“A Tale of a Merry Christmas Carroll, sung by women.
“There was sometime an old knight, who being disposed to make himselfe merry in a Christmas time, sent for many of his tenants, and poore neighbors, with their wives, to dinner; when, having made meat to be set on the table, would suffer no man to drinke, till he that was master ouer his wife should sing a carroll, to excuse all the company. Great nicenesse there was, who should bee the musician, now the cuckow time was so farre off. Yet, with much adoe, looking one upon another, after a dry hemme or two, a dreaming companion drew out as much as hee durst, towards an ill-fashioned ditty. When, having made an end, to the great comfort of the beholders, at last it came to the woman’s table, where, likewise, commandment was given, that there should no drinke be touched till she that was master ouer her husband had sung a Christmas carroll; whereupon they fell all to such a singing, that there was never heard such a catterwalling peece of musicke; whereat the knight laughed heartely, that it did him halfe as muche good as a corner of his Christmas pie.”
This jolly old knight might have been a descendant of the squire of Gamwell Hall, in the time of Robin Hood (who Mr. Hunter has lately brought down a little from his supposed aristocratic birth, and cleared from the mist of poetic legend)—for he is made to say,
“....Not a man here shall taste my March beer,
Till a Christmas carol he does sing;
Then all clapt their hands, and they shouted and sung,
Till the hall and the parlour did ring.”
Sir Thomas Overbury, who died in 1613, in his description of a Franklin, says, he kept the “wakefull ketches” on Christmas Eve, with other observances, yet held them no relics of popery; other writers of the same age also refer to them. As the rule of the puritans advanced, and the time of the Commonwealth approached, endeavours were made, as stated in a former page, to suppress all observances of Christmas; and carol singing would naturally share the same fate, and join therefore in the struggle to avoid absolute destruction. In ‘Festorum Metropolis,’ 1652, it is stated, “As for our songs and carrols, brethren, they are collected and composed out of the Scriptures, containe matter of instruction and edification, they implant the history and benefits of Christ’s birth in the minds of poor ignorant people; and oftentimes he is taken by a song that will flye a sermon.” They were still preserved in private, and in remote places, and old Christmas, in his visit to Devonshire, before mentioned, names the carols and pleasant songs as part of the amusements of the evening. Warmstry, also, in his ‘Vindication of Christmas,’ in answer to an objection, whether the feast might not be a remnant of the Saturnalia, and whether the carols might not arise from the hymn to Ceres, during that feast called [Greek: ioulos], says “Christmasse Kariles, if they be such as are fit for the time, and of holy and sober composures, and used with Christian sobriety and piety, they are not unlawfull, and may be profitable, if they be sung with grace in the heart.” An observation that may well be remembered in the present times, in answer to any objectors.
Warton mentions two celebrated itinerant ballad, and therefore doubtless carol, singers, about the middle of this century, called Outroaringe Dick and Wat Wimbars, who occasionally made 20s. a day, by attending fairs and meetings; but they must have been of earlier date, as they are mentioned also in ‘Kind Hart’s Dreame,’ by Henry Chettle, in 1592; their gains, therefore, taking into account the difference of value in money, were large, and such as would tempt many a modern carol-singer, as well as some members of a recently reformed learned profession, anxiously looking for any respectable life-boat to save them from sinking.
After the Restoration, the people gladly returned to their amusements without restraint, and from the reaction, in many instances perhaps, went into the opposite extreme and indulged in too much conviviality. Carol singing was renewed with increased zeal.
“Carols and not minc’d meat make Christmas pies,
’Tis mirth, not dishes, sets a table off;
Brutes and phanaticks eat and never laugh.”
It so continued down to the present century, when it apparently began to abate; but it will be unnecessary to give any references to prove the continuance of such a custom, when, to a certain extent, it exists at present, though this and other observances are much shorn of their honours. Many of us will recollect when at Christmas time every street of any note had its carol singers, with their bundle of various carols, whereas now scarcely one vagrant minstrel can be found throughout the town, brass bands having blown them out; but there is still some demand for the carols, and specimens of broadside carols may be procured from the printers of this class of literature, in St. Andrew’s Street, Monmouth Court, Long Lane, and elsewhere.
In Birmingham also, and other large manufacturing towns, and other neighbourhoods where the practice of carol singing is retained, popular editions of the style called chap-books, as well as broadsides may be found; several of them of considerable antiquity, handed down for many generations, and frequently illustrated by woodcuts of the most grotesque nature in point of execution and design. Many of us will also recollect when carols were sung in the country, not only in the farm-houses, in mansions, and baronial halls, but likewise in churches—as Heath says, was the custom, in Scilly, in the middle of last century—and this with much propriety and right feeling.