the date of its
composition to performance by a full choir in a chancel than it is to-day.
But whatever the precise nature of the charm may be, you can prove by a
very simple experiment that such a performance tends to impair it.
Assemble a number of carollers about your doorstep or within your hall,
and listen to their rendering of 'The first good joy,' or 'The angel
Gabriel;' then take them off to church and let them sing these same
ditties to an organ accompaniment. You will find that, strive against it
as they may, the tune drags slower and slower; the poem has become a
spiritless jingle, at once dismal and trivial. Take the poor thing out
into the fresh air again and revive it with a fife and drum; stay it with
flagons and comfort it with apples, for it is sick of improper feeding.

No, no: such a carol as 'God rest you, merry gentlemen,' has a note which
neither is suited by, nor can be suited to, what people call 'the sacred
edifice': while 'Joseph was an old man,' 'I saw three ships' and 'The
first good joy' are plainly impossible. Associate them with organ and
surpliced choir, and you are mixing up things that differ. Omit them, at
the same time banning the house-to-house caroller, and you tyrannically
limit men's devotional impulses. I am told that the clergy frown upon
house-to-house carolling, because they believe it encourages drunkenness.
Why then, let them take the business in hand and see that too much drink
is neither taken nor offered. This ought not to be very difficult.
But, as with the old plays, so with carol-singing, it is easier and more
consonant with the Puritan temper to abolish a practice than to elevate it
and clear away abuses: and the half-instructed mind is taught with fatal
facility to condemn use and abuse in a lump, to believe carol-singing a
wile of the Evil One because Bill once went around carol-singing and came
home drunk.

In parishes where a more tolerant spirit prevails I am glad to note that
the old custom, and even a taste for the finer ditties, seem to be
reviving. Certainly the carollers visit us in greater numbers and sing
with more evidence of careful practice than they did eight or ten years
ago: and friends in various parts of England have a like story to tell.
In this corner the rigour of winter does not usually begin before January,
and it is no unusual thing to be able to sit out of doors in sunshine for
an hour or so in the afternoon of Christmas Day. The ve