Let’s hear it for the good king! Helmore and Neale’s 1853 Carols for Christmas-Tide broke new ground in the carolscape by digging up a 16th century school songbook from Finland and re-planting it in fertile English soil. Piae Cantiones is in Latin and Swedish, so J M Neale contrived new words ‘principally in imitation of the original’, apart from a couple which he completely re-invented. One of these was ‘Good King Wenceslas’ which he fitted to the tune of ‘Tempus adest floridum’, a song about the rebirth of spring. It became one of the most popular carols of the 19th century, especially after its inclusion in Bramley & Stainer’s Christmas Carols Old and New in 1867, harmonised by Stainer himself. It had some of the most excoriating criticism ever suffered by an English carol…

‘Poor and common place to the last degree.’ Arthur Henry Bullen  A Christmas Garland 1885

  ‘Much to be deprecated’ Edgar Pettman  Modern Christmas Carols 1892

 ‘One of Neale’s less happy pieces…not without hope that it may gradually fall into disuse.                                                   Dearmer, Shaw and Vaughan Williams Oxford Book of Carols 1928

 ‘An unnatural marriage between Victorian whimsy and the C13 dance carol…ponderous moral doggerel…ridiculous…deplorable…third-rate invention.’Elizabeth Poston  Penguin Book of Christmas Carols 1965

 ‘If Elizabeth Poston, Percy Dearmer and other scholars had their way…out into the deep, crisp and even snow, the cruel frost and the rude wind would go Neale’s pious text’Malcom Williamson  A Book of Christmas Carols 1988

 And yet… they couldn’t stop themselves publishing it, and are no doubt feeling a little foolish in their celestial retirement as we keep on singing it.  

 In the wise words of the NOBC: ‘Perhaps the peasant did not have the right to gather firewood.’                                                 Keyte & Parrott New Oxford Book of Carols 1992

 

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