Compare: Lulle Lullay, Collected by John Jacob Niles

It is named after the city of Coventry, England, where the 16th Century Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors depicted Herod's slaughter of the innocents, told in the lyrics.

1. Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, Thou little tiny Child.
By, by, lully, lullay.

2. O sisters, too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day;
This poor Youngling for whom we sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

3. Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young, to slay.

4. Then woe is me, poor Child, for Thee,
And ever mourn and say;
For Thy parting, nor say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Editor's Note:

In some versions, the following lines are substituted for the first verse, and are repeated at the ending of the carol:

Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child,
By by, lully lullay.

Sheet Music from Henry Ramsden Bramley and John Stainer, Christmas Carols New and Old, Third Series (London: Novello, Ewer & Co., ca 1878), Carol #61.

Sheet Music from Rev. Charles Lewis Hutchins, Carols Old and Carols New (Boston: Parish Choir, 1916), Carol #540
MIDI / Noteworthy Composer / PDF

Sheet Music from Martin Shaw and Percy Dearmer, The English Carol Book, Second Series (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., Ltd., 1913), Carol #38

Public Domain Recording:

• LibriVox Christmas Carol Collection 2006 (Recording by Kim Butler)

This is one of many songs which relate to the Holy Innocents, whose feast day is December 28. For more, please see The Hymns Of The Holy Innocents.

See, generally, Corpus Christi Day and the Performance of Mysteries, from William Hone, The Every Day Book, 2 Vols. London: William Tegg, 1825, 1827 (Volume 1, June 2).

"Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all the region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

"A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more."

The Fair Child Lullaby
(“ ffayr chylde, lullay ”)

In The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, this gentle lullaby was sung by the women of Bethlehem to their babies, urging them to "Be still, be still, my little child," just before the unwilling soldiers of King Herod came to slaughter their infants in Herod's attempt to eliminate a competitor, the newborn King of the Jews. In the liturgical calendar, those children are commemorated on December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

The beloved “Coventry Carol” has one of the most unusual of histories. It was a song from the 16th-century Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors, one of only two plays to have survived from the cycle of late medieval mystery plays of which Coventry played a part (the other was the Weavers' Pageant). The Pageant has roots to perhaps the 14^th century, to morality plays that tradesmen mounted far the entertainment of their monarchs and town officials, making this one of the oldest of carols.

The Pageant covered the Nativity story from the Annunciation to the Massacre of the Innocents.

The original copy of the play was always kept in the possession of the town council for safe keeping. When a copy was needed, the copyist went to the town council, but was charged a hefty fee for the privilege. The town council copy of the Coventry plays has been lost.

The oldest copy that we have knowledge of was the one that was re-edited by Robert Croo, then the mayor Master Palmer, on March 14, 1534. That manuscript was destroyed in the fire at the Birmingham Free Reference Library in 1879. Fortunately, however, the Coventry antiquarian Thomas Sharp had preserved copies in two volumes. The first was the printing in 1817 of only 12 copies “for the purpose of bringing it more immediately to the knowledge of his antiquarian friends.”¹ The second edition was the publication by Merridew and Son of Sharp's Dissertation of 1825; the full title was Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry, by the Trading Companies of that City.

It is quite difficult to see or purchase the 1825 volume (I saw a copy for sale at a cost of US$600 in August, 2008), but was reprinted as recently as 2004 by Kessinger Publishing (with used copies much more affordably priced). In addition, there have been a number of reproductions of the play over the years including:

• William Marriott, A Collection of English Miracle-Plays. Basel: Schweighauser & Co., 1838.

• James Orchard Halliwell. Ludus Coventriæ. London: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1841. (Based on the 1468 Cotton Manuscript)²

• John Matthews Manly, Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama. Vol. 1. Boston: The Athenaeum Press, 1897.³

• Hardin Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays. Published for the Early English Text Society by K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1902. Craig was a student of Manly and generally followed his edition, but noted that he had also closely consulted Sharp.

Although the 1825 edition of Sharp is the earliest, I have been unable to examine a copy. Fortunately, however, The Retrospective Review, and Historical and Antiquarian Magazine published a review of Sharp's Dissertation the next year. The review reprinted the carol:

Lully, lulla, thow littell tiné child;
By, by, lully, lullay thow littell tyné child:
By, by, lully, lullay.

 

O. sisters too how may we do
For to preserve this day
This pore yongling for whom we do singe
By, by, lully, lullay.

 

Herod the king in his raging
Chargid he hath this day
His men of might in his owne sight,
All yonge children to slay.

 

That wo is me pore child for thee,
And ever morne and say
For thi parting nether say nor singe
By, by lully, lullay.

William Marriott's edition of 1838 also gives a copy of our Carol (on page 38). His copy is substantially the same as that given by Sharp (whom Marriott acknowledges in his text) except for a change in the third verse:

And ever morne and day.

The reason for this difference is unknown, and only occurs in this edition.

Another early version of the Carol that I've examined was that of Halliwell's in Ludus Coventriæ (1841). It was virtually the same, differing only slightly in the second verse where Halliwell wrote:

Chargith he hath this day.

This version from Halliwell contained the note on page 414 that “Sharp has printed the following....”⁴ Halliwell noted that he attempted to give the reader as faithful a copy as possible of the originals, “with all its errors and defects.”

And ever morne and may

Manly's footnote indicates that Sharp gave the word “say” but that Professor Kittredge “corrected” it to “may.” Prof. Manly did not indicate why Prof. Kittredge gave this change. The intended Vol. 3 to this series that would have contained notes and a glossary was never published.

A copy of this carol is also found in Hardin Craig's Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays (1902). Craig wrote that Prof. Manley's edition was the basis of his work, “though it has been carefully compared with the editions of Thomas Sharp.” His version is identical to that of Prof. Manly, including the notes.

Lacking any explanation for the changes to the word “say” in verse 3, and finding no obvious reason for adapting them, my feeling is to reject them.

None of these sources included the music that Sharp is said to have included in his 1925 Dissertion.

This was one of three carols from this play. According to Elizabeth Poston, the manuscript had a later annotation by Thomas Mawdycke, 1591, directing that this song ‘the women singe’, and that the shepherds sing the other two. Concerning the song, Poston wrote:

The manuscript, no longer in existence, from which Sharp transcribed the carol, gave it in a three-part setting. The carol is well performable in these three parts, impressive and rather bare in harmony. To anyone conversant with the style of the period, the addition of a fourth or tenor part in amplification of the existing harmony is obvious and presents little choice. Sharp gives the original as barred in duple metre, which Thurston Dart in his interesting edition (Two Coventry Carols, Stainer & Bell) has been careful to preserve.

The first carol was:

As I out rode this enderes night
Of thre ioli sheppardes I saw a sight
And all a bowte there fold a star shone bright
    They sange teri terlow
    To mereili the sheppards ther pipes can blow.

This carol was to be sung by the shepherds, as was the third carol:

Doune from heaven, from heaven so hie,
Of angeles ther came a great companie,
With mirthe and ioy and great solemnitye,
    The sange terly terlow;
    So mereli the sheppards their pipes can blow.

In contemporary usage, the two verses are combined into a single carol.

According to William Sandys, there is an old tradition that Herod's own son was among the innocents slaughtered. For more information, see: When Herod In Jerusalem

Footnotes:

1. William Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described, p. 218. The original quotation itself was in quotation marks indicating to me that it was a quote from Sharp's edition. According to Hardin Craig, the full title of the 1817 work was The Pageant of the Sheremen and Taylors, in Coventry, as performed by them on the festival of Corpus Christi; together with other pageants, exhibited on occasion of several royal visits to that city; and two specimens of ancient local poetry. Return

2. Note: there is considerable debate concerning when and where this version was actually performed. Because my interest is in the song and less so the play, I leave this argument to others. The source for the Halliwell text was the Cotton Manuscript of 1468 and would thus predate Croo's edition by at least 66 years. In referring to the Sharp edition of 1816 [sic], Mr. Halliwell notes “Mr. Sharp has also printed a Coventry play of a later date....” See: Esther L. Swenson, An Inquiry Into the Composition and Structure of Ludus Coventriae. Minneapolis: Bulletin [Number 1] of the University of Minnesota, October, 1914. Return

3. It should be noted that in Manly's edition, there occurred notes attributed to “Kittredge.” In the Preface, Professor Manly explained that “... the emendations of Professor Kittredge, whose suggestions, as being unpublished and communicated directly to me, are always distinguished by his unabbreviated surname” (as opposed to the letter “K”). “Kittredge” referred to George Lyman Kittredge, Gurney Professor of English Literature, Harvard College. The Manly edition was part of a literary series whose general editors were G. L. Kittredge and C. T. Winchester. Return

4. It is interesting that the Coventry Carol occurs in “XIV. The Trial of Joseph and Mary” and not in '”XIX: The Slaughter of the Innocents.” In the text, it is referred to as the “ffayr chylde, lullay.” Return

Sources:

Hardin Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays. London: Published for the Early English Text Society, 1902.

Percy Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams, Martin Shaw, eds., The Oxford Book of Carols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928.

Earthly Delights: Xmas Carols

James Orchard Halliwell. Ludus Coventriæ. London: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1841.

William Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described: Especially the English Miracle Plays.1823. Hone wrote in a note on page 218 that in the summer of 1819 he was permitted to borrow a copy of the 1817 edition.

Hugh Keyte and Parrot, Andrew, eds., The New Oxford Book of Carols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Robert Joseph, The Christmas Book. New York: McAfee Books, 1978.

Pamela M. King, The Coventry Plays, 2000. Site accessed August 11, 2008.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/yorkdoom/coventry.htm

William Marriott, A Collection of English Miracle-Plays. Basel: Schweighauser & Co., 1838. This edition, oddly, is often overlooked by scholars. Marriott gives the date of Robert Croo's transcription as the “xiiij^th dey of Marche” — the 15^th of March, rather than the 14^th of March as given by Hone and others. Marriott also gives another very different play titled “Candlemas-Day or The Killing of the Children of Israel.”

John Matthews Manly, Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama. Vol. 1. Boston: The Athnaeum Press, 1897.

Elizabeth Poston, The Penguin Book of Christmas Carols. London: Penguin, 1965.

Thomas Sharp, Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry, by the Trading Companies of that City Coventry: Merridew, 1825. Sharp was also the publisher of The Presentation in the Temple, A Pageant, as originally represented by the Corporation of Weavers in Coventry. This edition was prepared for the Abbotsford Club in 1836.

William L. Simon, ed., The Reader's Digest Merry Christmas Songbook. Pleasantville, NY: Readers Digest Association, revised 2003.

Henry Southern, et. al., eds., The Retrospective Review, and Historical and Antiquarian Magazine.

London: C. and H. Baldwyn, 1826

Matthew Lyle Spencer, Corpus Christi Pageants in England. New York: The Baker & Taylor Company, 1911. This was a doctoral dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of Chicago. Spencer was a student of Professor Manly.

William Studwell, The Christmas Carol Reader. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995

Esther L. Swenson, An Inquiry Into the Composition and Structure of Ludus Coventriae. Minneapolis: Bulletin [Number 1] of the University of Minnesota, October, 1914.

Editor's Note

Other carols which may date to the Coventry mysteries include The Holy Well and The Bitter Withy.