Coventry Carol with mournfulness and killing of children

Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Massacre of the Innocents – Google Art Project

When people first realize what the words to this carol are actually saying, they tend to be puzzled and/or outraged. I remember clearly someone in my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, saying, “What on earth is going on with those kids being murdered?” Well, I can’t blame him. While I do love the song myself, it certainly can’t be said that it fits the stereotypical cheery Christmas template. The haunting melody is paired with a text that describes a horrible scenario: Herod the King commanding all young children in Bethlehem to be killed. Here are the relevant two verses that spell out the story:

O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay”?

Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.

The original version calls for three women to sing, so each of them has “sisters two” (or “too,” but that’s just old-timey spelling). You have to carry over the words from the end of one line to the next to get the proper meaning. A modernized version of the words would go something like this: “Oh my two sisters, what will we do today to save this child to whom we are singing? Herod in his anger has ruled that his soldiers should kill all young children.” The meaning of “in his own sight” is unclear, as Herod doesn’t go along with the soldiers to do the killing. It may mean “the soldiers must do the killing themselves, in their own sight,” implying that they can’t palm off the job on anyone else.

This story occurs in only one of the Gospels, the book of Matthew chapter 2. The Magi, or Wise Men, have come from the East, led by the star that shows them the way to where a new King has been born. But they don’t know exactly where to go once they reach Judea, so they visit Jerusalem to inquire of Herod, who has been put in charge of the area by the Romans. “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him.” When Herod hears that some new king has been born he is troubled, we are told, “and all Jerusalem with him.” If Herod wa’n’t happy, wa’n’t nobody happy! There’s nothing funny about what happens, of course, but I’ve always found the phrase to be a bit of ironic (or perhaps unintentional) humor. Anyway, Herod calls in the scribes and priests to demand where the Messiah is to be born. They quote Micah 5:2 which names Bethlehem as the place of the birth. Herod, thinking he’s being crafty, asks the Magi to come back and tell him where the new king is, “so that I may come and worship him also,” but they are warned in a dream and don’t go back to Jerusalem after their visit to Bethlehem. Enraged, Herod commands that all male children under the age of two in Bethlehem be killed so that he can be sure to eliminate the royal child. But Joseph and Mary have taken the Christ child to Egypt and so escape Herod’s wrath. (Those manger scenes that include the Wise Men there are just wrong, by the way. The Magi don’t show up until much later, when Jesus is a “young child” and living in a house, not a stable. But they’re a colorful addition to the scene, so perhaps I shouldn’t be such a killjoy.)

The song is called the “Coventry Carol” because it was part of a medieval mystery play written in Coventry, England. These plays were typically sponsored and performed by various guilds, associations of various trades and crafts that are somewhat like our labor unions of today. I am vastly tickled to see that the guild responsible for the mystery cycle that contains this carol was the Shearmen and Tailors. Pretty specialized, no? Back in the Middle Ages England was a center of wool production, so these guys would have been heavily involved in that industry.

Anyway, just to show how dedicated I am to digging up arcane facts about choral music, let me tell you that I actually found a digital version of the Coventry Mystery Play itself. All written in Merry Olde English, so pretty hard to follow, but the original seems to have had the spoken parts of a story all together in a section and then the songs afterwards. So the end of Part One is the whole scene with Herod, the Wise Men, and the soldiers’ killing of the children and then reporting back to Herod. Mary and Joseph have already departed for Egypt, of course, and if I’m understanding it correctly the play’s author has one of the women telling the soldiers that the child they are seeking isn’t there. But the soldiers say that they have to kill the children anyway because Herod told them to. When they report back to Herod, though, they do tell him that they weren’t able to kill the newborn King, and he’s pretty mad, saying that he’s going to go to Egypt after them. Then there are three songs, two by shepherds and one by the mothers of the dead children. These women may be singing to the children before their deaths in the first verses as they realize that any “poor youngling” is doomed. The final verse seems to clearly spell out that the children are now dead:

That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”

I’ll give a more modern version here, too: “I am grieved for you, my poor child. I will always mourn and because of your death (parting) I will never again be able to sing you a lullaby.”

Matthew tells us: “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” (2:17-18 KJV, quoted from Jeremiah 31:15) I wonder if the original composer of the song had this verse in mind as he or she wrote the carol? Whoever the composer was, he had to be literate and should have known the biblical passages on which the play is based.

The performance must have been pretty affecting; there’s just been this terrible scene with these same women pleading with the soldiers to spare their children, and now they’re out on stage singing this lullaby. Interestingly enough, the parts in these plays were traditionally played by men and boys, with no women being allowed on stage. So the scoring was for alto, tenor and baritone.

We don’t have any original manuscripts for the play and music, but we know that there was one dating back to 1534. It’s a good thing that a scholar named Thomas Sharp took it upon himself in 1817 to do a detailed transcription of that early version, complete with stage directions and music, because there was a fire where the original was kept and it was destroyed. Sharp was credited with being very careful, however, so we’re pretty sure that we have an accurate transcription.

The mystery plays as a whole fell into disuse for several hundred years; Sharp’s transcript revived interest in at least this one. Then the Coventry Carol received an additional (but sadly caused) boost during World War II: “It was brought to a wider audience after being featured in the BBC’s Empire Broadcast at Christmas 1940, shortly after the Bombing of Coventry in World War II, when the broadcast concluded with the singing of the carol in the bombed-out ruins of the Cathedral.^”(Wikipedia)

I will close with two videos: one a performance with the familiar, original music (but not the original English words), and a version with modern music by someone named Philip Stopford, which I rather like. But not as much as the old one! Just to be clear.

I like this first one because, hey, Jesus almost certainly spoke Aramaic while on earth. So that’s pretty authentic, don’t you think? Plus their voices are great, and they don’t resolve that last minor chord until the very end of the song, which is the way it’s supposed to be. Something called a “Picardy third” is involved here, but don’t expect me to explain it.