Composed Carols
The reason for listing composed carols here is precisely because they are the OPPOSITE of folk-carols and thus define the latter more clearly. We know the authors of composed carols and the date they were written; their texts are not altered, but printed and fixed. There is no ‘folk process’. What is interesting to note is the extent to which the Victorians, in their re-invention of Christmas, were shameless in their borrowing of songs from abroad. In the table below (which is in date order of composition), note that four of ‘our’ carols are American in origin:
| Carol | Nationality | Date | Lyrics By | Music By | English Hymnal? | |
| Lully, Lulla (Coventry Carol) | England | 16th C | Robert Croo 1534 | Copy by Thomas Sharp 1825 | No | Read |
| O come all ye faithful (Adeste Fideles) | England | 1743 | John F Wade | John F Wade | 28 | Read |
| Silent Night | Austria | 1816 | Joseph Mohr | Franz Gruber 1818 | No | Read |
| Once in Royal David's City | Anglo-Irish | 1848 | Mrs Alexander | HJ Gauntlett 1849 | 22 | Read |
| It came upon the midnight clear | USA | 1849 | Edmund Sears | Arthur Sullivan 1874 | 26 | Read |
| Good King Wenceslas | England | 1853 | Rev J.M. Neale | Piae Cantiones | No | Read |
| See amid the winter's snow | England | 1858 | Edward Caswall | Sir John Gross 1871 | No | Read |
| We Three Kings of Orient | USA | 1857 | John Hopkins Jr | Hopkins | No | Read |
| O Little Town of Bethlehem | USA | 1868 | Phillips Brooks | Vaughan Williams 1906 | 15 | Read |
| In the bleak mid winter | England | 1872 | Rossetti | Holst/Darke 1906/1911 | 25 | Read |
| Away in a manger | USA | 1882 | Anon | W.Kirkpatrick 1895 | No | Read |
| Ding! Dong! merrily on high | England | 1922 | G.R. Woodward | arr. Charles Wood | No | Read |