Coventry Carol

The pageant. Coventry's trading companies each kept a pageant, a play on a wagon moved through the streets; the word first meant the wagon and only later the play ^[1][3]. The Shearmen and Tailors kept their pageant house in Mill Lane and played at Corpus Christi ^[4][2][1][3]. Their subject, in Sharp's words, was "the Birth of Christ and Offering of the Magi, with the Flight into Egypt and Murder of the Innocents" ^[1][3].

Robert Croo's text. The play's only known text was a book written out by Robert Croo. At its end, in red ink, Sharp reproduced his note: "T[h]ys matter nevly correcte be Robart Croo the xiiijth dey of marche fenysschid in the yere of owre lorde god M CCCCC & xxxiiijte", newly corrected and finished on 14 March 1534 ^[1][2]. So Croo was revising an older play, and Sharp regretted that the older copies were gone ^[1][3].

The mothers' scene. An angel sends Mary and Joseph away into Egypt. Croo's stage direction follows, as Craig spells it out: "Here the wemen cum in wythe there chyldur, syngyng them; and Mare and Josoff goth awey cleyne" ^[1][2]. Three women speak; one lulls her child in her arms so that it will not cry. Herod's soldiers arrive, the women plead and then fight back, one with her pot ladle, and the soldiers do what Herod ordered ^[1][2]. Croo's text marks where the women sing but does not give their song; its words come after the end of the play, with the music ^[2][3].

The songs of 1591. After the play, Sharp printed the songs under their own heading: "Theise songes belonge to the Taylors & Shearemens Pagant. The first and the laste the shepheards singe and the second or middlemost the women singe." ^[1][3]. Below it, in black-letter type, come a name, "Thomas Mawdycke", and a date in Latin, 13 May 1591, with the city's officers of that year ^[1][2]. Nothing on the page says whether Mawdycke wrote, copied or owned the songs ^[1]; one modern history of the plays takes him to be their copyist ^[3]. The music is for three voices, headed "The treble", "The tenor" and "The basse", engraved for Sharp's book in the old notation, with diamond-shaped notes and one flat in the key, the words written under the notes and each verse set out in full ^[1][3].

Thomas Sharp and the fire. Thomas Sharp (1770 to 1841), a Coventry hatter's son, copied many of the city's old records before they were lost ^[6][3]. In 1817 he printed the pageant in only twelve copies ^[4][2][3]; no account of that printing we have read says whether it had the songs. His Dissertation of 1825 reprints the play and gives the songs' words and engraved music ^[1][2]. His Coventry manuscripts later passed into William Staunton's Warwickshire collection, and with it to the Birmingham Free Reference Library. On 11 January 1879, the date Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham gives (one modern history of the plays says 1878), the library burned, and with it, in that dictionary's words, "the valued and patient gatherings of Thomas Sharpe, the Coventry antiquarian" ^[5][2][3]. The play's manuscript was among them; Sharp's pages are now its only record ^[2][3].

Myth and record. Often told: the Coventry Carol is a carol of the 1400s, as The English Carol Book dated its words, and as William Sandys dated the pageant in 1833 ^[9][7]. What the record shows: the play text is Croo's revision of 1534, which cues the song without giving it, and the song is known only from the copy dated 1591 ^[1][2]. It may be older than that copy, but no earlier text of it is known ^[1][3].

The Gospel of Matthew tells that Herod, when he saw that the wise men had tricked him, "slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under" ^[10]. The mothers of those children sing this song. It is a lullaby and a lament: they rock their babies knowing what is coming ^[1][3].

Refrain. "Lully, lulla" and "by by, lully lullay" are hushing sounds, not words with a meaning ^[14]. "Littell tiné child" is "little tiny child". Sharp put accents on some words to show how they were said; he spelled it "tiné" and then "tyné" on the text page, and "tyne" under the music ^[1].

Verse 1. Sisters, what can we do today to save this poor little one we are singing to? A "yongling" is a young one ^[13]. Sharp's text and treble part spell "too", but his tenor and bass parts spell it "two": the mother may be speaking to the two other women on stage ^[1][2].

Verse 2. In his fury King Herod has today "chargid", ordered, his soldiers to kill all the young children before his own eyes ^[1][10].

Verse 3. So I grieve for you, poor child, and will always mourn; at your "parting", your death, I can neither speak nor sing. And yet the verse ends with the lullaby once more ^[1].

It is a Christmas carol. The killing of the children is remembered in the church year on Holy Innocents' Day, 28 December ^[11][12].

The 1591 setting is for three voices, treble, tenor and bass, with the tune in the treble ^[1][3]. Sharp's plates give the full refrain once, at the start, then the three verses, each with its own small changes to the tune ^[1].

Our arrangement is read from Sharp's plates, in G minor as printed, in 3/4 time and slow. It sings the short refrain (its first line and "By by lully lullay"), verses 1 to 3, then the refrain again, as The English Carol Book (1923 printing) lays it out, with Sharp's words and spelling ^[1][9]. The soprano sings the 1591 treble, which is the tune; the alto sings the 1591 tenor; the bass sings the 1591 bass. The tenor is ours, written so that every chord keeps its third when two or three people sing: with two, soprano and tenor; with three, add the bass. The old harmony turns from minor to major on "lulla", on "this day" and on every last "lullay". Verse 2 ends on a bare open chord in 1591; our tenor adds the third, so it ends major like the others. A few notes differ from Sharp's plates: some where the engraving seems to slip, and some to make the lines easier to sing, such as one note to a syllable in the alto and a breath at the end of each line.

• Sandys, 1833. William Sandys reprinted the first two of the three songs in the introduction to his Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern, heading this one "Song II. (By the Women.)" and keeping Sharp's old spellings ^[7].
• "And ever morne and may". John Matthews Manly's edition of 1897, which Hardin Craig followed in 1902, prints "may" where Sharp printed "say" in verse 3, a correction Manly credited to Professor Kittredge. The English Carol Book also has "And ever morn and may", in modern spelling throughout ^[2][9][1].

• Soprano: the 1591 tune, most often on G, then A. Its top D comes once a verse, on the third line's first word ("This", "His", "For"), and its low F only on "yonge" in verse 2. Every "lullay" that ends a refrain, verse 1 or verse 3 closes on B natural, not B-flat.
• Alto: the 1591 tenor, mostly on D: hold it steady and let the tune move over it. It steps down to B natural on the "la" of each "lulla", on "this day" in verses 1 and 2 and on "and say" in verse 3, and to its low B-flat only on the "for" of "for thee" and the "nor" of "nor singe".
• Tenor: our part, in the middle of the chord, most often on B-flat, then A; every line starts on that B-flat. Its top E-flat comes once, on the "dren" of "children" in verse 2, and its low D once, on "singe" in verse 3.
• Bass: the 1591 bass, the roots of the chords, most often on its top G, then D. Each verse's third line starts low on B-flat ("This", "His", "For"), and it falls to the low G only at the close of the second and last lines ("day", "say", "slay" and the "lay" of every closing "lullay").