Christmas Carols and Their Stories
Puzzle 14 · Old English Folk Carols · Page 28 in print
The Sussex Carol
Cecil Sharp printed a Gloucestershire version of the Sussex Carol, On Christmas Night, sung by William Bayliss of Buckland, and noted that its words were also on a broadside by Batchelar.
Jump to a word
The words
Ballad Sheets
Early nineteenth-century printed sheets of the words.
Baritone
The solo voice of the 1912 Fantasia that used the tune.
Bishop of Ferns
The office later held by Luke Wadding.
Buckland
Gloucestershire village of William Bayliss, who sang Sharp a version.
Christmas Box
A Good Christmas Box (1847), a chapbook that printed the words.
Fantasia
Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols (1912), which used the tune.
Ghent
City where the 1684 Smale Garland was printed.
Horsham
Sussex town near which the tune was collected.
Lucy Broadwood
Folk-song collector who noted a melody for the words in 1892.
Luke Wadding
Irish bishop linked to the 1684 garland that first printed the words.
Monk's Gate
Hamlet near Horsham where Harriet Verrall lived.
Discipleship Ministries of the United (opens a new tab) · Mainly Norfolk (opens a new tab)
Orchestra
The orchestra of the 1912 Fantasia that used the tune.
Smale Garland
The 1684 songbook with the earliest printed form of the words.
Sussex
The county whose singer gave the carol its usual name.
Mainly Norfolk (opens a new tab) · Discipleship Ministries of the United (opens a new tab)
Verrall
Harriet Verrall, who sang the tune to Vaughan Williams in 1904.
Discipleship Ministries of the United (opens a new tab) · Mainly Norfolk (opens a new tab)
Sources
- Mainly Norfolk: English Folk and Other Good Music (Reinhard Zierke), ‘On Christmas Night / The Sussex Carol (Roud 597)’mainlynorfolk.info
- Discipleship Ministries of the United Methodist Church, ‘History of Hymns: On Christmas Night’ (22 December 2022)umcdiscipleship.org
- Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk-Carols (London: Novello; Taunton: Barnicott and Pearce, 1911); Internet Archive scanInternet Archive