> Folk Music > Songs > A Carol for Twelfth Day / Kilmore Carol

A Carol for Twelfth Day / Kilmore Carol

[ Roud 22087 ; trad.]

The Voice Squad sang the Kilmore Carol on their 1987 album Many’s the Foolish Youth. Seán Corcoran noted:

In 1684 while in exile in Ghent, Luke Wadding, Bishop of Ferns (which includes Wexford) published a ‘Smale Garland’ of carols. After his death these became immensely popular in Ireland (in fact, an edition was printed for a Drogheda bookseller, James Connor, in 1728) and are sung to this day at Christmastime in the Wexford fishing village of Kilmore Quay. The Dublin singer Frank Harte was Phil [Callery]’s source for this song.

Joglaresa sang Now to Conclude Our Christmas Mirth (A Carol for Twelfth Day) on their 2009 album of Irish and English songs of Wintertide, In Hoary Winter’s Night. They noted:

In 1684, Luke Waddinge, Roman Catholic Bishop of Ferns, published a little book of poems titled A Smale Garland of Pious and Godly Songs for the disinherited gentry of County Wexford. It contained 11 Christmas songs that were to become the foundation of the County Wexford carol-singing tradition. In 1728 Father William Devereux composed a garland of carols incorporating some of those published by Luke Waddinge. Copies of Devereux’s A New Garland Containing Songs for Christmas multiplied, and were sung in parishes including Piercetown, Ballymore, Mayglass, Lady’s Island, Tacumshane, Rathangan and Kilmore. Whilst the songs eventually died out in most of these parishes, they are still performed in the parish of Kilmore where they are sung by a choir of six men who divide into two groups to sing alternate verses. Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, who has published a modern edition of these carols, quotes a letter published in The People (a Wexford newspaper) in 1872: “I have stood within many of the grandest cathedrals in Europe and under the dome of St Peter’s itself, but in none of them did I ever feel the soul-thrilling rapturous sensation that I did as a boy listening to six aged men on a frosty Christmas morning sing the carols beneath the low straw-thatched chapel of Rathangan.”

Now to Conclude Our Christmas Mirth (also known as A Carol for the Twelfth Day) and The Darkest Midnight in December (On Christ’s Nativity) are both from the sources mentioned above and are still sung in Kilmore, but the song most popularly known in England as The Wexford Carol (Good People All This Christmas Time) is not found in any of the south Wexford carol books. However, it was printed as a broadside by the County Wexford Museum in Enniscorthy. It has a footnote stating that it was sung by a Reverend Patrick Cummings c.1912, who got the words and air from his mother, who in turn got the words and air from her mother.

Lyrics

The Voice Squad sing the Kilmore Carol

Now to conclude our Christmas mirth, with news of our redemption,
We will end our songs on our Saviour’s birth with one that deserves attention.
Three great wonders fell on this day, a star led Kings where the Infant lay,
Water made wine in Galilee and Christ baptised in Jordan.

Those Kings might have known what Balaam of old said of a star that would arise,
In Jacob’s land where he foretold the coming of the Messiah.
Jasper, Melchior and Balthazar set out when they saw the new bright star,
Leaving their eastern kingdoms far, to find out the new-born Jesus.

Amazed to see the cottage poor, the stall where He was born in,
They left their retinue at the door, though great, they entered without scorn.
The Blessed Babe and mother found, leaving their crowns and sceptres down.
Adored Him prostrate on the ground and might have spoke as follows:

Oh King of Kings here in disguise whom stars obey and angels serve.
Though wealth and grandeur You despise, You have given us more than we deserve.
Our beds are gold and ivory, our garments rich with broidery.
Beset with pearls and pagentry, whilst You lie in a stable.

What else might have passed, you may conceive in this fond conversation.
They bade farewell, taking their leave, home to their habitation.
Farewell good Christians, fare you well too, many a happy Christmas we wish you,
With a blessed end for to ensue, through the merits of Sweet Jesus.