Coventry Carol facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Coventry Carol |
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|---|---|
| Genre | Christmas music |
| Text | Robert Croo (oldest known) |
| Language | English |
The Coventry Carol is a famous English Christmas carol. It was created in the 1500s. This carol was traditionally sung in Coventry, England. It was part of a special play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors.
This play tells a part of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Matthew. The carol itself is about a sad event. This event is when King Herod ordered all baby boys under two years old in Bethlehem to be killed. The carol is like a lullaby sung by the mothers of these babies.
The music for the carol is very old. The person who wrote the words is unknown. The oldest known text was written down by Robert Croo in 1534. The oldest known music for it is from 1591. Today, some modern versions of the carol exist. These include settings by Kenneth Leighton and Philip Stopford.
Contents
History of the Coventry Carol
The Coventry Carol is one of three songs in The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. This play was a nativity play. It was part of the Coventry Mystery Plays. These plays were first performed by the city's guilds. Guilds were like clubs for different trades.
The exact date the carol's words were written is not known. However, there are records of Coventry guild plays from as early as 1392. The only surviving copy of the carol and its play was put together by Robert Croo. He finished his manuscript on March 14, 1534.
Croo was like a manager for the city's plays for many years. He was paid for acting, making costumes, and writing new parts. He also copied out the Shearmen and Tailors' Pageant. He said his version was "newly correcte." Croo often took older stories and updated them.
Why the Plays Stopped
Changes in religion led to these plays being stopped in the late 1500s. But Croo's original book, which included the songs, survived. A local historian named Thomas Sharp copied it in 1817. He published it as part of his study of Coventry's plays.
Sharp published a second edition in 1825. This one included the music for the songs. Both of Sharp's printings were exact copies of Croo's manuscript. This was very lucky. Croo's original manuscript was later destroyed in a fire in 1879. So, Sharp's copies are the only source we have today. Sharp was known as a careful scholar. His copy of the carol's words seems to be very accurate.
The Carol in the Play
In the play, three women from Bethlehem sing the carol. They come onto the stage after an angel warns Joseph to take his family to Egypt. The carol is a sad song. It shows the mothers' sorrow for their children.
| Original spelling | Modernised spelling |
|---|---|
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Lully, lulla, thow littell tine child, |
Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child, |
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O sisters too, how may we do |
O sisters too, how may we do |
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Herod, the king, in his raging, |
Herod the king, in his raging, |
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That wo is me, pore child, for thee, |
That woe is me, poor child, for thee |
Sharp's publication made people interested in the play and songs again. Even though the plays were usually in summer, the lullaby became a Christmas carol in modern times. It became even more famous after a BBC broadcast in 1940. This was during World War II, shortly after the Bombing of Coventry. The broadcast ended with the carol being sung in the bombed-out ruins of the Cathedral.
The Music of the Carol
The music for the carol was added to Croo's manuscript later. A person named Thomas Mawdyke added it on May 13, 1591. Mawdyke wrote the music for three voices. It's not clear if he wrote the music himself. The style of the music suggests it might be even older.
The three vocal parts (alto, tenor, and baritone) show something interesting. In mystery plays, the parts of the "mothers" were always played by men. Mawdyke might have added the music to try and bring the plays back in 1591. However, the city leaders decided not to support the revival. The surviving plays were finally brought back to life in the Cathedral starting in 1951.
An "Appalachian" Version
A different version of the carol was supposedly found in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. This happened in June 1934. A folklorist named John Jacob Niles collected it from an old lady. Niles thought the carol came from England. He believed it traveled through a singing tradition called shape note singing.
However, this version of the carol has not been found anywhere else. Some people think Niles, who was also a composer, might have written it himself. Later, a musician named Joel Cohen found an old shape note song from the 1700s. This song also had some of the Coventry Carol lyrics. It also had a tune that was a little like Niles's version. Because of this, Cohen thought the Appalachian version might be real.
See also
In Spanish: Villancico de Coventry para niños
