he
Birthday of the Holy Child seems, with some change of form, to be
steadily and rapidly gaining ground. Instead of the itinerant
ballad-singer, or the little bands of wandering children, the
practice of singing carols in Divine Service, or by a full choir at
some fixed meeting, is becoming prevalent."

Since Mr. Bramley wrote these words the practice has grown more prevalent,
and the shepherds of Bethlehem are in process of becoming thoroughly
sophisticated and self-conscious. For that is what it means. You may
(as harassed bishops will admit) do a number of irrelevant things in
church, but you cannot sing the best carols there. You cannot toll in
your congregation, seat your organist at the organ, array your full choir
in surplices, and tune up to sing, for example--

"Rise up, rise up, brother Dives,
And come along with me;
There's a place in Hell prepared for you
To sit on the serpent's knee."

Or this--

"In a manger laid and wrapped I was--
So very poor, this was my chance--
Between an ox and a silly poor ass,
To call my true love to the dance."

Or this--

"Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing,
And all the bells on earth did ring
On Christmas Day in the morning."

These are verses from carols, and from excellent carols: but I protest
that with 'choirs and places where they sing' they will be found
incongruous. Indeed, Mr. Bramley admits it. Of his collection "some," he
says, "from their legendary, festive or otherwise less serious character,
are unfit for use within the church."

Now since, as we know, these old carols were written to be sung in the
open air, or in the halls and kitchens of private houses, I prefer to put
Mr. Bramley's proposition conversely, and say that the church is an
unsuitable place for carol singing. If the clergy persist in so confining
it, they will no doubt in process of time evolve a number of new
compositions which differ from ordinary hymns sufficiently to be called
carols, but from which the peculiar charm of the carol has evaporated.
This charm (let me add) by no means consists in mere primitiveness or mere
archaism. Genuine carols (if we could only get rid of affectation and be
honest authors in our own century without straining to age ourselves back
into the fifteenth) might be written to-day as appropriately as ever.
'Joseph did whistle,' &c., was no less unsuited at