About

This is a not-for-profit website, set up and personally curated by David Sutcliffe who lives in Somerset UK. David welcomes any serious information or ideas to improve this website. Please use the Contacts page.

By definition, folk-carols have reached us haphazardly either through cheap printing (‘broadsides’) or by oral transmission over time. In a way, it is a fool’s errand to attempt to trace the ’original source’ of these carols. Whole essays can be written on the regional variations of some carols.

This website aims to make preliminary, provisional statements about the selected carols, citing certain stepping stones on their journey to us. You can then do follow up investigation, as you wish. A starting point rather than the final word!

David read Theology and Social Anthropology at Cambridge University. He has been a morris dancer for 30 years and a community choir director for 20 years. His published biographies are of Rev. Charles Marson, early Christian Socialist (Cockasnook Books, 2009); and of Cecil Sharp, the folk music collector, (The Ballad Partners, 2023).  David also created and manages the website cecilsharpspeople.org.uk.

Acknowledgments to the librarians and researchers who have helped me are given in the appropriate sections. Thank you to them. Illustrations and images are, to the best of my knowledge, in the public domain, unless otherwise stated. If I have failed to identify a copyright issue, I will address this at once.