* E7803 Chriftmas Carols NEW & OLD THE WORDS EDITED BY THE Rev. HENRY RAMSDEN BRAMLEY, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Saint Mary Magdalen College, Oxford. THE MUSIC EDITED BY JOHN STAINER, M.A., Mus. Doc., Of the fame College. Lonpon: NOVELLO AND COMPANY, Limirep, AND NOVELLO, EWER AND CO., NEW YORK. a ot osLONDON: NOVELLO AND COMPANY, LIMITED, PRINTERS.CHRISTMAS CAROLS. LEARNED writer of the laft century, the Rev. Arthur Bedford, in his edition of the well-known Chriftmas Carol, “A Virgin unfpotted,” gives his readers to underftand that the name Carol is derived from Carolus, the Latin for Charles. “A Chriftmas Carol,” he fays, “becaufe fuch were in ufe in King Charies I. reign.”* But though it is eafy to fhow from writers who died before Charles I, was born, by whom the word Carol is ufed in a fenfe fimilar to that which it bears at prefent, that this is not the truc derivation, it is by no means fo eafy to give an account of the real origin of the term. Authorities are not agreed upon the point. The word exifts, not only in Englifh, from at leaft the four- teenth century, but in old French and German, in Italian, in Welfh, and in the Celtic dialects of Brittany and the Scottifh Highlands. It feems moft probable (according to the opinion of the prefent Profeffor of Anglo-Saxon in Oxford), that “ the other tribes and nations of Europe, have, like ourfelves, taken the word from the French, as was natural: feeing the French were the firlt leaders off of European dance and fong.” + But how or from what quarter the word came into French feems to be involved in obfcurity. The earlieft apparent inftance of its occurrence in any form is in S, Ouen’s Life of S. Eligius, written in Latin in or about the year 672.4 _S. Eligius, who was Bifhop of Noyon, feems to have found his flock much infected with Paganifm. So, amongft other things, he forbade any Chriftian from indulging in folftices (whatever they might be), balls, dances, carols, or diabolical * Hutk’s “Songs of the Nativity,” p. 30. t MS. letter of Rev. John Earle, December 4, 1877, t Quoted by Mr. Baring Gould (? from Du Cage) in his Preface to Mrs Chope’s Carale for Ute in Church.”