Words and Music: English Traditional
Compare Tydynges I Bryng 3ow For To Tell (Wright, 1847)
Source: William Henry Husk, Songs of the Nativity (London: John Camden Hotten, 1868)
Version Two of Seven From Husk
See generally Boar's Head Carols
1. Tidings I bring you for to tell,
What me in wild forest befel
When me must with a wild beast mell1
With a boar so bryme.2
2. A boar so bryme that me pursued,
Me for to kill so sharply moved,
That brymly beast so cruel and unrude,3
There tamed I him,
And reft from him both life and limb.
3. Truly, to show you that this is true,
His head with my sword I hew,
To make this day to you mirth new,
Now eat thereof anon.
4. Eat, and much good do it you;
Take your bread and mustard thereto.
Joy with me that I have thus done,
I pray you be glad every one,
And joy all in one.
Notes:
1. Meddle. Return
2. Fierce. Return
3. Savage. Return
Husk's Note:
"This is from the manuscript of the fifteenth century which was edited, as before mentioned, in 1847, for the Percy Society by Mr. Thomas Wright." [Tydynges I Bryng 3ow For To Tell (Wright, 1847)]
Also found in Edith Rickert, Ancient English Christmas Carols: 1400-1700 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1914), p. 256.
