"We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is a popular English Christmas carol from the West Country of England.
Video We Wish You a Merry Christmas
History
The Bristol-based composer, conductor and organist Arthur Warrell is responsible for the popularity of the carol. Warrell arranged the tune for his own University of Bristol Madrigal Singers, and performed it with them in concert on December 6, 1935. That same year, his elaborate four-part arrangement was published by Oxford University Press, under the title "A Merry Christmas: West Country traditional song".
Warrell's arrangement is notable for using "I" instead of "we" in the words; the first line is "I wish you a Merry Christmas". It was subsequently republished in the collection Carols for Choirs (1961), and remains widely performed.
The earlier history of the carol is unclear. It is absent from the collections of West-countrymen Davies Gilbert (1822 and 1823) and William Sandys (1833), as well as from the great anthologies of Sylvester (1861) and Husk (1864). It is also missing from The Oxford Book of Carols (1928). In the comprehensive New Oxford Book of Carols (1992), editors Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott describe it as "English traditional" and "[t]he remnant of an envoie much used by wassailers and other luck visitors"; no source or date is given.
Origin
The greeting "a merry Christmas and a happy New Year" is recorded from the early eighteenth century. The English custom of performing inside or outside homes in return for food and drink is illustrated in the short story The Christmas Mummers (1858) by Charlotte Yonge, in which a group of boys run to a farmer's door and sing:
I wish you a merry Christmas
And a happy New Year,
A pantryful of good roast-beef,
And barrels full of beer.
After they are allowed in and perform a Mummers play, the boys are served beer by the farmer's maid.
Another example is recorded in 1883, from the villages of Burford, Church Stretton and Worthen in the English county of Shropshire:
I wish you a merry Christmas, a happy New Year,
A pocket full of money, and a cellar full of beer;
A good fat pig to last you all the year.
Please to give me a New Year's gift.
The origin of this Christmas carol lies in the English tradition wherein wealthy people of the community gave Christmas treats to the carolers on Christmas Eve, such as "figgy pudding" that was very much like modern-day Christmas puddings. A variety of nineteenth-century sources state that, in the West Country of England, "figgy pudding" referred to a raisin or plum pudding, not necessarily one containing figs.
Maps We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Lyrics
- We wish you a merry Christmas,
- We wish you a merry Christmas,
- We wish you a merry Christmas
- And a happy New Year.
- Good tidings we bring
- To you and your kin;
- We wish you a merry Christmas
- And a happy New Year!
- 2
- Oh, bring us some figgy pudding,
- Oh, bring us some figgy pudding,
- Oh, bring us some figgy pudding,
- And bring it right here.
- Good tidings we bring
- To you and your kin;
- We wish you a merry Christmas
- And a happy New Year!
- 3
- We won't go till we get some,
- We won't go till we get some,
- We won't go till we get some,
- So bring it right here.
- Good tidings we bring
- To you and your kin;
- We wish you a merry Christmas
- And a happy New Year!
- 4
- We all like our figgy pudding,
- We all like our figgy pudding,
- We all like our figgy pudding,
- With all its good cheers
- Good tidings we bring
- To you and your kin
- We wish you a merry Christmas
- And a happy New Year.
- We wish you a merry Christmas
- We wish you a merry Christmas
- We wish you a merry Christmas
- And a happy New Year!
Version 1
Version 3
Version 4
See also
- List of Christmas carols
- Christmas carol
- Christmas music
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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