| Author | Topic: Add: I Hear Along Our Street | |
| dmcg | Posted - 16 Aug 07 - 10:28 am | |
I hear along our street Pass the minstrel throngs Hark! They play so sweet On their hautboys Christmas songs. (Chorus) Let us by the fire Ever higher, ever higher, Sing until the night expire Sing until the night expire In December ring Every day the chimes Loud the gleemen sing In the street their merry rhymes. Who by the fireside stands Stamps his feet and sings But he who blows his hands Not so gay a carol rings. Shepherds at the grange Where the Babe was born Sing with many a change Christmas carols until morn. Source: Words: Longfellow, Tune: "Still sung in Dunster today" Notes: From the sleevenotes of "Angels a-shouting":
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| dmcg | Posted - 16 Aug 07 - 10:29 am | |
I'd be grateful if jeff or John Shaw could give a little more background on this one: who collected it, when and so on. | ||
| John Shaw | Posted - 26 Aug 07 - 06:14 pm | |
I can't actually tell you who collected this carol because in a sense it has not been formally "collected". Several Hotwells Howlers members know Mike, Di and Paul Dibble, who are members of the traditional carolling party in Dunster, West Somerset, and who have taught this one to a fair few people in the West country. From early December the Dunster carollers sing in various places around the village - pubs etc. The carollers' repertoire includes carols of West Gallery origin as well as more standard carol favourites, rather like the better-known village carol traditions in Yorkshire, Cornwall and elsewhere. Mike and Di don't know how this Longfellow poem came to be part of the local repertoire, but it is irmly lodged as a favourite item. To my knowledge it has been published once - in Glyn Court's "Carols Of The Westcountry" (Westcountry Books 1996). There are no notes about it in the book other than that it is from Dunster. | ||