Young And Old Must Raise The Lay

For Christmas

Words: Rev. John Mason Neale, alt.
See: Young And Old Must Raise The Lay-1855, with notes.

Music: Old Melody Harmonized by Michael Praetorius, 1610
Carol #681 from Hutchins and #15 from Woodward, The Cowley Carol Book.

Additional Music: "Aachen Gesangbuch"
From Rev. Charles Lewis Hutchins, Carols Old and Carols New (Boston: Parish Choir, 1916), Carol #417

According to Sequences, Hymns, and Other Ecclesiastical Verses (1866), Neale used the tune from "Good King Wenceslas" ("Tempus adest floridum").

Source: Rev. Charles Lewis Hutchins, Carols Old and Carols New (Boston: Parish Choir, 1916), #681, p. 563.

1. Young and old must raise the lay
That their heart engages;
For the child is born today,
Who is King of Ages:

2. For the God, by all adored,
Comes to His elected;
For the Babe, that is the Lord,
Comes to be rejected.

3. If the purple proves the King,
Where is goodly raiment?
If man needeth ransoming,
Who shall make the payment?

4. For the purple here is grass;
For the throne, the manger;
For the courtiers, ox and ass,
Kneel before the Stranger.

5. Through the desert as we go,
Sorrowful and fearing,
From the Rock the waters flow,
That shall work our cheering:

6. Manna, wherewith all are fed,
Comes for our salvation,
Born in Bethlehem, House of Bread
By interpretation.

7. Young and old must raise the lay
That their heart engages:
For the Child is born today,
Who is King of Ages:

8. Young and old their deeds so frame,
That, as He came hither,
They, when he their lives shall claim,
May to Him go thither.

Sheet Music from Charles L. Hutchins, #417
MIDI / Noteworthy Composer / PDF

Sheet Music from Charles L. Hutchins, #681
MIDI / Noteworthy Composer / PDF

Sheet Music from George Ratcliffe Woodward, The Cowley Carol Book, First Series (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., Ltd., 1902, Revised and Expanded Edition 1929), Carol #15
MIDI / Noteworthy Composer / PDF

Note: This version, Carol 681, contains eight verses with four lines, and omits verse three. Carol 417 contains five verses with eight lines, following the version from St. Margaret's Hymnal. See: Young And Old Must Raise The Lay-1875.

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