The Holly and The Ivy

The Holly and The Ivy

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,
Of all trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown.
O, the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flow’r,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To be our dear Saviour.
O, the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good.
O, the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn.
O, the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

The holly bears a bark
As bitter as any gall,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to redeem us all.
O, the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

The Holly and The Ivy is an ancient song that survived in the oral traditions of folk music in a variety of different regional variations. In the early 1820s it was first included in a list of traditional carols, and then when anthologies of carols were published in the 1860s there was a version of the carol in most of them, with some dating it back to the early 1700s, but there were differences between the versions that were published, and each collection would often associate the words with a different tune.

The version we know today only dates from 1909 when it was transcribed by Cecil Sharp in Gloucestershire as he collected village folk songs. I’ve previously mentioned in reference to O Little Town of Bethlehem and Ding Dong Merrily on High that Ralph Vaughan Williams, Charles Wood, and others had started collecting these tunes in the 1890s and early 1900s; the melodies had never been written down or published and had passed from one generation to the next for centuries. It was feared that industrialisation and the decline of rural life might result in these tunes being lost forever. The Holly and The Ivy was noted to have been transcribed on 13 January 1909 and he also commented on the unique melody: the words and the tune were published together in 1911and have largely replaced the earlier versions.

Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) was born in London and raised in a musical family. After attending Cambridge University he felt he might have better prospects in Australia and moved there in 1882. He was there for 10 years and progressed from being an assistant organist at St Peter’s cathedral in Adelaide to become joint director of the Adelaide College of Music. He composed several choral pieces and had two operettas performed professionally, and then decided to return to Britain in 1892. He had part time posts at two prestigious music schools in London but developed a strong interest in the folk music of the west country. He met Lucy White and Emma Overd singing in pubs in Somerset and recognised the need to make a record of the rich repertoire of songs they had accumulated. From 1905 he spent less time teaching music and increasingly made a living from publishing collections of songs and lecturing on folk music.

During World War I there was less demand for his services so he travelled to the USA to lecture on English folk music and started to collect American folk tunes. He travelled extensively in the Appalachian region and discovered how some tunes and songs originally from England had either been preserved in their original form or had evolved in different ways. However he did not pay very much attention to the music of the African-American communities he encountered and this has resulted in his work being criticised by some cultural critics. It wasn’t really until Alan Lomax started to explore American folk music in the 1930s that this oversight was corrected, and where Sharp only transcribed the music and lyrics by hand, Lomax had the technology to allow him to record the singers themselves, and the history of the blues, and R&B (as it was performed in the 1940s and 1950s), started with Lomax’s earliest recordings.

Meanwhile, back in Gloucestershire, The Holly and The Ivy reminds us that these two essentially English hedgerow plants not only have a place in our Christmas celebrations but also carry a symbolism that predates the nativity. In pre-Christian Britain the “deep mid-winter” and the winter solstice (21 or 22 December) was a time when darkness and cold would be set aside for hearty banquets of food and alcohol. The Roman Empire had its festival of Saturnalia, and Germanic/Nordic folk-lore has Yule celebrations. The shortest day was heavily symbolic because it meant that the first steps back towards summer had started. The neolithic structure at Newgrange, Brú na Bóinne, in Ireland’s County Meath that I described in July 2017 has an internal chamber that is lit by direct sunlight only at sunrise on the winter solstice, and it predates Stonehenge by several thousand years. The solstice was an important time and one to be celebrated, and the evergreen winter colours from the glossy green leaves of the holly and ivy, and the bright red of the berries, would have brightened their homes.

Merry Christmas.

Header image: British postage stamp, 1982

Central image: 20th century Christmas card

Footer image: Holly and Ivy wrapping paper by Garden Divas