"
'Nos Galan' ('New Year's Eve') is one of the many texts to which this tune was formerly sung. It belongs to the competitive canu penillion tradition, in which merrymakers would dance in a ring around a harpist, extemporizing verses in turn and dropping out when invention failed."

Re the Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols quote above, am I reading something incorrectly? Nos Galan, "...one of the many texts to which this tune was formerly sung" should surely be the other way around? "... one of the many tunes to which this text was ... sung"? Even so, I think it's wrong. I can't think of any other tune to which "Deck the Halls" is sung and it was my understanding that those words were first published to the Welsh tune, Nos Galan, in the States somewhere towards the end of the 19th C.

Nos Galan is certainly a harp air which is still used for dancing, as well as for singing penillion, which the author has explained correctly ... except that I'm not aware that anyone sang and danced at the same time.

sian