Christmas Carols and Their Stories
Puzzle 09 · Old English Folk Carols · Page 23 in print
The First Nowell
Nowell is an English form of the French noel, once a shout of joy at public festivals; the Oxford English Dictionary finds its first English use in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
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The words
Camborne
Cornish town from which the ‘Nowell and Nowell’ variant came.
Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer, the first recorded English user of the word nowell.
Cornwall
The county whose archive holds the oldest known copy of the carol.
Davies Gilbert
The Cornish antiquary for whom Hutchens copied the carol, who printed it in 1823.
Descant
The upper voice-part from which editors thought the tune grew.
Frankincense
One of the gifts the Wise Men offer in the carol text.
Gold
One of the gifts the Wise Men offer in the carol text.
Hutchens
John Hutchens, who copied the earliest known text and tune about 1816–1817.
Kresen Kernow
Cornwall’s archive centre, which holds the Hutchens manuscript.
Myrrh
One of the gifts the Wise Men offer in the carol text.
Noel
The French word of which nowell is an English form.
North West
The direction the star draws near to in the carol text.
Nowell
The refrain word of the carol, an English form of noel.
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Ox Stall
The stall beside which the child is born in the carol text.
Wise Men
The travellers who follow the star in the carol text.