ADS-L Digest - 27 Feb 2009 to 28 Feb 2009 (#2009-60)

[James Harbeck]

Actually (according to OED), a carol was originally a ring-dance and
it extended from that to the music. There is no "story" sense listed.
I can't off the top of my head think of any well-known Christmas
carols that were first poems, though "In the Bleak Mid-Winter" (which
I would not call a carol, though it is a Christmas song) was
originally a poem by Christina Rossetti, later set to music by two
different fellows (Darke is, I think, the better-known), and Parry's
stirring "Jerusalem" set a poem by William Blake to music. The
Coventry Carol ("Lullay, lulla, thou little tiny child...") is so
named because its first performance was as part of one of the
segments of the Coventry cycle plays (which were performed on or
around the feast of Corpus Christi, actually), and it was always,
from the beginning (16th century), a song.

James Harbeck.

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