Medieval Carols

In late medieval times the word ‘carol’¹ meant a song-dance. These song-dances were widespread across Europe – the French used their word ‘carole’ and we copied it. Holding hands, a ring of people would sing and do a circle dance.² Their leader would sing the verses and the dancers joined in the chorus, which was always called the ‘burden’. The music required a specific structure, rhythm and metre (most often 8-syllable lines) to fit the stepping.³

Our early carols were written in Middle English and had a variety of themes – carols for Easter or celebration of Springtime,⁴ convivial ‘good ale’ carols, amorous songs and lullabies as well as the Nativity story. The American scholar Richard Leighton Greene in his book The Early English Carols presented 474 medieval carols, of which 212 (45%) were about the Nativity and/or the Virgin Mary.⁵ Very few of today’s carols can claim direct lineage back as far as these early carols - possible exceptions would be The Joys of Mary ⁶ and The Holly and the Ivy,⁷ both of which directly echo medieval concepts and motifs. 

One development that would significantly influence our early carols was the arrival in England of Franciscan monks in 1224. Within sixteen years they had recruited over 1,000 new monks nationwide. St Francis of Assisi had founded his new order in 1210, based on rules of simplicity and poverty. He re-created the first live Nativity scene (animals, crib, Mary and baby Jesus) in Greccio, Italy in 1223. Thereafter the figure of the Virgin Mary became a softer, central focus of much sacred music and poetry.

Before the ‘carol’ form came along, the catholic Church had sponsored anthems and hymns to sing at the various Christmas services and masses. These hymns were in Latin and mainly in the Gregorian plainchant style. The first 20 songs in the New Oxford Book of Carols are this type of Latin hymn, including no.16: ‘Veni, veni, Emanuel’ (O Come, O come, Emanuel) which was not translated and published in England until 1851.⁸

Note: After the Norman Conquest, the language of the royal court was Old French,⁹ so when the people began to sing ‘carols’ in their own Middle English language, it must have felt liberating. Equally liberating would have been the dramatic pageants (in vernacular dialect) known as Mystery Plays. These had been regularly performed across medieval Europe, but the earliest record in England is 1376 AD (the York Mystery Play). The Coventry Carol ¹⁰ (Lully, lulla, thow littel tyne child) is one of only two carols to survive from the Mystery Play texts.

As regards the tunes to accompany our medieval carols, few manuscripts with musical notation have survived. The Trinity Roll manuscripts at Cambridge University and the Selden manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, however, give us rare music notations of nine 15th century carols (New Oxford Book of Carols nos. 27-35). These are simply stunning to view 600 years later, and thanks are due to the Bodleian Library particularly for releasing them to public view.¹¹ 

The ‘carol’ song-dance form lasted for over 200 years here in England, between roughly 1300 and 1520 AD and there can be no doubt that the coming Protestant break with Rome under Henry VIII did irreparable damage to our early carols. The dissolution of the monasteries (1536-1541) deprived people not only of many manuscripts but also of the monks that used to copy and preserve them. The Protestant denunciation of the doctrine of Corpus Christi (the real body and blood of Jesus in the eucharist) around 1568 led to the collapse of the Mystery Plays too within a decade.¹²

In conclusion, ‘carols’ subsequently became simply songs sung especially at Christmas – the loose definition we use today, but even as late as 1892 John Julian in his Dictionary of Hymnology¹³ was happy to define a ‘carol’ as a ‘song of joy originally accompanying a dance’.