Christmas Carols and Their Stories
Puzzle 04 · Carols of the Middle Ages · Page 16 in print
The Coventry Carol
The Coventry Carol is the middle of three songs in the Shearmen and Taylors’ pageant. A note bearing Thomas Mawdycke’s name and the date May 13, 1591, says the shepherds sing the other two.
Jump to a word
The words
Birmingham
The city whose Free Reference Library burned with the manuscript in 1879.
Dissertation
Thomas Sharp’s 1825 book on the Coventry pageants.
Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or (opens a new tab) · Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays (opens a new tab)
Herod
The raging king whose order the women’s lullaby mourns.
Innocents
The children Herod ordered slain, the subject of the carol.
Isaiah
The prophet who speaks the prologue of the Shearmen and Taylors’ play.
Lullay
The lullaby burden of the Coventry Carol, ‘lully, lullay’.
The Oxford Book of Carols (opens a new tab) · Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or (opens a new tab)
Magi
The wise men whose offering the pageant staged.
Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or (opens a new tab) · Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays (opens a new tab)
Mawdycke
Thomas Mawdycke, whose name heads the 1591 copy of the songs.
Mill Lane
The Coventry street where the guild kept its pageant house.
Pageant House
The guild’s pageant house, recorded in Mill Lane in 1503.
Robert Croo
Who made the final correction of the pageant text in 1534.
Shearmen
The cloth-shearers’ guild that staged the Nativity pageant.
Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or (opens a new tab) · Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays (opens a new tab)
Taylors
The tailors who shared the Nativity pageant with the shearmen.
Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or (opens a new tab) · Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays (opens a new tab)
Thomas Sharp
Whose 1825 Dissertation preserves the play’s text.
Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or (opens a new tab) · Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays (opens a new tab) · The Oxford Book of Carols (opens a new tab)
Weavers
The Coventry guild whose companion pageant Croo also copied.
Sources
- Hardin Craig, ed., Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays (Early English Text Society, Extra Series 87, 1902); archive.org scan twocoventrycorp00craigoogInternet Archive
- Thomas Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry (Coventry: Merridew and Son, 1825); archive.org scan dissertationonpa00sharuoftInternet Archive
- The Oxford Book of Carols (first published 1928; 1964 printing), Internet Archive scanInternet Archive