19, to Bar. Forster’s Dreame; Psalm 43, to Crimson Velvet; Psalm 47, to Garden Greene; Psalm 84, to The fairest Nymph of the Valleys; &c.
In a carol, still sung, called “Dives and Lazarus,” there is this amusing account:
“As it fell it out, upon a day,
Rich Dives sicken’d and died,
There came two serpents out of hell,
His soul therein to guide.
“Rise up, rise up, brother Dives,
And come along with me,
For you’ve a place provided in hell,
To sit upon a serpent’s knee.”
However whimsical this may appear to the reader, he can scarcely conceive its ludicrous effect, when the “serpent’s knee” is solemnly drawn out to its utmost length by a Warwickshire chanter, and as solemnly listened to by the well-disposed crowd, who seem, without difficulty, to believe that Dives sits on a serpent’s knee. The idea of sitting on this knee was, perhaps, conveyed to the poet’s mind by old wood-cut representations of Lazarus seated in Abraham’s lap. More anciently, Abraham was frequently drawn holding him up by the sides, to be seen by Dives in hell. In an old book now before me, they are so represented, with the addition of a devil blowing the fire under Dives with a pair of bellows.
Carols begin to be spoken of as not belonging to this century, and few, perhaps, are aware of the number of these compositions now printed. The editor of the Every-Day Book has upwards of ninety, all at this time, published annually.