Definitive source for traditional Christmas songs. Contains many not usually collected in popular books. ( )

A large collection of traditional English carols, as well as modern carols. Most of the traditional ones are from sources in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; some were collected from folk sources in the nineteenth or eary twentieth centuries. There is an introduction on the history of carols, which makes the point that many traditional carols were not about Christmas; some were not even explicitly religious at all. ( )

The church choir I am in uses the English Hymnal, and what a delight it is to know you are often singing an alto part "harmonised by Ralph Vaughan Williams", and as like as not a tune he adapted from a folk song. Thank heaven he and his friends went around collecting these wonderful old tunes before they died out.

Perhaps in WARM's Australia, these songs are well-known. But in the United States most of them were virtually unknown until Martin Shaw's Chorale started singing them and this book gave people access to the music. And I would say that the majority would still be rarely used here in the U.S. Much of this music is drawn from early sources though rearranged in a more modern idiom. There are also a number of songs that express sentiments that go as well with neo-paganism as they do with Christianity. ( )

Ex libris Cora L. Feldkamp. ( )