Without discussing Carol "form", it will suffice to say that Christmas words do not make a carol out of whit would otherwise be a hymn tune or part-song. In other words, a tune can only be termed a carol the nearer it approximates to the folk-song type and the further it departs from the hymn tune. It ought, moreover, to stand on its own melodic basis independent of harmony.

This collection is a humble attempt to suggest rather than reproduce the characteristics of the old traditional carols. One of the tunes opens with an actual fragment (all I can remember) of a folk-tune which in boyhood I heard a farm hand sing. I fear the tune itself is lost, as I have revisited the district to find that the singer is dead and that no one else in the "countryside" knows the song. I forbear for the present to say which Carol this is, as I shall be interested to know whether it will be readily identified by any folk-song expert, and whether — in that event — it will be too apparent where the folk-tune leaves off and my own begins. All the tunes can be sung, if required, in unison except "Tryste Noel", which, although included in the collection, is better described as a Christmas song than as a carol. I have the approval of the authoress for the sudden change from modal to modern idiom, to express the half passionate, half wistful appeal of the last two lines in each verse.

R.R.T.

November, 1912.