Origins: Yorkshire 'gooding' carol?

Subject: Origins: Yorkshire 'gooding' carol?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 07:43 AM

I've stumbled across an old "International Christmas carols" book (Theodore Presser co., 1966) which contains a Yorkshire Gooding Carol:

Well-a-day! Well-a-day!
Christmas too soon goes away!
Then your gooding we will pray
For the good-time will not stay.
We are not beggars that beg from door to door,
But neighbors' children you have known before.
So gooding pray, we cannot stay,
we cannot stay, but must away.
For the Christmas will not stay,
Well-a-day! Well-a-day!

Soooooo..... what's the history of gooding carols? Obviously it's reminiscent of wassail songs, but with a difference!

Subject: RE: Origins: Yorkshire 'gooding' carol?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 08:58 AM

See Chambers's Book of Days (1879, pp. 749-750), where this carol is cited with an illustration. The carol is also in The New Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford, 1992, p. 532; with tune and detailed notes), whose version is from Ralph Dunstan's Second Book of Carols (1925). The tune is related to "Well-a-daye" ("Sweet England's prize is gone! / Well-a-day, well-a-day") in William Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. 1 (1859, p. 176). On gooding, see Book of Days (p. 724).

~Masato

Subject: RE: Origins: Yorkshire 'gooding' carol?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 09:28 AM

Notes and Queries (Click here) discussed "gooding" on St. Thomas's day in several numbers, but unfortunately page images won't come up at present.

Subject: RE: Origins: Yorkshire 'gooding' carol?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 06:49 PM

A simplified expalnation from Brewer's:

Mumping Day.

St. Thomas's Day, December 21. A day on which the poor used to go about begging, or, as it was called, "going a-gooding," that is, getting gifts to procure good things for Christmas (mump, to beg).   
    In Warwickshire the term used was "going a-corning," i.e. getting gifts of corn. In Staffordshire the custom is spoken of simply as "a-gooding." (See MUMPERS.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Yorkshire 'gooding' carol?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 01 Dec 02 - 08:38 PM

Thanks, Masato!

Subject: RE: Origins: Yorkshire 'gooding' carol?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 05:06 PM

Now if only I could figure out if the melody in the book I mentioned is accurate. Something about it doesn't seem to fit with the era- I may never know!