First Day of Yule, The

DESCRIPTION: "Make we mirth For Christ's birth." "The first day of Yule have we in mind How God was man, born of our kind." "The second day we sing of Stephen." "The third day (be)longeth to Saint John." And so on through the church year.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1430 (British Museum -- Sloane MS. 2593)
KEYWORDS: Christmas cumulative MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #8, pp. 7-8, "(The fyrst day of Yole haue we in mynd)" (1 text with variants)
Rickert-AncientEnglishChristmasCarols, pp. 223-224,"Make we merry for Christ's birth" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #3343
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #5271
ADDITIONAL: Richard Greene, editor, _A Selection of English Carols_, Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, Oxford/Clarendon Press, 1962, #3, pp. 56-57, "(Make we myrth)" (1 text)
Edward Bliss Reed, editor, _Christmas Carols Printed in the Sixteenth Century: Including Kele's Cristmas carolles newely Inprynted_, Harvard University Press, 1932, pp. xxx-xxxi, "(no title)" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSSloane2593}, London, British Library, MS. Sloane 2593, folio 33
MANUSCRIPT: {MSEngPoetE1}, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodley 29734), folio 22
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (form)
NOTES [150 words]: Although no longer found in tradition, it is found in two important manuscripts from around the fifteenth century:
- Sloane MS. 2593, an important collection which contains many folk songs
- Bodleian MS. Eng. poet. e.1, a collection containing many carols
This is not exactly like the Twelve Days of Christmas in its style; although the first few stanzas count the first, second, third day, it eventually starts leaping through the year to various church holidays. Greene, p. 187, suggests that the trick "was probably educational as well as rhetorical in intention"; it was intended to remind singers of the catalog of church holy days. This makes a lot of sense to me.
For more on manuscript Sloane 2593, see the notes to "Robyn and Gandeleyn" [Child 115].
For more about the famous anthology Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. e.1 (Bodleian 29734), see the notes to "The Golden Carol (The Three Kings)."- RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: MSBR3343

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography