Good King Wenceslas

The real Wenceslas. Wenceslas was a duke, not a king ^[20][15]. He was killed on 28 September at Stará Boleslav, where his younger brother Boleslav had invited him, by one account to a feast, at the door of a church or on his way to one ^{[15][16][18][20]}. The year is disputed: some sources give 935, others 929 ^[15][16][18]. Boleslav is the main suspect, but Radio Prague's programmes, drawing on Czech historians, say the sources do not settle who struck the blow ^[18][20]. He was soon honoured as a martyr ^[18][20] and became the patron of Bohemia, and his feast, 28 September, is now a Czech national holiday, Czech Statehood Day ^[16][21][20]. A tradition says the emperor Otto I made him a king after his death ^[7][19].

Neale's legend. John Mason Neale was an English priest, born in 1818, who from 1846 until his death in 1866 was warden of Sackville College, East Grinstead ^[5][24][7]. He first told the story in prose, as "The Legend of S. Wenceslaus", in Deeds of Faith, a children's book of church stories, its preface signed on Michaelmas Eve, 1849; the Hymnology Archive dates the book itself to 1850 ^[6][7]. In the tale it is Advent, not Christmas. The king sees a poor man pulling sticks from the bushes on a snowy hillside, Rudolph the swineherd, and sends his servant, Otto, to ask about him. The king carries the logs on his own shoulder, and when Otto can go no further, he tells him to tread in his footsteps; Otto finds them glowing "as with a holy fire" ^[6]. Neale named sources for most of the book's other tales; of this one he said only that, "supposing it a legend", it was "a legend of such extreme beauty" ^[6].

The tune. The tune comes from a book printed in Greifswald by Augustin Ferber: Piae Cantiones, "pious songs" of the church and school "of the old bishops", in use throughout the kingdom of Sweden, lately corrected by a churchman who had served the church and school of Åbo in Finland well, and now printed through the work of Theodoricus Petri of Nyland ^[3][4][10]. Petri dated his preface at Rostock on 23 May 1582 ^[4][5]. Modern references count 74 songs in it (Helmore counted 75), and the last, under the heading "De tempore vernali cantiones", songs of springtime, is Tempus adest floridum, "the flowering time is here" ^{[3][12][7][10][5]}. In the National Library of Finland's copy it is printed as a single tune line, in the diamond-headed notes of the time, without bar lines. The first strain carries two lines of the poem, one under the other, and the other three verses are printed as text below it ^[3].

From Stockholm to East Grinstead. Thomas Helmore later wrote that "an extremely rare book was brought from Stockholm" for the editors of the Hymnal Noted, Neale and himself ^[5]. Woodward, who edited the same copy in 1910, says the British envoy at Stockholm brought it "not later than the beginning of 1853"; the Museum of Music History says 1852 ^[4][8]. From its tunes came their Carols for Christmas-tide and Carols for Easter-tide ^[5][4].

The carol. Carols for Christmas-tide holds twelve carols, and the title page of its 1854 vocal edition says they are "set to Ancient Melodies" by Helmore, with words "principally in imitation of the original" by Neale ^[2][7]. Good King Wenceslas is not one of those imitations: Neale ignored the spring words and set his Bohemian legend to the tune, moving it from Advent to St Stephen's Day and making the servant a page ^[7][13][6]. In the folio edition, whose pages 28 and 29 the Hymnology Archive reproduces, it is No. 11: the first verse under four voice parts and a keyboard part, in A major, and verses 2 to 5 printed in two columns below ^[1]. A small edition of the vocal parts followed, dated 1854 on its title page, with a notice by both men, dated on the feast of Saints Simon and Jude, 1853, saying they had already "put forth" the harmonised folio edition ^[2].

Myth and record. Often told: the carol first appeared in Neale's Deeds of Faith of 1849, or it translates a Czech poem ^[9][19]. What the record shows: Deeds of Faith holds the prose tale, and the verses are first known from 1853 ^[6][1]. The Hymnology Archive, following an article by Joseph Kalousek in a Prague museum journal of 1900, traces the tale to a poem by Václav Alois Svoboda, printed in Prague in 1847 in Czech, German and Latin, in which Wenceslas and his servant Podivin carry food and firewood to the poor on a winter night ^[7][19].

All five verses are Neale's own; none comes from the Latin ^[7][13].

Verse 1. The Feast of Stephen is 26 December, the day of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr ^[17][13]. In the Acts of the Apostles he is one of seven men chosen to care for the church's poorer members, and is stoned to death ^[23][17]. The snow lies "deep, and crisp, and even", and by moonlight the king sees a poor man "gath'ring winter fuel", firewood ^[1].

Verse 2. The king calls his page and asks, "if thou know'st it, telling", tell me if you know, who the peasant is. He lives "a good league hence": a league was reckoned at three miles ^[22]. His home is "right against the forest fence", close to the forest's boundary; a fence was any wall, hedge or bank that closed off land ^[22]. Neale gives no real place for "Saint Agnes' fountain"; in his prose tale the swineherd lives "down by the Brunweiss" ^[6].

Verse 3. "Flesh" is meat ^[22]. With it go wine and pine logs, and he and his page will carry them: "Thou and I will see him dine". They walk into "the rude wind's wild lament": rude winds were rough, violent ones ^[22].

Verse 4. The page loses heart. "Good my page" means my good page, as Stainer's book prints it ^[14]. The king tells him to "mark my footsteps" and tread in them boldly, and the winter's rage will chill his blood less.

Verse 5. The snow is "dinted", pressed into hollows by the king's feet; a dint was a mark made by a blow or by pressing ^[22]. The "sod", the turf under the snow, is warm where the saint has stepped ^[22]. The last four lines turn to the singers: Christians who have wealth or rank and bless the poor will find blessing themselves. Hymnary.org links the carol to Jesus's words in Luke: when you give a feast, call the poor, "and thou shalt be blessed" ^[23][24].

Tempus adest floridum

The words Neale set aside are a spring song in four verses: flowers and grass come back after winter, they show God the Creator, and the singers should be made new with the world ^[3][11]. This is the Latin as printed in 1582, with its shortened words written out and æ as ae, and u and v as in modern Latin; the English is our own ^[3]. In the second verse we read the third line as if "quae", which, had dropped out, as Woodward suggested in 1910 ^[4].

Tempus adest floridum, surgunt namque flores, The flowering time is here, for the flowers are rising; Vernales in omnibus, imitantur mores, in everything the ways of spring are copied; Hoc quod frigus laeserat, reparant calores, what the cold had harmed, the warm days mend; Cernimus hoc fieri per multos labores. we see this done by much labour.

Sunt prata plena floribus, iucunda aspectu, The meadows are full of flowers, lovely to see, Ubi iuvat cernere herbas cum delectu, where it is a joy to look closely at the plants; Gramina et plantae hyeme quiescunt, the grasses and plants that rest in winter Vernali in tempore virent et accrescunt. grow green and grow tall in springtime.

Haec vobis pulchre monstrant Deum Creatorem, These things show you, beautifully, God the Creator, Quem quoque nos credimus omnium factorem, whom we also believe to be the maker of all things; O tempus ergo hilare, quo laetari libet, so, O cheerful time, when it is good to rejoice: Renovato nam mundo, nos novari decet. now that the world is made new, we too should be made new.

Terra ornatur floribus et multo decore, The earth is dressed with flowers and much beauty, Nos honestis moribus et vero amore, and we with honest ways and true love; Gaudeamus igitur tempore iucundo, so let us rejoice in this pleasant time Laudemusque Dominum pectoris ex fundo. and praise the Lord from the bottom of our hearts.

It is a Christmas carol, and its own day is St Stephen's Day: the Oxford Book of Carols heads it "St. Stephen, Dec. 26" ^[13][17]. Its tune is TEMPUS ADEST FLORIDUM ^[24][7], and its meter is 7.6.7.6 D, eight lines of seven and six syllables in turn ^[1][2].

The tune is in bar form, AAB ^[7]: in Helmore's setting of 1853 lines 1 and 2 go to the first strain, lines 3 and 4 repeat it, and the last four go to a second strain, which starts high on "Brightly shone the moon that night" and ends with a held note on "fuel" ^[1]. Every verse is sung to the same music. Stainer's book shares the verses out by speaker: the king's words go to a solo tenor, the page's to a solo treble, and the story told around them, verse 1, the second half of verse 3 and verse 5, to the chorus ^[14].

Our arrangement reads the tune and verses 1, 4 and 5 from No. XI of The Condensed Vocal Parts to the Carols for Christmas-tide (London, 1854), in A as printed there, with its chords checked against Bramley and Stainer's No. X in Christmas Carols New and Old ^[2][14]. The soprano sings that tune and the alto, tenor and bass are our own, one note to each syllable but for the tune's two on each verse's next-to-last syllable (the "fu-" of "fuel."), for 2 to 4 singers: two singers take soprano and alto, a third adds the bass, and the tenor makes four.

• Soprano: the tune, most often on A, from the low E to the top E. Each verse's fifth and last lines start on that top E ("Brightly", "Gath'ring") and come down by step, and on the "fu-" of "fuel." it rises from A to D before settling on A to the end.
• Alto: mostly a sixth below the tune, most often on C-sharp, down to its low G-sharp only at the end of each verse's first and third lines ("out," and "about,") and up to its top A only on "moon", "good" and "men,". After "sight," take the breath and start the last line low, on C-sharp, then leap up to F-sharp on "ring".
• Tenor: the middle of the chord, most often on its low E, then A. The first four lines of each verse sit mostly on that low E; the fifth and seventh climb to its top E, on "that" and "sight," in verse 1.
• Bass: the bass line, most often on A, down to its low F-sharp on the third note of each verse's first and third lines ("Wen-", "snow") and up to its top A only on "moon", "good" and "men,", an octave under the alto. Under the last line's "fuel." it stays on A to the end.