First Nowell, The

The First Nowell Roud 682, NOBC 137: This carol looks like a folk-carol, sounds like a folk-carol, but its folk credentials and provenance are really quite thin. There seem to be no broadsides¹ or cheap printings of it in the 18th and early 19th centuries to build up transmission energy; collectors like Lucy Broadwood, Frank Kidson and Baring-Gould at the end of the 19th century found no ‘wild’ tunes or texts - everybody was singing what the carol books of William Sandys and John Stainer had prescribed. This carol just turned up in Cornwall early in the 19th century, fully formed and ready to go; but even its publication by Davies Gilbert in his 1823 book Some Ancient Christmas Carols is problematic…

Davies Gilbert (1767-1839) was the son of Rev. Edward Giddy,² curate at the parish church of St Erth village (6 miles S of St Ives in West Cornwall) from 1757 to 1775. When the vicar of St Erth died in that year, Edward Giddy was hoping to take over the parish but he was overlooked and he resigned his curacy, moving to Penzance where son Davies soon began attending the grammar school. However, in 1779 Edward Giddy’s mother-in-law died, leaving Tredrea,³ a 17th century manor farmhouse in St Erth to Edward’s wife Catherine. Edward was installed again at the church there and the family lived at Tredrea for many years. This is important because the young Davies Giddy spent many happy years at this house, was home-educated there and eventually took it over as his married residence when his father died in 1814. Davies remembered the excitement of carol parties there at Christmas time and, approaching his 40th year, he must have decided to rescue and publish the carols he loved from whatever sources he could find.⁴ Among his papers is a carol book, the so-called ‘Hutchens Ms’ which contains a letter addressed to Davies – it is a reply that he received in June 1816 from John Morgan, the innkeeper of the Star Inn at St Erth:⁵

‘I have at last procurd (sic) a person to fulfil your request respecting the old Christmas tunes, & as he is a labouring man, perhaps I shall not be able to procure them as soon as I could wish, nevertheless you may rely on my attention to procure them as early as possible… NB I have proposed to have a small book to prick the notes in.’

This tells us two things – that Morgan is prepared to act as mediator⁶ to locate these old carol tunes and secondly, that he feels he has enough musical competence himself to ‘prick out’ the tunes. In fact, there is a strong similarity between Morgan’s handwriting in this 1816 letter and the handwriting of the subsequent ‘Hutchens’ carol book with its 38 carols and tunes. But the ‘Hutchens’ book is certainly not small and took several years to appear - an expert may have to adjudicate whether the handwriting is identical. The ‘Hutchens book’ is in fluent copperplate style, a fair copy handwritten text with hand-drawn staff notation. All carols are melody line only, no Bass or other parts. There is unfortunately no date visible in the book and some commentators suggest a date as late as 1825. It is an incredible insight into late 18th century carol music and must have required a great deal of time and care. No field notes nor rough copy have survived.

There is an acknowledgment in the opening pages: ‘A Book of Carols collected for Davies Gilbert Esq., MP and FRS by John Hutchens’. But nobody has managed to trace exactly who ‘John Hutchens’ was. There are at least two possible scenarios:

1. John Morgan could not fulfil his promise and withdrew altogether. John Hutchens stepped in and just happened to have incredibly similar handwriting to John Morgan; he was musically competent and was the genuine compiler of the book. He may have collected the carols from ‘live’ singers or perhaps he simply copied other documents like musician tune books. Either way, his eventual book was a clean ‘faircopy’ when presented to Gilbert… OR,
2. John Morgan did do his job, contacted the ‘labouring man’ who was John Hutchens; whereupon Hutchens sang most or all of the carols,⁷ but needed the mediating hand of John Morgan to record them. In such a case, Hutchens was perhaps known in the area as a gifted singer/musician – unfortunately, there is no record of any ‘John Hutchens’ in St Erth parish records at all, but there were three ‘John Hutchens’ at St Buryan (13 miles to the south), one of whom was the manager of the new Bible Christian chapel there.⁸ Non-conformists were known for their singing congregations. Some Anglican churches had West Galleries too, where musicians could lead the congregations in song – the West Gallery in St Buryan church was not removed until 1851.⁹ It must be said that there were other branches of the Hutchens family in the St Just area and west of Penzance generally, so we may never know the exact identity of Mr John Hutchens.

Davies Gilbert did, however, have other carols material to hand without consideration of the ‘Hutchens book’.¹⁰ There is an exercise book, dated ‘Xmas 1817’, in his own handwriting with 12 carols in it, including the First Nowell carol.¹¹ He noted that 8 of these carols ‘used to be sung at Tredrea’ - indeed 6 of those carols form the entire body of the 1822 (first edition) of his carols book. He also noted in this exercise book that the carol entitled ‘Know well, Know well’ was ‘evidently a corruption of Noel’.¹² Perhaps for this reason, he did not put it forward for the 1822 book,¹³ but he did insert it into the 1823 expanded edition (20 carols, 7 tunes). So, there it was - ‘The First Nowell’ for the first time in text but without a tune. It’s not clear why he withheld the tune. Gilbert published nine stanzas of the carol, but we only sing six today.¹⁴

It was William Sandys, fellow antiquarian (also of Cornish descent),¹⁵ who published the first tune for ‘The First Nowell’ in his book Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern, Including the Most Popular in the West of England (London: Beckley, 1833). Sandys (1792-1874) was an enthusiastic amateur musician and antiquary; he was born in London, living and working as a solicitor there all his life. He insisted that his selected carols were ‘still used in the West of England’ (p61), but he never revealed the precise sources of his carols, when or where collected. He may well have had sight of Hutchens’ tune (shown above), changing it from the key of G into the key of D with a 3/8 time. With a little tweaking later by John Stainer in his 1867 book of carols,¹⁶ it is recognisably the tune we sing today.

There remains another point of contention about this carol – over its tune. Some musicologists have noted that the Nowell tune hardly uses the root note of D throughout the song and doesn’t settle on D at the end either. They argue that it therefore probably originated as a descant or higher track above a lost or forgotten main melody. We shall never know. Cecil Sharp collected a version with five verses that did begin and end on the root note and published this in the Journal of the Folk Song Society vol 5 (1914, pp26-27).¹⁷ It is occasionally sung today but no great claims are made for it (as shown below):

When Ralph Dunstan, the prominent Cornish musician, published The Cornish Song Book (Lyver Canow Kerenewek) in 1929,¹⁸ he presented a chorus that went ‘O well, O well, O well, Born is the king of Israel’. So, it seems there was always some fluidity of this text in Cornwall.

In summary, The First Nowell is a uniquely Cornish carol, which dates from at least the 18th century and which was shakily preserved by Gilbert and Sandys. Its echo of the Old French word ‘Noël’ suggests that the carol may have older, late medieval antecedents but perhaps no direct lineage.¹⁹ The maritime and cultural links between Cornwall and Brittany may have kept the carol alive in Cornwall over time.

Note 1: on the date of ‘Hutchens book’: Davies Gilbert’s 1823 carol book repeated the 6 carols from the 1822 book but added a further 14 carols, of which 7 appear only in the Hutchens book and not in Gilbert’s other source material.20 We should, therefore, conclude that the ‘Hutchens book’ was in Gilbert’s hands during 1823 in time for publication of his second carol book.

Note 2: on the etymology and use of the word ‘Nowell’: Gilbert knew that ‘Nowell’ was a corruption of ‘Noël’, an Old French word, derived in turn from Latin natalis, meaning ‘birthday’.21 Medieval ‘Noël’ songs in France from the 14th century onwards told the Nativity story to the people, using simple folk tunes and language, so that eventually the word ‘Noël’ became a shout of joy rather like ‘Alleluia’ and might be used in a variety of situations. This is why Gilbert in the Preface of his 1822 book, cited the French writer Gilles Ménage,22 who had stated:

‘Le mot de Nouel étoit autrefois un mot de re-jouissance; on le crioit dans toutes les fêtes et solennités publiques.’

The word ‘Noël’ was formerly a word of rejoicing; one cried it at all celebrations and public feast days.’

Using this original meaning, The First Nowell therefore becomes ‘The first shout of joy the Angels did say was to certain poor shepherds etc’. Makes a lot more sense!