Alternate Title: Christmas Cheer
Words and Music: Unknown
Source: William Henry Husk, Songs of the Nativity (London: John Camden Hotten, 1868)
Now Christmas time is coming on,
And, painful Harvest past and gone;
Now reap the fruit of all your care
With Christmas pies and good strong beer,
Sirlions of beer and hams of bacon,
With hollow meats, [1] roast goose and capon;
With good strong liquor; but take care
To let the poor come in for share.
Now hey for Christmas, let the spits go round,
Let cauldrons boil and pies i' th' oven be found.
May they who now deny themselves good cheer,
Against their wills keep strict Lent all the year.
1. Poultry, rabbits, &c. Return
Husk's Note:
These lines appeared in "Poor Robin's Almanack" for 1723. In the observations in the almanack on the mouth of December, the following remarks occur, which, as showing some of the customs of the period, are not undeserving of preservation. The writer, it will be observed, has not omitted the customary growl at the degeneracy of the age, although he has couched it under the milder form of the expression of a hope. "Now comes on old merry plentiful Christmas. The husbandman lays his great Log behind the fire, and with a few of his neighbours over a good fire, taps his Christmas beer, cuts his Christmas cheese, and sets forward for a merry Christmas. The Landlord (for we hope there are yet some generous ones left) invites his Tenants and Labourers, and with a good Sirloin of Roast Beef, and a few pitchers of nappy ale or beer, he wisheth them all a merry Christmas. The beggar begs his bread, sells some of it for money to buy drink, and without fear of being arrested. or call'd upon for parish duties, has as merry a Christmas as any of them all."
