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

[Jonathan Lighter]

Somebody mentioned "Golden Apples of the Sun."  The name of Yeats's poem is
"Song of the Wandering Aengus."

(No, it isn't about a loose cow.)

JL

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 11:46 PM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> Subject:      Re: ADS-L Digest - 27 Feb 2009 to 28 Feb 2009 (#2009-60)
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> 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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