The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #27543 Message #3049370
Posted By: Joe Offer
09-Dec-10 - 02:34 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Boar's Head Carol Info.
Subject: RE: Origins: Boar's Head Carol Info.
This is the song for December 9 in Jon Boden's A Folk Song a Day project, so I thought I'd add a little more to the research we have on the song.
The version in the Digital Tradition is a good transcription of #19 in the Oxford Book of Carols (1928, 1964). The song text is the same in The New Oxford Book of Carols (1992); and in Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time 2 (1859) pp.757-758. Chappell got the song from Dr. Rimbault's Little Book of Christmas Carols.
I found a nice summary of the lengthy notes from the Oxford Book of Carols at www.nsmt.org
The Boar’s Head Carol. English traditional. This carol is sung every Christmas at Queen’s College, Oxford. The Provost and Fellows enter after the usual trumpet call that announces dinner each evening during Full Term. The Provost having then said grace, the boar’s head is carried in by three chefs on its silver charger, surrounded by rosemary and gilded springs of bay, stuck with flags, and magnificently crowned. One either side are torch-bearers, and in front walks the solo singer and (proceeding backwards) the choir. The procession halts for each verse, moving forward during the refrains. When the charger is set down on the high table, the Provost distributes the herbs among the choristers and presents the solo singer with the orange from the boar’s mouth. An early version of the text is ‘A carol bringyng in the bores heed’ in Christmasse Carolles Newly Emprynted at London in the flete strete…by Wynkyn de Worde (1521) No early musical setting survives, and the tune to which it has been sung from at least the eighteenth century probably derives from a Restoration bass pattern. The version we use was printed in William Wallace Fyfe’s Christmas, its Customs and Carols (1863) and Husk’s Songs of the Nativity (1864), except for the refrain, for which we use the 1901 revision, the arrangement now sung at Queen’s College. Boar’s head feasts were particularly popular at Christmas – in Edward II’s time the open season for boar hunting ran from Christmas to Candlemas (Feb. 2). Wild boar have been extinct in England since the middle of the eighteenth century.